Why do people refer to characters in movies by their actor's names?

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• FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Depending on how famous the actor is, sometimes it’s easier to remember their name than the character’s name

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• makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  My three usual reasons in order of most to least common:

  • I remember the actor’s name and not the character
  • I’m describing the movie to someone else and they don’t know the character
  • I’m intentionally disrespecting the movie in my description implying it’s not worth my effort to learn their names

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• 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I’m crap with names as it is, let alone a temporary second one

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  • XiELEd@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    A temporary second one? But I guess in my case, as I tend to watch movie adaptations, and often produced outside of my country (so I don’t care about the celebrity culture) I find the actor temporary, in regards to the character. A character can be played by multiple actors, after all, and the character still exists without an actor.

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    • 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Fair, I think I was watching an adaptation of something I’d read, I’d probably be more inclined to know the characters by their names. I’d generally say that’s probably only 10-15% of what I watch overall

      FWIW sometimes I don’t even get the actors’ names and they get called “the guy from that comedy we watched the other month”

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• spacegoat@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I can’t even bother to learn my coworkers names. How am I supposed to expend effort to remember names from every piece of media

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• MurrayL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Probably because the actor’s name came more readily to mind, and if you’re already discussing the movie then you know who they’re referring to.

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• markz@suppo.fi ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Depends on the actor and the role. Gandalf is Gandalf, but Nic Cage is Nic Cage.

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  • pHr34kY@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Even in Guns Akimbo, it’s Harry Potter. It must suck when the role is bigger than your name.

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    • Kalothar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      After Swiss Army Man, he successfully broke my Harry Potter image of him and became a distinct Daniel Radcliffe.

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• HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It is actually a convention for movie reviews to use the actor name while TV reviews will use the character name. Why? A lot of it is thought that movie goers aren’t going to be as familiar with a character name as they would be with the actor in that role.

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  • AngryRedHerring@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That’s interesting, I’ve never heard that before. Makes sense. Where did you pick that up?

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    • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’ve seen some reviewers talk about it and I did a web search to confirm.

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• MimicJar@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t think it’s always the actors in name, it’s sometimes what they’re known for.

  Look at the recent adaptation of The Odyssey. It’s easy to remember that the name of the main character is Odysseus, it’s basically the title. But his wife? I’m sure it’s said a few times in the film but I don’t remember it, it’s Anne Hathaway. But they also have a son… Uh… Spider-Man.

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• JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Unless a movie says a character’s name A LOT I will forget it. I’m so so bad with names. But I hear actors’ names all the time. It’s that simple. If I remembered the characters’ names, I’d use them. I suppose also for more obscure movies that I like, I’d probably use the actors’ names if I think other people don’t know the movie.

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  • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I love the movie Bad Moms but I can never remember the main character’s name, they should have just named her Mila Kunis.

    In the movie Mercy, starring Chris Pratt, the main character’s name is Chris. They probably figured people would call him that anyway

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• Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  All of the reasons above, plus sometimes the character just doesn’t have a name

  When I’m talking about They Live, the protagonist is literally unnamed. Rowdy Roddy Piper is credited as “Nada” but even that is never used in the film (Great movie btw, go watch it if you haven’t seen it)

  Then sometimes the actor is far more famous than the movie was, or the character wasn’t very memorable, or whatever the case is. Particularly true if the actor is appearing as a cameo

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• TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Makes perfect sense to me that if you forgot the characters names, which I often do, you would use a name that another person would understand without having to look up a name that they wouldn’t know anyway.

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• Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Because they conflate the actor and the character. Very popular in the USA I feel (could be wrong, but where I live we don’t do that).

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• celeste@kbin.earth ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I agree with the other comments that it's probably about memory more than anything, especially in faster paced communication like an in person conversation.

  In like, a blog post intended for lots of people to read, it's contextually dependent. Probably? Like, if they're reviewing the movie, they're talking about how the actor filled the role. In a plot description, it's more natural to say the character name. If the actor is named then, it could be intended to imply the actor never disappeared into the role. "Then Chris Hemsworth snuck into Whosville dressed as santa and stole all the presents with his dog Max" implies that the person talking never entirely saw Chris as the Grinch.

  But, yeah, in immediate one on one talk, I assume it's the name that comes to mind first. The famous person is memorable. Though, if you got a very strange mental image, you can also consider the possibility that the speaker was making a joke, like I was with "how chris stole christmas" up there. The quality of the joke is separate from whether it was intended as one.

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• Leviathan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Can’t remember the character’s name and fluidity of conversation supercedes pedantry in this case.

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  • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m very pedantic and will often say “Chris Pratt’s character” instead of “Chris Pratt”, but that’s just my unnecessary pedantry, if you just say the actor’s name, people know what you mean

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