8 More Actors Who Didn't Know They Were Being Weirdly Typecast

3. Bruce Willis Meets His Former Self

In the wake of his career-defining role as John McClane, Bruce Willis has wrestled with typecasting as Hollywood sought to cast him as everyman figures in action movies - usually facing increasingly insurmountable odds. That sort of ignores some of his better roles, but that's pretty much the point of typecasting: it works from an audience point of view as well as with studios.

But less well-noticed is the fact that he's also been cast a few times as a character who meets his younger self in movies. And in every case, as you'd expect, he's supposed to learn some sort of lesson from the encounters. Not always good lessons, either.

The first time it happened was 12 Monkeys in 1995 whose dark twist revealed that he witnessed his own death as a child. It then happened again in 2000's Disney's The Kid when he met his younger self to learn how to be a better man. And then in a return to more harrowing form, in 2012's Looper, he met his younger self who is charged with assassinating him.

In all three cases, the younger version ends up imprinting on the elder: in 12 Monkeys witnessing his own death shapes his entire life, in The Kid, he's taught to be a better person and in Looper, he's literally wiped out of existence. So not exactly all self-improvement, then.