Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of overweight actors in United States cinema
Selectively merge) to Character actor. I rescued this article in September 2006 by removing unreferenced names, writing the intro, with references reflecting considerable research, and noting examples such as Sydney Greenstreet, who played "The Fat Man" in Maltese Falcon.  I found books which spoke of them as a type of character actor, just as much as a "romantic lead." I particularly wanted to avoid a listing of a noncharacter actor who simply put on a few pounds. In reviews of films or obituaries, sources which have long been included in the article as inline references like the New York Times referred to them as "proud of his rotundity (Sebastian Cabot)," "roly poly character actor (James Coco)," "rotund comic" and "fat boy (Lou Costello)," "portly" and "rotund comic actor(Dom DeLuise)," "rotund actor (Burl Ives)," and "roly poly character actor (Michael Tucker)."  Several "delete" arguments were basically "IDONTLIKEIT" which is not a valid reason to fail to  well referenced results of research. So my suggestion is to keep the  intro with some references and add it to Character actor with no list, but just a few of the historically important names. Wikipedia is not censored to avoid topics that may offend someone. HeartofaDog and Erik have it right. Merge the intro into Character actor and keep the referenced text with a few historical examples. That is the only way to avoid malicious or unreferenced additions. That will be better than a list which confuses as to its purpose and invites malicious or unreferenced additions. The "portly/rotund/fat/roly poly" comic or bad guy was a staple of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and those actors who made a living by carrying 300 pounds were far from romantic leading men who needed to go on a diet. {Character actor is a better fit than Typecasting which is more about the difficulty an actor has playing some other part than one he is known for
— User:Edison, 20:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Stance: merge
Cited policy: WP:PRESERVE (Wikipedia:Editing policy)