20 famous characters played by multiple great actors
- Lisbeth Salander
- Queen Elizabeth II
- Sherlock Holmes
- Jack Ryan
- Rooster Cogburn
- Hannibal Lecter
- Mad Max
- Peter Pan
- Sarah Connor
- Robin Hood
- Bob Dylan
- James Bond
- Vito Corleone
Joker
After Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, it was hard to imagine any other actor playing the part. Sure enough, 11 years later Joaquin Phoenix stepped into the role and made it his own, making it just the second time in movie history that two actors won an Academy Award for the same character, after Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro did it playing Vito Corleone.
Some characters, it seems, are just too interesting to be played once. Here are 20 famous characters that have been played by more than one great actor.
Lisbeth Salander
Lisbeth Salander is the dark-haired, tattooed heroine of Stieg Larsson’s award-winning Millennium series, starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The character was first portrayed in film in 2009 by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, who was nominated for a BAFTA for her performance. Rooney Mara took on the role in the 2011 David Fincher-directed American adaptation of Dragon Tattoo, earning an Oscar nomination. Most recently, The Crown’s Claire Foy played Salander in The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Although the film was a disappointment at the box office, Foy was singled out for her performance in an otherwise unexceptional entry to the franchise.
Queen Elizabeth II
The Royal Family is ripe for drama, and at the centre of it all is Queen Elizabeth II, who has been portrayed in film and television no fewer than 100 times. Notable performances include Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton in the hit Netflix series The Crown, and Helen Mirren in 2006’s The Queen, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Lead Actress. The famously private Queen has yet to give her opinion on which performance is her favourite, though apparently she has “strong opinions” about her family’s depiction in The Crown.
Dumbledore
Legendary Irish actor Richard Harris played the Hogwarts headmaster in the first two Harry Potter films. He only agreed to take the part after his 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he didn’t. After Harris died in 2002, he was replaced by Michael Gambon, who played the role in the remaining six films in the franchise. In 2018, Jude Law played a young Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, a sequel to the prequel of the Harry Potter series, set 70 years before Potter attends Hogwarts.
Sherlock Holmes
According to the Guinness World Records, more actors have portrayed Sherlock Holmes than any other character in film or television. Notable performances include: Jeremy Brett in the Granada TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Nicholas Rowe in Young Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr. in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Ian McKellen, in Mr. Holmes, and Benedict Cumberbatch in BBC’s Sherlock.
Hamlet
Considered one of the greatest roles in drama, the title character from Shakespeare’s tragedy, about a Danish prince who vows to avenge his father’s death, has been portrayed by some of the greatest actors both on stage and the big screen, including: Laurence Olivier, Nicol Williamson, Mel Gibson, and Kenneth Branagh. Ethan Hawke also played the character in a modern retelling of the story in 2000’s Hamlet, set in Manhattan instead of Denmark and with the character as a film student rather than a prince.
Jack Ryan
The first Tom Clancy novel to feature Jack Ryan was 1984’s The Hunt for Red October, which was adapted into a 1990 film starring Alec Baldwin as the CIA intelligence analyst. Since then, there have been four other Jack Ryan films, with Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine playing the character. John Krasinski currently plays Ryan in the popular Amazon series Jack Ryan.
Rooster Cogburn
Jeff Bridges was apprehensive to take on the role of Rooster Cogburn, especially since it had already been done and done so well by none other than the Duke himself. But he came around when the Coen brothers told him they’d be basing their 2010 film not on the 1969 classic John Wayne western, but on the Charles Portis novel that inspired it. This gave Bridges the freedom to do his own thing with the character, turning in an Oscar-nominated performance as the hard-drinking, sharpshooting Deputy U.S. Marshal.
Hannibal Lecter
Following in Anthony Hopkins’ footsteps after his Oscar-winning performance as the cannibal doctor in The Silence of the Lambs is no small task, but Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen more than held his own in the NBC series Hannibal, bringing a new sense of style and detached sophistication to an already well-established character. Before Hopkins, Succession actor Brian Cox first brought the character to the screen in Michael Mann’s Manhunter.
Mad Max
Mel Gibson’s breakout role came playing the leather-clad, motorcyclist cop “Mad Max” Rockatansky in the 1979 George Miller film Mad Max, which at the time was the most profitable film ever made. He reprised the role in a pair of sequels: Mad Max 2 and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Thirty-six years after the original film, English actor Tom Hardy took up the role in the critically acclaimed Fury Road, co-starring Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. Evidently it was a role he was meant to play, since when he was a teenager he adopted a dog named Mad Max.
