4 Super Specific Roles (Actors Played More Than Once)

Then, five years later in 2000, Willis starred in The Kid, a seemingly heartwarming movie about a total jerkass meeting his kid self through wholesome magic or whatever. While interacting with Lil' Bruce, he decides to unjerk his ass after learning that being nice will eventually make him a millionaire and let him bang Emily Mortimer, like in some kind of cynical capitalistic version of A Christmas Carol.

Walt Disney PicturesAh, it’s actually DISNEY’S The Kid. Well that explains it.

OK, well, if you've been in as many movies as Bruce has, everything probably turns up twice. There's probably some other movie wherein he steals a motorcycle after a rapist gets his dick shot off. But then in 2012, we of course got Looper, in which Willis plays a remorseless murderer who escapes from some other murderers into the past, where his younger-though-equally-murderous self tries to murder him. They even did makeup on Joseph Gordon-Levitt to make him look more like a young Bruce Willis, and you can barely tell it's not real!

TriStar PicturesThey ... they know that we know what he looked like at that age, right? Like, we have entire movies and stuff ...

If only the film could have ended with an even older Willis coming back to tell his two younger selves that they need to go back and warn infant toddler Bruce about the dangers of time travel. And on a weirdly similar note ...

Later, when it came time to show an older version of the character, Doctor Who had a choice: They could either slap a grey wig on Sheppard and stuff his pockets full of mothballs / Werther's Originals for that authentic old man smell, or they could hire his dad, William Sheppard. After they realized they spent all of their makeup budget on highlighter to contour Matt Smith's supernatural chin, the show chose the latter option.

BBCHe has his father's eyes. And dramatic lighting.

This, oddly enough, is something of a habit for the pair. In the 2010 movie Mysterious Island (directed, in fact, by Mark Sheppard), the father and son tag-teamed Captain Nemo. That is, they played the younger and older versions of Jules Verne's famous submarine captain. So that's twice that they A) were in a movie/show that feature a flashback/flashforward showing a character at a different age, B) it was decided they needed a separate actor rather than makeup, and C) they chose the same father/son acting combo. And even this wasn't the first time.

The pair's shtick started (as far as we know) with the 2009 NCIS episode "Broken Bird," wherein William and Mark Sheppard both play a villainous ex-CIA interrogator/torturer, nicknamed "Mr. Pain" because it's NCIS. Of course he was.

A few years later, along came Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, in which Penikett plays FBI agent Paul Ballard, who's investigating "Dolls" -- people who can be temporarily imprinted with whatever personality their rich clients want, from escort to thief to everything in between (functionally robots, if not mechanically). This includes a cute girl named Mellie, who thinks she's falling in love with Ballard but is, unbeknownst to her, programmed to spy on him to see how much he's uncovered about the titular Dollhouse.

So once again, Penikett gets a lot of attention from a programmed not-quite-human spy until, again, the two end up falling in love for reals. We're assuming that somewhere, right now, the guy is browsing job listings for "Male actor to play role of 'Man whose penis grants free will to automata.' Looking for a Tahmoh Penikett type."

20th TelevisionIsaac Asimov's 69th Law of Robotics

And while you might think that kids' movies only have about five plots, it's still a bit weird that five years later, in 1994, Benson voiced the title character in Don Bluth's Thumbelina, a movie about a redheaded, tiny non-human trying to find her place in the world after feeling like an outcast. Then a toad and a mole try to marry her, because at one time, major animation studios were really betting on interspecies romances being the next big thing.

Warner Bros. PicturesHans Christian Andersen had ... issues.

And despite the other roles that came Benson's way, she always managed to circle right back to voicing non-humans looking for the meaning of life, which they usually hoped to find down the pants of someone from another species. That's the basic, creepy summary of Weebo, Benson's character in Flubber, the Robin Williams movie that answers the question "What if snot was lovable?" Weebo is a flying robot that really wants to be human so she can have sex with Robin Williams. Whom she later almost sexually assaults.

Walt Disney PicturesAnd who built her, technically making him her father.

Ultimately, she/it realizes it's never going to happen, and surrenders to the idea that Williams' character is destined to be with a flesh-and-blood partner. Dammit, where's Tahmoh Penikett when you need him?

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.

Rest in peace, Robin. You've made so many lives so much better.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more check out 5 Actors Who Do the Exact Same Thing in Every Movie and 5 Actors Who Do The Same WTF Specific Thing In Every Movie.

Also follow us on Facebook. Because we're awesome.