Movies.ie celebrates the other-I with Five great film alter-egos!
Hunter S Thompson/Raoul Duke – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
This one might get a little complicated… Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas follows drug guzzling journalist Raoul Duke as he careens around Vegas getting up to no good. So in the film itself, Raoul Duke may be his own person but we know that Duke is really Thompson’s ever so slightly exaggerated alter-ego. Furthermore,Johnny Depp is up there on screen doing a wholesale impersonation of Hunter S Thompson, having spent four months hanging out with the legendary scribe before shooting. Got it? Good!
John Nash/Charles – A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind tells the true story of troubled mathematical genius John Nash. At first, Nash appears to be just a little too absorbed in his work but soon it becomes clear that he has rather more serious mental problems. What’s not clear at first is that his chummy, supportive room-mate Charles (Paul Bettany) isn’t actually a real person but merely an invention of Nash’s mind created to keep him company as he works obsessively to find an original idea.
Marie/Le tueur – Switchblade Romance
A major spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the hugely inventive French slasher movie Switchblade Romance (or Haute Tension to give it it’s original title). The story follows two college friends, Marie and Alex on a break in the country to study in peace, only to have the peace abruptly disturbed by a nightmarish trucker who stalks the countryside violently dispatching everyone he meets. What we learn at the end of the film is that Le tueur doesn’t actually exist and is in fact the split personality of the seemingly innocent Marie.
Frank Partridge/Frank T.J. Mackey
Magnolia Tom Cruise puts in a startling performance in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia as Frank T.J. Mackey, author of Seduce and Destroy and motivational speaker (which may be putting it a little mildly) for men who can’t get anywhere with the ladies. Over the course of the film, we learn that Mackey is an adopted persona designed to remove himself as far as possible from his difficult childhood, when he was left to care for his sick mother by his TV producer father, Earl Partridge (Jason Robards).
Count Orlok/Nosferatu – Nosferatu
The final alter-ego in our list is perhaps the least convincing. In that Hollywood versions of the Dracula myth, the Count is quite believable as a normal guy during the day but the same cannot be said of Count Orlok, the daytime alter-ego of Nosferatu (Max Schreck). How he manages to broker property deals looking like that we’ll never know but somehow he manages it; convincing young estate agent Thomas Hutter that he’s just after a little pied-a-terre in Wisbourg like any self respecting nobleman.