Actors You Don't Know You Know - or - Who's That Under that Imagery? It's Me! It's Me!

I've always found typecasting to be an intriguing concept in it's prevalence. Some actors struggle with breaking out and showing their range of talent, while others seem to embrace the niche as they become "the guy" for a role. Honestly, I think I would be very disappointed to meet Dennis Hopper and find that he is a completely sane, rational person after seeing him perfect the role of the disturbed villain. Or to meet Anthony Hopkins to find out he's not that bright or distinguished. But most interesting are the actors who become typecast without the majority of the public even knowing who they are.

Andy Serkis doesn't exactly fit the category, but considering in his two biggest roles you never saw his face, I think he fits the bill. Serkis played King Kong under all the CGI in the most recent re-make, thus bringing life to the wireframe movements of the ape. Likewise he played Gollum / Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (also by Peter Jackson). In fact, with CGI getting better and better, Serkis' role as Gollum inspired a lot of debate over whether or not the person under the CGI may be eligible for academy awards, ultimately it was decided they could not.

Frank Welker is known as a "voice acting god" having a repertoire of over 1,200 voices. Though Welker will play the voice of Megatron in the forth-coming Transformers movie he is most known for his dubbed animal vocalizations in live action movies such as the monkey in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as cartoon animal characters (in particular dogs: Scooby Doo, Astro, etc. If it's a cartoon dog, or in the canine family Frank Welker probably did the voice / vocalizations.)

Janos Prohaska, though, is who I think of first, when I think of someone who made a lifetime career of playing niche roles. What Frank Welker did for canines, Janos Prohaska did for anthropoids. I couldn't find an actual photo of him, so this is a photo of one of the characters he played: the Mugato, on Star Trek. Janos Prohaska made a career out of playing all sorts of apes, gorillas and gorilla like creatures, with a few bears thrown in as well.

Obviously, there are more unsung actors out there who breathe life into some of our favorite characters, these are the top three that spring to my mind.