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    Skip Links The Big Question : What are academy schools, and is their future under threat? Film & TV 14 ° Hi 16°C / Lo 8°C Search Headlines Going out? | Navigation from The Independent & The Independent on Sunday > > > Famous Cameos: What's he doing here? From Salman Rushdie to Lance Armstrong, it seems that stars can't resist a cameo. Kaleem Aftab looks at the best mini roles Friday, 3 October 2008 Getty The most surprising appearance remains Bruce Springsteen's solitary appearance acting in a feature film. In High Fidelity, he appears in John Cusack's dream and tells him to go seek out his ex-girlfriends ? after all, what self-respecting music fan would or could refuse The Boss? Search Bookmark & Share There is nothing quite as efficient as a cameo to get a laugh in a movie. Both Tom Cruise playing a film producer in Tropic Thunder and, bizarrely, Salman Rushdie as an obstetrician (in Then She Found Me) have raised many smiles in cinemas this week. In the past decade, the cameo has become a staple of Hollywood comedies. These appearances are nearly always ironic, with a celebrity appearing to mock his or her own celebrity. Indeed, the cameo has become so rife that it's almost become a celebrity competition to out-cameo a rival. They will often play clueless and self-absorbed in the hope that the audience will see how far they're not clueless and self-absorbed. It's product placement for the most important commodity in their careers: themselves. Television shows such as The Muppets, Extras, Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons specialise in cameos – and highlight how a brilliant scene-stealing performance can change a career. Of course, Alfred Hitchcock was famous for appearing in his own movies and would come up with increasingly ingenious ways to walk across the screen or appear in a mirror. Spotting him became a game for his fans. But M Night Shyamalan's appearances in his own films and in self-aggrandising American Express commercials are just plain annoying. Spike Lee used always to act in his own movies and Nike commercials until the day he woke up, looked in the mirror and realised that he wasn't born to be an actor. Then directors started turning up in other people's films – Quentin Tarantino for one loves doing this – but after a while the joke became a bit of a bore. Actors also love appearing in their friends' movies: Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell always make an effort to appear in at least one scene of each other's movies, while Matt Damon and Ben Affleck constantly swing into Kevin Smith pictures. Repetition has made the art of the cameo lose its charm. That's why the best cameos are often those in which real people play themselves on screen, making it a huge surprise for the audience when they appear. Cameos don't need to be ironic or funny to be memorable; they just need to be innovative and surprising. Rock Star Cameo Bruce Springsteen in 'High Fidelity' Musicians love making cameos in movies, especially when their chosen profession is being depicted or mocked. David Bowie has cropped up on a number of occasions, including in Zoolander, and plays a financial guru in the forthcoming August. Alice Cooper gives a lesson in rock history in Wayne's World, Keith Richards showed Johnny Depp that he hadn't gone far enough in his imitation of him in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Billy Idol rocked in The Wedding Singer. The most surprising appearance remains Bruce Springsteen's solitary appearance acting in a feature film. In High Fidelity, he appears in John Cusack's dream and tells him to go seek out his ex-girlfriends – after all, what self-respecting music fan would or could refuse The Boss? Sportsman cameo Lance Armstrong in 'Dodgeball' Athletes give musicians a run for their money when it comes to stealing scenes. The most influential appearance was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing a pilot in Airplane!. The Milwaukee Bucks basketball legend had previously fought Bruce Lee in Game of Death. The Farrelly brothers love casting sports stars; Tom Brady appeared in Stuck on You, Anna Kournikova in Me, Myself and Irene and Brett Favre in There's Something About Mary. David Beckham is rumoured to be appearing in Goal III. But the appearance of Lance Armstrong in Dodgeball was by far the funniest. The seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor gives a brilliant pep talk to Vince Vaughn about never giving up in Rawson Marshall Thurber's comedy. Mysterious cameo 'The List of Adrien Messenger' Cameos often go uncredited, a good way of ensuring that audiences are kept in