Repurposing

With the examples of two define actors directed by the same men, we can see how an actor can be repurposed outside the realm of a film in which they define themselves. Firstly, take William H. Macy, who seems to wiry in the Coen brothers' FARGO. He is an actor who gives a smile like a realtor. There is something underneath that smile: an awkwardness. In the film, FARGO, Macy plays a car dealer who has hired some men to kidnap his wife so that he can get her rich father to pay a ransom for her. He puts on a smile for everyone, but the sweat coming from underneath his hair suggests the ugly truth behind his character. Also with Steve Buscemi, who is in FARGO as well as a few other Coen films, we see a character who is so odd we don't what to make of him except that he's odd. A few months pass after seeing FARGO, and Buscemi and Macy are thought of in our heads as wiry or odd. They become defined within our heads. We return to FARGO. In our minds, their characters are already defined as odd or wiry. Now, FARGO is set in stone, it is defined. Before the actors come on the set we know who they are, we have a feel for who they are. It is the same in their other films where they seem to play variations on those characters.