10 Actors Who Played The Same Character In Completely Different Movies

The Character: John Lennon

The Movies: The Hours and Times and Backbeat

Ian Hart is probably best known as the actor who played Professor Quirinus Quirrell (aka the dude who had Voldemort’s face embedded in the back of his head) in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone but earlier in his career he gained recognition for taking on the role of music icon John Lennon not once but twice.

Despite a lack of physical similarity (Hart being blue-eyed and bald to Lennon’s brown eyes and mop-top), he gave an uncanny performance in Christopher Münch’s The Hours and Times in 1991. A fictionalised account of what may have happened between Lennon and The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein during a holiday they took to Barcelona in 1963, the movie won a Special Jury Recognition Award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

Hired on the strength of his first performance as Lennon, Hart later played a younger version of him in Iain Softley’s Backbeat – a 1994 drama set during The Beatles’ time in Hamburg and focusing on the love triangle between Lennon, fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe and German artist Astrid Kirchherr.