Peter Pan
In early productions of the play, the character of Peter Pan was played by a woman, starting in 1904 with English actress Nina Boucicault. Since then, the eternally youthful resident of Neverland has been played by men and women, including: Jeremy Sumpter in 2003’s Peter Pan, Kelly Macdonald in Finding Neverland, Freddie Highmore (also in Finding Neverland, as the real-life inspiration for the character), Levi Miller in Pan, and Allison Williams in the NBC live television event Peter Pan Live! But perhaps most famously, Robin Williams played a grownup version of the character in Steven Spielberg’s Hook.
Sarah Connor
Game of Thrones castmates Emilia Clarke and Lena Headey have both played Connor after Linda Hamilton made the character famous in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Headey took on the role for the short-lived FOX series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, while Clarke played the part in Terminator Genisys. Ultimately, though, no one could replace Hamilton, who reprised her career-defining role in 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, the first time she had played the character in close to 30 years.
Robin Hood
Hollywood has a thing for making—and re-making—Robin Hood movies, some good and some not so good. Actors such as Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Cary Elwes, Sean Connery, and Taron Egerton have all played the bow-and-arrow-wielding thief, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, but the most famous representation is Errol Flynn in 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Keira Knightley also played a female version of the character (Robin Hood’s daughter, Gwyn) in the Disney TV movie Princess of Thieves.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is a man of many talents and facets. To capture all of them, filmmaker Todd Haynes used six different actors to depict the Nobel Prize-winning singer-songwriter in his 2007 film I’m Not There. Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw all play Dylan at different times in his life. Blanchett was singled out for her performance with an Oscar nomination.
James Bond
Seven actors have played 007: Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig. Connery and Moore are tied for having played the Ian Fleming creation the most times, with seven, while Niven and Lazenby are the only two to have played him just once. Most recently, Craig starred as the suave British spy in 2021’s No Time to Die, the actor’s fifth and final Bond film. Actors rumoured to take over the role include Tom Hardy, John Boyega, Sam Heughan, and others.
Spock
After Leonard Nimoy played Spock, the highly intelligent and sympathetic half-Vulcan half-human member of the USS Enterprise, on TV and in movies for over 40 years, Zachary Quinto took over the role in 2009 in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. Quinto, who has starred in three Star Trek movies so far, stayed true to the character Nimoy helped create while putting his own spin on it, appeasing diehard fans while helping to usher in a new generation of Trekkies.
Dracula
Next to Sherlock Holmes, it’s hard to imagine a character that’s been portrayed in more movies and TV shows than Count Dracula, the titular vampire of Bram Stoker’s 1897 epistolary novel. The earliest known adaptation of the novel is 1922’s Nosferatu, starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, who was based on Dracula. The first official adaptation, however, came in 1931, when Bela Lugosi played the character. Other notable performances include John Carradine in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Claes Bang in the BBC series Dracula, and Frank Langella in 1979’s Dracula. Christopher Lee has played the character more times than anyone, with 10 credits as Dracula.
Jesus
The Son of God is a risky role to play, even when done well. Mel Gibson told Jim Caviezel that The Passion of the Christ would likely damage the actor’s career, and to an extent he was right. Still, many great actors have not shied away from the role, including: Max von Sydow (The Greatest Story Ever Told), Robert Powell (Jesus of Nazareth), Willem Dafoe (The Last Temptation of Christ), Christian Bale (Mary, Mother of Jesus), Ewan McGregor (Last Days in the Desert), and Joaquin Phoenix (Mary Magdalene).
Vito Corleone
Robert De Niro initially auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone, Vito Corleone’s oldest son, but Francis Ford Coppola felt he was too angry to play the part, and so it went to James Caan. But De Niro left enough of an impression that he was cast as a young Vito in The Godfather Part II, earning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. This made it the first time that two actors had won an Oscar for playing the same character, after Marlon Brando won Best Lead Actor for the first film.
Batman
Nowadays it seems there’s a new Batman almost every other week, from Christian Bale to Ben Affleck to the latest actor to don the black cape, Robert Pattinson. Before them, the Dark Knight was portrayed by Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, and, of course, Adam West, who played the character for three seasons on ABC from 1966 to 1968. Though he wasn’t the first to play the Caped Crusader, to many West was the original Batman, who helped popularize the character and make him who he is today.
Joker
Starting with Cesar Romero in the 1966 TV series Batman, countless actors have portrayed or voiced Bruce Wayne’s nemesis. Perhaps most notably, Heath Ledger won a posthumous Academy Award for his transformative performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Joaquin Phoenix also took home an Oscar for his eerie depiction of the character in the standalone film Joker, making it just the second time two actors have won the award for the same role after Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro did it playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.