10 Actors Who Asked For Their TV & Movie Characters To Be Killed Off
Actors don't like their characters dying. But there are a few who went ahead and asked for death.
Characters on movies and TV shows die for all manner of reasons. In a vast majority of cases, it's simply because the script calls for it.
In other cases, an actor dies in real life and their character gets the same treatment. Entire productions can get cancelled or radically changed upon the death of an actor playing a major character.
As a general rule of thumb, actors don't like their characters dying. If the character you're playing dies, you're out of a job. Killing off characters has become a common way to dispose of troublesome actors.
Charlie Sheen's character in Two and a Half Men famously got killed off twice. Charlie Sheen had a very public drug-fuelled breakdown. He fell out with the showrunners, made a lot of unsavory comments, and created more bad publicity than CBS was willing to put up with.
They didn't just fire him from Two and a Half Men, they killed his character off-screen for good measure. He was replaced by Ashton Kutcher. They brought back Charlie Sheen's character in the series finale (played by a body double) and dropped a piano on his head. This drove the point home: they hated Charlie Sheen and there was no way he was coming back.
Yet there is a narrow subset of actors who actually ask for their characters to be killed off. An actor may want to leave a franchise for greener pastures or they may get tired of playing the same character for years.
10. Dean Norris - Breaking Bad
0Dean Norris played Hank Shrader, a DEA agent and brother-in-law to Walter White, the titular character who was breaking bad in Breaking Bad. After five years in the role, Norris was ready to quit. The story was winding down and his character was doomed anyway. Hank Shrader had remained totally oblivious while his brother-in-law built a meth empire under his very nose.
After landing a role on Under The Done, Norris asked for Hank Shrader to be killed off in the first half of season five due to conflicting filming schedules. The writers turned him down. The story called for a Walt-Hank showdown and rushing it would have led to an unsatisfying payoff. Norris's problem was solved for him when the season was split into two with a production break of four months. This allowed him to film Under the Dome without having to quit Breaking Bad early.