Special mention must go to the Farrelly brothers’ Me Myself and Irene, an ill-fated attempt to render DID as comedy. Even Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor, come to think of it. Harry Potter’s psyche is fatefully connected with that of his arch-enemy, Voldemort, who shatters his persona into pieces. There’s Tolkien’s Gollum, who struggles to retrieve his former hobbit self, Sméagol. Many others live as two discrete identities: Clark Kent and Superman, Peter Parker and Spider-Man, Bruce Wayne and Batman. And what about superheroes? The Incredible Hulk is essentially a comic-book update of Jekyll and Hyde. Movies about demonic possession, werewolves, vampires – all are stories of two personae within one body. Jekyll and Hyde’s DNA runs through movies such as Psycho and Split, but, the more you look, DID themes can be found across the entertainment landscape. Next up, we have the enticing prospect of Russell Crowe as Dr Jekyll in the Tom Cruise-led reboot of The Mummy. Fredric March’s 1931 portrayal is still considered the definitive version others to take on the challenge have included Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Anthony Perkins, even Robbie Coltrane. Jekyll and Hyde has been dramatised countless times since, on stage, screen and radio. His performance was apparently so convincing that, for a time, Mansfield was suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Stevenson’s wife also maintained that the author had read a scientific paper on “sub-consciousness” at the time.Īn English actor named Richard Mansfield quickly acquired the rights to Jekyll and Hyde, and within a year was performing the dual role on stage in both the US and in Britain. Stevenson denied any real-life inspirations for the story, but that same year, Frederic Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, published an article on what he called “multiplex personality” (a more prescient description than he could ever have known), citing two well-known French cases of the time, Louis Vivet and Felida X. In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a multilayered literary classic that is, in essence, a study of an extreme DID case: a respectable Victorian gentleman and a bestial monster residing in the same body. The connection between DID and horror was made before cinema was even invented. Just as autism in the movies makes you a maths genius, so DID makes you a “psycho”. Psycho is a horror masterpiece but as a portrayal of a real-life mental-health condition, it’s nonsense. At other times, the mother half took over completely,” explains a doctor at the end of the movie. At times he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. “He began to think and speak for her, give her half his life, so to speak. One conspicuous example old enough to spoil, though, is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, ostensibly based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein but essentially a murder mystery with a DID twist. So many movies in these genres have used DID as a dramatic driver or a “gotcha” twist, it would be spoiling most of them just to mention their titles in this context (cough Fight Club cough). Unfortunately, those dramas have tended to be horror movies and psychological thrillers, which has not really helped us understand the condition. You can see the appeal: DID is a condition that lends itself to extremes of behaviour, conflict, torment, secrets and mysteries – everything a juicy drama requires in one character. Split trailer: James McAvoy plays 23 characters in one in psychological thriller Guardian DID is relatively rare in real life, but we have all heard of it, and we all think we know what it entails because cinema and television seem to be obsessed with it. Split’s writer and director, M Night Shyamalan, professes to having had a lifelong fascination with dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as split personality, or multiple personality disorder, and frequently mislabelled as schizophrenia (which is an entirely different condition). Is it “Dennis”, the frowny, buttoned-up neat-freak? Is it “Patricia”, the prim, English-accented governess? Could it be “Hedwig”, the nine-year-old Kanye West fan? We don’t get to see all of Kevin’s alter egos, but enough to get the picture and to make this lurid little horror stand out from the crowd. Every time he walks into the cell, they have to work out who they are dealing with. This presents extra challenges for the young women Kevin has abducted and locked in his basement. He plays Kevin, a man with at least 23 distinct personalities – not all of them nice. But James McAvoy sets a new benchmark with his new movie, Split. T om Hanks played six different characters in Cloud Atlas, Eddie Murphy played seven in The Nutty Professor and Alec Guinness notched up eight in Kind Hearts and Coronets.
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