10 actors who played the same movie characters decades apart
It’s not unusual for one actor to play the same character in several movies over a long period of time. Tom Cruise has been Ethan Hunt for about 30 years, and he refuses to age at a regular human rate.
We’re not here to talk about actors who’ve regularly kept up with their characters, though. We’re looking at the ones who took significant breaks between stints with the same alter ego.
Specifically, we want characters who returned after a gap of at least two decades. The actor can have played the character on TV or in any other medium, and they can have appeared in archival footage or flashbacks, but other than that, it’s open season.
Thanks to the rise of ‘legacy sequels’ in recent years, this list was depressingly simple to put together. Thanks, Hollywood.
10 actors who played the same characters years later:
Jeff Goldblum: David Levinson (20 years)
To celebrate America’s 220th birthday, Roland Emmerich released one of the biggest blockbusters to ever bust a block: Independence Day. This all-out action-fest blew everyone away and enjoyed a good two decades of adulation. Then came the sequel and, oh dear.
Independence Day: Resurgence from 2016 was a complete flop, the textbook example of an utterly pointless legacy sequel. While Will Smith was smart enough not to get aboard this doomed vessel, several actors from the original film weren’t so lucky. The highest-profile casualty was Jeff Goldblum, who returned to play computer whizz David Levinson for the second time. It was not worth the wait.
Sam Neill & Laura Dern: Dr Alan Grant & Dr Ellie Sattler (21 years)
Speaking of Jeff, he bravely revisited another classic character after the disappointment of Resurgence. His Dr Ian Malcolm had a few brief appearances in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, 21 years after he was last seen in The Lost World. Not wanting to feel left out, his colleagues from the original film were quick to match steps.
Both Sam Neill and Laura Dern reprised their roles as Dr Alan Grant and Dr Ellie Sattler, respectively, for 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion, with their most recent outings being Jurassic Park III, which came out in 2001. Had Goldblum not taken the Fallen Kingdom gig, he would have beaten them hands-down with a 25-year gap between appearances.
Anthony Perkins: Norman Bates (23 years)
In Alfred Hitchcock’s disruptive thriller Psycho, Anthony Perkins’s turn as the seemingly mild-mannered motel owner with mummy issues to end all mummy issues, Norman Bates, has a legacy that nobody can touch. Even if Perkins himself tried to ruin it with the unfortunate Psycho II.
Released in 1983, 23 years after the first and three years after Hitchcock’s death, Psycho II picks up the story following Bates’ release from a mental hospital. Vera Miles was also dragged back into the sour limelight, reprising her role as Lila Crane. Psycho II isn’t a bad film by all accounts, but it is completely unnecessary.
Harrison Ford – Rick Deckard (35 years)
Harrison Ford is one of two actors (the other being Edward James Olmo) who appeared in both the sequel and the original, which hit screens 35 years earlier. He might not be a primary alumnus of Blade Runner 2049, but Rick Deckard still played a key part in the new story.
Of course, everyone’s favourite action grandpa is no stranger to reprising roles. He’s played Indiana Jones far too many times for his own good, and he retook the wheel of the Millennium Falcon as Han Solo for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but this outing was a fruitful homage, carrying forward the bleak tone and a haunting image in the form of Ryan Gosling’s character lying on snow-covered steps.
Denis Lawson: Wedge Antilles (36 years)
To give the Star Wars prequels some credit (shocking, I know), they didn’t lean too heavily on the nostalgia of the original films. That rule went straight out the window as soon as Disney came in. With his brief cameo as Wedge Antilles in The Rise of Skywalker, Denis Lawson beats out everyone else in the trilogy with an absence of 36 years.
Billy Dee Williams would have joined him on this list, had he not voiced Lando Calrissian in The Lego Movie. As for Warwick Davis, who cameos as the Ewok Wickett Warrick, he was undone by Caravan of Courage.
Michael Keaton: Beetlejuice (36 years)
Michael Keaton could have also been on the list for playing Batman, where he returned to the role of the ‘Caped Crusader’ in 2023’s The Flash, although he’d probably prefer if we all forgot he was ever involved in that.
Instead, let’s talk about the time he stepped back into the black-and-white stripes of Beetlejuice after 36 long years. Keaton was one of many stars who returned for Tim Burton’s 2024 film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, including Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. He’d barely lost a step as the undead sex pest and was easily the best thing about a thoroughly average outing.
Tom Cruise: Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (36 years)
Rounding out our list of actors who reprised roles 36 years down the line is the only one to do it in a film worth watching. Back in 1988, Tom Cruise proved once and for all that planes are indeed cool by starring in Top Gun.
Almost four decades later, Cruise picked up the story of Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in the appropriately titled Top Gun: Maverick, a film that smartly shifted focus onto the next generation of fighter aces. Val Kilmer also came back as Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, his final role prior to his death in 2025.
Peter Billingsley: Ralphie Parker (39 years)
In 1983, Peter Billingsley played the nine-year-old Ralphie Parker in the holiday comedy A Christmas Story, the bespectacled child wielding a gun twice his might. He would go on to have a decent career, balancing his acting duties with producing work to moderate success. Then, in 2022, he decided to revert to his roots.
A Christmas Story Christmas (yes, that’s what it’s called) was released almost exactly 39 years to the day after its predecessor. A 51-year-old Billingsley plays an older version of Ralphie, who now has kids of his own, which was a brilliant idea that was executed really well, serving a fitting tribute to a festive classic.
Nick Castle: Michael Myers (40 years)
The great thing about a William Shatner mask is that you can wear it at any age and have none the wiser about the man behind it. Nick Castle first breathed life into Michael Myers, the all-conquering villain of the Halloween franchise, and four decades later, when the series was rebooted by David Gordon Green, he was given the chance to don the borrowed visage.
He shared Michael duties with a younger stuntman, James Jude Courtney. Besides archival footage of his breathing being used for Halloween II, this was the first time Castle had returned to the role that he had helped make a worldwide sensation.
Ellen Burstyn: Chris MacNeil (50 years)
Ellen Burstyn is a very smart woman, for she knew that everything after The Exorcist was going to be terrible, and so stayed away from the franchise after her iconic performance as Chris MacNeil. Unfortunately, even the toughest nut must crack.
Burstyn, at 90, was finally tempted back for The Exorcist: Believer, which was also directed by David Gordon Green, to reprise MacNeil for the first time in half a century. A legend in every sense of the word, Burstyn deserves all the love for this remarkable achievement, even if the film itself was pants.
