4. The Fast And The Furious (2001)
Actor(s) that got typecast: Michelle Rodriguez
One of the clearest examples of an actor who can’t stop doing the same thing in their movies is Michelle Rodriguez. Rodriguez is best known for the role that started the career trend in question in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious. Not only has she embraced the typecasting, but she seems to have turned it to her advantage in a big way.
Rodriguez’s role as Leticia “Letty” Ortiz in the movie that started the Fast Saga saw her play a no-nonsense tough girl who drank beer, hung out with the guys, and showed disdain for women who didn’t chew broken glass and fix engines in their spare time. Letty was killed off in the fourth film in the franchise (her second appearance) but was later brought back from the dead for reasons too convoluted to explain here. The Fast and Furious movies saw Rodriguez typecast as varying degrees of tough chick, usually one that dies while being appropriately badass.
There are a number of films that used Rodriguez to that effect after The Fast and the Furious. Resident Evil, S.W.A.T., Avatar, Battle: Los Angeles, Machete – all of them have featured Michelle Rodriguez as the sort of woman who will spit out bullets while giving her enemies the stink-eye. It’s probably worth mentioning that she’s actually pretty tough in her real life – she was training as a boxer when she was offered her first acting job – so maybe reality also contributed to her typecasting.