The title role in the performing arts is the performance part that gives the title to the piece, as in Aida, Giselle, Michael Collins or Othello. The actor, singer or dancer who performs that part is also said to have the title role.
The actor playing the title role is not always the lead; the title role may or may not be the protagonist. In the television miniseries Shogun, for example, ToshirÅ Mifune had the title role, but the lead was played by Richard Chamberlain. In the James Bond film and novel The Man with the Golden Gun, the title character is the primary antagonist. It can be even more complicated when the title role and the lead are in different genders; for example, in the recent revival of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Whoopi Goldberg had the title role, but the lead was Charles S. Dutton.
Read more about Title Role: Title Character
Famous quotes containing the words title and/or role:
“It was his title that killed me. I had never spoken to a lord before. Oh, me! what a fool, what a beast I have been!”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)