To ask which roles you think no-one else could play

[StrangledVowels]

Some actors or actresses embody a role so completely, it’s inconceivable anyone else could ever play the same part. They could never be satisfactorily re-cast.

The first one that jumps into my mind is Peter Falk as Columbo. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in that role - he was and always will be Columbo.

Can anyone think of any others?

Yes, all four of the Father Ted main characters definitely couldn’t be replaced.

Will be interesting to see how the cast of the new Harry Potter Series fare. Such huge boots to fill.

Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Delicious.

Natasha Lyonne is doing a brilliant modern update of Columbo in Pokerface. It’s great fun! I also can’t imagine anyone else playing her part in Russian Doll.
I notice a lot of comedy roles being mentioned. I’d add Richard Ayoade as Moss in the IT crowd and Dylan Moran as Bernard Black.

Stockard Channing as Rizzo
Meryl Streep in anything
Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Imelda Staunton, Julie Walters and Maggie Smith in Harry Potter
Maggie Smith in pretty much anything after 1996 but ESPECIALLY Downton Abbey (maybe also before that, I'm just not familiar)
Agreed that Charlotte Gainsburgh is Jane Eyre
Ellen DeGeneres as Dory
Everyone in the 90's version of the Adams family/Adams family values
Jack Black in School of Rock
Tom Hanks and Sally Field in Forest Gump
Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction

I could go on for days 🤣

Doris Day in Calamity Jane
Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen
Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump

The entire cast of Breaking Bad

Sooooo true! There were points in that show I had to remind myself it was fiction and the actors weren't really going through all that for real. They were that good!

Brenda Blethyn as Vera

Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean Luc Picard (swoon)

Maggie Smith in pretty much anything after 1996 but ESPECIALLY Downton Abbey (maybe also before that, I'm just not familiar)

Miss Jean Brodie

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

John Cleese as Basil Fawlty

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. He was astonishing in Wolf Hall.

David Jason as Del Boy

Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean Luc Picard (swoon)

The cast of the original series. There'd have been no Jean Luc Picard without Kirk, Spock et al.

David Jason in A Touch of Frost.

Sean Bean in Sharpe.

Jeremy Brett as Sherlock.

Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in In the Mood For Love

Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul

Star Trek TOS, all of them.

Sean Bean as Sharpe

The cast of Friends and Gavin & Stacey

John Hamm as Don Draper. How could anyone else play him?

All the actors in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
John Belushi in Animal House, and he and Dan Ackroyd in The Blues Brothers

Charles Dance as havelock veterinary

Christopher Reeve will always be Superman.

The entire cast of the American version of The Office, especially Steve Carell..

Helen Mirren as DC Tennyson in Prime Suspect

Paul Darrow as Kerr Avon - Blake's 7

Alan Rickman - Severus Snape

Both have also played the Sherriff of Nottingham funnily enough