Basic Trope: A person who plays a nice character is a jerk off stage.
- Straight: Bob plays the character of Charlie, The Hero, on stage, but offstage he's bossy and overly demanding
- Exaggerated: Bob plays Charlie, All-Loving Hero, but offstage, he kills his producer.
- Downplayed:
- Bob plays Charlie, a flawed but good hero, but offstage, he's slightly rude to everybody.
- Bob plays Charlie, who's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold kind of character, meanwhile his actor is a shallow jerk and nothing more
- Justified:
- Bob can be a jerk, but the rest of the cast and crew aren't exactly all that great either and interacting with them has been a pain in the ass.
- Bob is a great actor, despite his lack of people skills.
- Bob sometimes runs into some really disrespectful and incredibly annoying fans.
- Inverted: Mean Character, Nice Actor.
- Subverted:
- Bob plays a nice character on stage. Although he's certainly a good person off stage, he's not particularly nice.
- Bob sees the errors of his ways and decides to become a better person off-set.
- Double Subverted: But he's downright cruel to his family once he gets home.
- Parodied: Bob appears in an ASPCA commercial petting a dog, then immediately punts the dog and beats it with a stick the minute the director says "Cut!"
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob plays a nice character is seen being mean to people. His actor friends come to his defense and say he's actually a nice guy... except to people of color because he's a white supremacist.
- Bob is a Nice Guy at heart and is friendly to his friends, family, and fans, but has trouble getting along with his coworkers.
- Whether Bob is nice or mean depends on whether or not he likes his coworkers.
- Averted:
- Bob isn't particularly a nice or mean person.
- Charlie is a mean character played a mean actor.
- Enforced: Because of media scrutiny, Bob is known as being a Nice Character, Mean Actor. So studios make him play fictional versions of himself.
- Lampshaded: "It's a good thing for Bob we always turn off the cameras before he drops character!"
- Invoked:
- Bob's agent suggests he act like this so fans leave him alone.
- Bob Used to Be a Sweet Kid, but decades of Horrible Hollywood have made him mean and callous in order to survive.
- Exploited:
- Bob is actually really not that bad in person, but, for some reason, people eat up his BTS "Nice Character, Mean Actor" persona. Thus relevance and sales may blow up if he acts like a jerk.
- Screenwriter David writes a scene where Charlie is wrongfully shunned, so that the actors can vent their true feelings towards Bob.
- Defied: Bob was formerly kind of grumpy, but he decides to act nicer to live up to the character he plays.
- Discussed:
- "If only Bob was like Charlie when the cameras were not rolling."
- "Why couldn't 'Charlie' be the actor, and Bob, the character?"
- Conversed: "Why are nice characters always played by such jerks."
- Deconstructed: Bob terrorizes the cast off-stage, which makes it difficult for them to adore him in character like Charlie. They either can't play their parts properly or drop out of the production. The show ultimately fails.
- Reconstructed: Bob is a nice guy playing a nice character, but finds himself being typecast in family-friendly roles and isn't taken seriously by people. So he starts being a jerk to shake off his overly positive image.
- Implied: Bob plays the very popular character Charlie, but none of his coworkers wants to be around him for some reason.
Back to Nice Character, Mean Actor.
