Jennifer Aniston, Michael Cera, and, you know, Katharine Hepburn: Is it bad when an actor is always the same?

Great stars were people like John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Hepburn. They had memorable personalities and played variations of themselves. Great actors are people like Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman and Sean Penn. They are chameleon-like and change from role to role. Few people are actor/stars like Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro who combine the best qualities of both Star and Actor. They can inhabit a character but part of their personality still shines through.

Don’t ALL of Anniston’s rom-coms bomb? About the only exception I can think of is Marley, and frankly, the Lab was the reason to go see that movie, not her and Owen Wilson. Marley and Me had a huge fan base, and for some reason, JA is the first women they think of (or the first one to say yes) for these kinds of roles. I don’t know why. She doesn’t appeal to me at all. Also know enough about her personal life (from interviews, etc.) to realize she is NOTHING like the girl next door she usually portrays, but in fact is kind of a high maintenance women, travelling around with a high-priced hairdresser and a possee of stylists. Some “it girls” seem to deserve their reputation but I think she has skated on her Friends fame for years. If I know she’s in the cast of a movie I usually avoid it. I don’t find her interesting or believable in any way, and I have to be really interested in the subject matter (i.e. Marley and Me) to see the movie anyway.

Owen, you’re an Aniston fan. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. But to compare her to Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn is ridiculous. Seriously.

I think what the majority of people mean when they say “plays the same character over and over again” is that they have no acting range. No chops. No emotion or the same emotions all the time. That’s what it is. People like Michael Cera, Jennifer Aniston, Seth Rogen, etc are the victims of typecasting. It’s either that or they have the range of an armless Vietnam Vet in a wheelchair with banged up wheels. Michael Cera needs to do what Elijah Wood did in Sin City. That being play the polar opposite of what people think you usually play. Granted Elijah Wood never played the same character in every movie nor had the same range in every movie. People still associated him with a goody-goody aura. Michael Cera would do well by going after a movie out of his comfort zone. He’s the very reason Scott Pilgrim was a miserable failure at the box office. He may be good at his schtick but it gets old.

It seems like I’m pretty late to the party but I’d like to add something. Most comedic actors do the same thing over and over and that’s why people go to see their movies. You look at Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, etc etc. That’s what makes them popular people laugh at the same person over and over. Michael Cera should be considered a comedic actor, I think the problem is most people hate the character he usually portrays, not that he is still doing the same thing over and over. Just my 2 cents…

How much did Jen pay you to write this apologist column for the very untalented Jennifer Aniston?