8. Jason Bateman
Style: Good Guy Driven To Distraction Now, before I begin this one, allow me to quickly iterate that Im a huge Arrested Devlopment fan and as such a huge Bateman fan by extension. However, Ive yet to see him in a role to date where he didnt seem to be directly channelling Michael Bluth. Im not necessarily saying thats a
bad thing (Michael Bluth was pretty hilarious), more that it makes me wonder how much of the long suffering Bluth Company President was performance and how much was seeping through from Batemans own personality. Bateman is a deadpan snarker; a straight man, whose funny moments usually come from his deadpan reactions to other characters insane behaviour. Hes the one character in Arrested Development, for example, that has an understanding of how the real world works, while the rest of the family live in a fantasy bubble created by less-than-satisfactory parenting and the former success of the Bluth Company. Its always so difficult to separate the elements of a character from the elements of an actors real personality; the two are often intrinsically and symbiotically linked to the point that one essentially plays off the other on screen. Is Bateman so similar throughout his modern filmography because hes been typecast or has he been typecast because he always draws upon himself when approaching each character? A difficult question to answer but I think youll probably find that its a little bit of both.