the dark about a star appearance. But there is another school of thought, which is to disguise actors and only reveal their identity in the end credits – Shane Meadows had Reeves and Mortimer appear as clowns in Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, for example. But it's John Huston's 1963 film The List of Adrien Messenger that takes this concept to extraordinary lengths as five actors – Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra – donned disguises. It's rumoured that Sinatra only turned up to be revealed as the actor for the credits and didn't actually appear in the film. Funniest cameo Julie Christie in 'Nashville' Robert Altman was behind the definitive comic cameo. Ned Beatty gawps at the English actress as she waltzes by, only to be admonished by Karen Black with the immortal put-down: "She can't even brush her hair." Author cameo Kurt Vonnegut in 'Back to School' Salmon Rushdie's turn in Then She Found Me may have created more laughs than his appearance with Julian Barnes and Jeffrey Archer in Bridget Jones's Diary, but he could take lessons from Kurt Vonnegut in the art of the cameo. The late author helps a student with his term paper on Kurt Vonnegut in the otherwise unmemorable Rodney Dangerfield comedy. Academic cameo Marshall McLuhan in 'Annie Hall' Harvard boffin Cornell West was such a fan of The Matrix that he was invited to record a DVD commentary talking about the philosophy behind the movie. The producers thanked him by giving him his own on-screen moment in The Matrix Reloaded. West was following in the footsteps of Marshall McLuhan, famous for his "the medium is the message" doctrine, expressed in his 1964 book Understanding Media. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen introduces McLuhan to an ill-informed professor who is pontificating about the merits of McLuhan's writings in a cinema line. Argument won. Political cameo Nelson Mandela in 'Malcolm X' At the end of the Spike Lee's film, in a Spartacus moment, Nelson Mandela seems confused by his years spent in prison when he turns to camera in front of a group of schoolchildren who follow his lead by stating: "I am Malcolm X." Apparently the man who would become South Africa's president refused to say "By Any Means Necessary". Movies made up of cameos 'Prêt-à-Porter' Around the World in 80 Days was a three-hour extravaganza of cameos. Albert Brooks's The Muse, about the movie industry, features a host of movie luminaries, including Cybill Shepherd and James Cameron, and famously has Martin Scorsese rambling on about making Raging Bull 2. The forthcoming What Just Happened? is an adaptation of producer Art Linson's book about his Hollywood experiences, and features Bruce Willis playing himself. Zoolander has a catwalk of stars. Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to cameos, with Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson making a special point of introducing his co-stars. It's also notable for a cameo from Tony Wilson himself. Robert Altman went to town on cameos in Nashville and The Player. But it's in Prêt-à-Porter that Altman really excels, with a checklist of names to rival Bret Easton Ellis's novel Glamorama. Movie-stealing cameos Alec Baldwin in 'Glengarry Glen Ross' Sometimes, a cameo is so good that it steals the movie – Pamela Anderson in Borat, for example. However, Alec Baldwin's performance in Glengarry Glen Ross deserves special praise because his turn comes in a good film featuring heavyweight actors such as Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Jonathan Pryce. He plays an emissary from downtown whose love of capitalism knows no bounds. David Mamet added lines to his play for this scene, and Baldwin says them like a man with dollar signs in his eyes. Artist cameo Stan Lee Some people just can't get enough of trying to appear in movies. Elvis Costello only ever seems to appear on screen in small doses, but the king of the movie cameo is the comic-book writer Stan Lee. No movie adaptation of one of his Marvel creations is complete without the bespectacled Lee making an appearance. He even has a line, delivered badly, in Spider-Man 3, when he is seen standing on a traffic island, wearing aviators, and witnessing one of Spidey's heroic acts. The immortal cheesy line? "I guess one man can make a difference after all." Also in this section Advertiser Links EDITOR'S CHOICE ON THIS SITE Advertiser Links Most viewed Read 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Emailed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Commented 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Day In a Page | | | | | | Select date Search ©independent.co.uk | | | | | | | |