Cripping-up is when a non-disabled actor takes the role of a disabled character. That character could be from a comic book, a historical figure known to be disabled or a literary figure.  With so few opportunities being offered to disabled actors beyond disabled characters, cripping-up should really go to a disabled actor first, however in practice this rarely happens. This is a list of TV Shows and Movies where non-disabled actors have been cast in disabled roles. Some of them also have disabled actors, but often these are just supporting roles.

Cripping-up in Films and TV Dramas. Which is Where Non-Visibly Disabled Actors Played Visibly Disabled Roles.

Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in The Upside (2017)

List of the films I've seen ... Favorite genres: Comedy, Golden Age Hollywood, Biographies, Documentaries , family films and Movie Shorts.

Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, and Penny Singleton in Blondie (1938)

Dennis Quaid, Dennis Christopher, Jackie Earle Haley, and Daniel Stern in Breaking Away (1979)

Aaron Eckhart, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Bella Thorne in Rumble Through the Dark (2023)

made-for-TV movies and short that spawned a series (or not). Note: Most do not depict airplane or boat pilots.

Every year, a number of television pilots are filmed -- "test episodes" for potential new shows. Some of them get ordered to series, and those pilot episodes often become episode #1 of the new show. Others, however, are unable to hurdle that barrier and remain unsold -- not picked up as a full television series.

Note that "unsold" does not necessarily equate to "unaired" -- many of the pilots listed here have aired on tv, either as a backdoor pilot (shown as a tv movie, or as an episode of an already-running tv show from which it was intended to spin off) or "burned off" (aired as a tv movie or a one-off episode among the summer reruns, or incorporated into one of several anthology tv series that consisted entirely of rejected pilots). Others have seen the light of day as extra features on DVDs, or straight-to-video releases, or in a few cases were even bumped up to theatrical releases.

I've started moving ones I've seen and/or have (i.e., I know they're at least marginally available) to the top of the list -- so far that's #s 1-976.

Sources: Unsold Television Pilots, Lee Goldberg. Movies Made for Television, 1964-2004 and 2005-2009, Alvin H. Marill. Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925-2007 and Encyclopedia of Television Pilots, 1937-2019 and Encyclopedia of Unaired Television Pilots, 1945-2018, Vincent Terrace. Various selective-subject (science fiction, animation, etc.) TV books. Various internet resources - IMDb, TCMDb, TheFutonCritic, etc. etc. etc.

(A work in progress.)

Jim Carrey in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

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