Meta Casting: Difference between revisions

The use of '''Meta Casting''' is taking an actor and crafting a role that utilizes their known history to create a resonance between the performance and the audience that makes the whole thing far more dynamic than it could have been in any other way. As an example, take an actor who is famous for having altercations with obnoxious tabloid reporters. Take that same actor and cast them in a role of a famous businessman who kills a reporter for harassing him constantly. In some cases the actual role is almost an [[Expy]] of themselves, as in they're playing an ''actor'' with a suspiciously similar history.

* [[Peter Sellers]] took this trope into his own hands and put a twist on it. He often commented in interviews that he had no real personality and was nothing beyond the [[The Goon Show|many]] [[The Pink Panther|colorful]] [[Doctor Strangelove|characters]] he played. After he read ''[[Being There]]'', he contacted author Jerzy Kosinski about getting a film adaptation made because he saw in it the role he was meant to play all along. That would be Chance the Gardener, a mentally-challenged man whose personality is so underdeveloped that he can only reflect other people's assumptions and desires, which makes each one of them see him as everything he or she ever wanted -- awanted—a passionate-yet-discreet lover, a brilliant thinker, etc. The resultant performance is regarded as one of the greatest, if not ''the'' greatest, of his career, even though it is worlds removed from most of his other work tonally.