8 More Actors Who Didn't Know They Were Being Weirdly Typecast
4. Ed Norton Has Violent Monsters Inside Him
As with Christian Bale, there's obviously something about Ed Norton that suggests to casting directors that he's well suited to playing characters with many layers. Even more specifically, it seems there's been a culture of him playing characters struggling with or hiding a violent monster inside them.
In his very first film role for Primal Fear, Norton set out his stall early, playing accused murderer Aaron Stampler whose abuse at the hands of a bishop led to the development of multiple personality disorder, including an identity called Roy who murdered his abuser. It ultimately ends up being a facade, but in all of the other cases here, there's an element of control to the changes Norton's characters undergo.
Next, he made American History X, in which he sought to run from his violent past as a racist foot-soldier of a neo-Nazi gang leader. And then he followed it up with Fight Club, in which his violent inner self exploded out as an entirely different figure in Tyler Durden and then finally he played Bruce Banner, who was cursed by his Hulk affliction.
There's a clear progression of the still-thematically-similar roles dealing with how inner violent personas are dealt with and they work as a quadrilogy pretty damn well.