The actor that has been typecast as Charles Manson
Whether in movies, on stage or on television, acting is a job first and foremost that people do to pay the bills each month.
There is a notion that it’s an artistic calling, or way for people to express their innermost feelings and connect with the souls of others and touch the transcendent, but, nope, sorry – acting’s a job. You won’t get to “express yourself”. You’ll take your “worker 2” role in a corporate training video, and you will like it. Maybe you’ll hit the big time and have a walk-on role in a Subway commercial. Except that rates for commercials have cratered, and you’ll still have to keep your bar job.
It’s a tough pill to swallow for most actors that they are not a movie star and no one is interested in their “persona, see you play Hamlet, or headline a Marvel movie. It’s not the end of the world, though. All it means is that you’ll have to find the thing you can be that no one else can be and embrace it. It’s the very soul of the cursed concept of casting type”.
All actors, at every level, have to look at themselves and think about the roles that suit them, then put themselves up for those roles. If you’re 6″6 and built like a brick shithouse but want to play comedy roles? Tough shit, you’ll be henchman number 16. If you’re a woman over the age of 30? Mums and witches, it is.
However, some people have aced their casting type so well that they can guarantee a role playing a specific character. People like Damon Herriman.
Who plays Charles Manson in many projects?
Born in Adelaide, Australia, Herriman was one of the lucky ones. Not only because he’s, y’know, a working actor but also because he was a child actor that successfully converted his career into adulthood. He’s what those in the industry would call a ‘that guy’ actor. Rarely the focus of a series but charismatic and compelling enough to always make a splash in smaller roles in film and TV. However, in 2019, Herriman had the kind of year that most character actors dream of.
Not only did he land a role in two of the hottest projects going at that time, he landed them playing the same character. In the Quentin Tarantino picture Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, he showed up giving a deliciously creepy take on Charles Manson. He’s in the film for literally one scene and one scene only but it’s enough. Herriman is sensational in the role and if you wanted more of him then you were in luck, because you got a lot more of him in Mindhunter.
In the second series of the hit Netflix crime drama, he portrays the infamous cult leader again and this time, gets almost an entire episode to inhabit the character. Herriman works wonders with a minimum of screentime in both cases and sent a message out to any casting director that might need it. Saying that if you need someone to portray the most famous cult leader ever, he’s the guy. A savvy move considering there’s one thing we can be sure of… that Hollywood will never truly get bored of telling the Manson story.