It takes a special actor to star in science fiction films and television shows.
That’s why it’s no accident that if an actor has starred in one sci fi show, they show up in others. For example, the actor who played Dr. Phlox on Star Trek: Enterprise showed up in Stargate Atlantis (the actor, John Billingsley was also the undead vice-president’s brother in Prison Break, so some sci fi actors are able to break into other genres).
Just over the weekend, I watched the campy Starship Troopers. In it, the actors who played the generals both starred in the film Total Recall. I had seen both movies many times and only made the connection over the weekend.
- Michael Ironside was a hard nosed general in Starship Troopers and was the corrupt cop who chased Arnold Schwarnegger’s character in Total Recall from Earth to Mars.
- Marshall Bell, who played the weak and scared general in Starship Troopers, was the mutant resistance leader, Kuato in Total Recall.
I asked myself with the sci fi genre being so small compared to others, why do these actors show up again and again in sci fi flicks? The answer is threefold:
- You have to have a wild imagination.You have to be quite imaginative to see aliens that don’t really exist.
- You have to wear itchy makeup. Just ask Andrea Martin why she didn’t reprise her role of Quark’s mom in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
- You have to memorize techie, scientific language about things that simply don’t exist or only exist in a research paper. And talk about things that could twist your tongue several times.
