Acting is both an art and a business. It is extremely difficult to make a living as an actor. People complain about actors getting typecast or playing the same roles over & over. Most actors are lucky to be typecast. It means people like seeing them in a certain kind of role. It means there is enough demand to keep them working.

In other words, actors get typecast, b/c usually that's what people pay to see. Very, very few actors are considered great actors w/ range and also A-list bankable. Daniel Day Lewis [was], Meryl Streep, & Christian Bale are among the short list.

Actors like Phillip Seymour Hoffman & Gary Oldman are/were among the most versatile and can headline arthouse films, but they won't put butts in seats for a blockbuster film. That goes back to what goose5 mentions about being a great actor vs being a movie star.

Take a movie like Days of Thunder. Few would argue that Tom Cruise is a better actor than Robert Duvall, but Cruise got paid $20M+, and Duvall was paid maybe $2-3M.

Regarding Kevin Costner, I thought he was great playing against type in Mr Brooks, but that film didn't make much money.

Finally, once you've been in the business a long time, won many awards & accolades, then many older actors settle on roles that they can phone in, b/c they're easy paychecks. Duvall, Tom Hanks, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino are all guilty of this.

I am reminded of Michael Caine's response when asked if he had seen Jaws 4: The Revenge. He said, "Never. I hear it’s terrible. However, I have seen the house it built and that’s terrific."