Unlikely Film Cameos

[SteveDave]

I will forever see him as Errol from 15 Stories, so seeing him in a flipping space ship always breaks the immersion for me. I can just picture him back in his space bunk, recording a message on his dictaphone for his Mum.

Hello Mum...it's me, Errol...the Chinese one. Well...I'm in space. Just woke up. I've been asleep for months.

[Ignatius_S]

I'd like to imagine that Robin Askwith's casting in a cameo in big-budget submarine epic U-571 was entirely down to the fact that the character is identified in the credits as 'British Seaman'...

It makes even more sense finding out that Askwith's rumoured deleted scene involved him shagging a wren when he should have been on look-out duty – the dereliction of duty causing the boat to sink. Naturally, the torpedo strokes the vessel at the moment of ectasy.

I'll have to seek it out and see it again; it has been about 20 years since I last saw it in a mid-afternoon TV showing and I just remember my impression that it was appropriately mid-afternoonish in tone.

Do give it another go – you might not change your opinion, but I think it's one that deserves far greater recognition. It certainly fits mid-afternoon nicely, but it has rather more depth than others that also fit it.

I've read his memoirs after finding it in a bargain book shop in Newport. Good Lord it was a dull book. Tales of him & "dear old Rog" Moore & how he once funded a blue movie. I don't think I finished it.

Hee, thanks for the warning! Sheard did write more than one book and the one that I picked up seemed enjoyably readable. Maybe no great shakes, but many of my favourite actors are supporting ones and often find their careers more interesting than many a star.

David Hasselhoff appearing in the fantastic Spongebob Squarepants Movie is always a favourite of mine....

Superb pick!

Brian Glover as a flick-knife wielding bookie facing down John Wayne in the aforementioned "Brannigan".

George and Mildred's Brian Murphy (George) as some kind of physick/torturer in "The Devils".

Dave from the Winchester in "Get Carter"....

Although the sight of Brian Murphy in that film did cause me to spill tea from my cup into the saucer, I later found it was perhaps less surprising as one might think. The actor had worked with Ken Russell before on stage, film and television. Murphy was in Russell's television adaptation of The Diary of a Nobody and he wasn't the only one in that production in working with the director in future projects.

With the other two, those kinds of roles weren't atypical for those actors in that stage of their career but you just can't help but do a double-take.... and I'm sure Arthur would have been appalled by Dave appearing in a blue movie.

[madhair60]

Another one that I found particularly jarring - Brian Conley showing up in Equilibrium.

WHAT

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It happened.

For some reason, Phil Lamarr appears as an extra during the train scene in Spider-Man 2. Speaking of which, while it's not so unlikely, I was surprised when Willem Defoe turned up, Obi Wan style, towards the end.

[Ignatius_S]

WHAT

He's the one doing the Al Jolson impersonation.

[Ignatius_S]

More than a cameo, but still very surprising, is Jim Davidson in Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts. In a parallel universe, Davidson is best known as a the darling of avant-garde cinema.

[KennyMonster]

Bishop Brennan from Father Ted is in John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man. He also pops up in Babylon 5 too.

In  recent years the wife and I have seen him as the home tutor in 'The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas' and also in 'Fraiser' as a servant working in an exclusive gentleman's club with which the brothers are trying to gain membership.

Both times we have had to pause the screen and spend ages trying to work out where we knew him from.

[Bad Ambassador]

More than a cameo, but still very surprising, is Jim Davidson in Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts. In a parallel universe, Davidson is best known as a the darling of avant-garde cinema.

He's also in Colour Me Kubrick as a celebrity who appears to be a cross between Liberace and Larry Grayson. There's a scene where he sings Can't Take My Eyes Off You to John Malkovich in very camp fashion. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Les Dennis playing very much against type (and doing a remarkably good job of it) as a creepy long-lost brother in Intimate Relations

[Ignatius_S]

He's also in Colour Me Kubrick as a celebrity who appears to be a cross between Liberace and Larry Grayson. There's a scene where he sings Can't Take My Eyes Off You to John Malkovich in very camp fashion. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

Good call! I haven't seen that one myself, but keep meaning to - and I'm going to have to now!

[Ignatius_S]

Les Dennis playing very much against type (and doing a remarkably good job of it) as a creepy long-lost brother in Intimate Relations

Another great call - he really is good in that.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Good call! I haven't seen that one myself, but keep meaning to - and I'm going to have to now!

Here, you can save yourself the trouble of sitting through the whole film..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WiiXUR3xM

[MuteBanana]

Fred Elliot from Coronation Street turning up in A Clockwork Orange is one of my faves.

He also appears in Ghandi.

[Delete Delete Delete]

He also appears in Ghandi.

As Ghandi?

[Don_Preston]

Another great call - he really is good in that.

I don't really know!

[MuteBanana]

As Ghandi?

I think he plays some homosexual Safari type wealthy chap.

I've ruined your joke. "I say be the change you want to see my ducks."

[Boycey]

Thriller Mute Witness  has a real doozy of a cameo with an uncredited

Spoiler alert

Alec Guiness

[close]

turning up at the end as an evil snuff movie producer.

This is off the top of my head but I seem to remember that the director of Mute Witness had actually filmed the cameo with that actor years before. They'd met in the pub or something and he chanced his arm and asked him if he'd do something and, to his surprise, said actor agreed.

The sequence was shot and then he spent years thinking of a film to go with it

Or something like that anyway. I can't be bothered to go to Wikipedia....

[Boycey]

And the above shows I don't know how to do those quote malarkey

[Theremin]

He's also in Colour Me Kubrick as a celebrity who appears to be a cross between Liberace and Larry Grayson. There's a scene where he sings Can't Take My Eyes Off You to John Malkovich in very camp fashion. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WiiXUR3xM

Weirdly, I find both Malkovich and Davidson a bit sexy in that clip, in a sort of 'elderly aristocratic deviant' way.

[Delete Delete Delete]

Fred Elliot is my number one pick for Foghorn Leghorn is they ever make a live action movie.

[castro diaz]

Mike off of Neighbours turns up in that film I can't remember the name of.

[Jemble Fred]

The sassy lil kid from Third Rock turns out to be ROBIN in the new Batman movie too!!!

[turnstyle]

I've mentioned it in here before, and it's not a cameo as such, BUT...

In How to lose Friends and Alienate People, Simon Peggs character tries to get into a night club. You see a shot of the guest list, and one of the names on it is CaB favourite - Gina Yashere.

Incredible really, if only because she wouldn't even get on a guest list for her mums house.

[spock rogers]

Larry Lamb is in Superman 3. I think it's the bit at the end where 'Super' drops off Richard Pryor at that mine place. Lamb is one of the blokes who works at the mine.

[MuteBanana]

I thought he was a reporter in that. But I was wrong.

Edit - Nope! He was 1st Reporter in the first movie.

[Jemble Fred]

Larry Lamb is in Superman 3. I think it's the bit at the end where 'Super' drops off Richard Pryor at that mine place. Lamb is one of the blokes who works at the mine.

Why is this one unlikely? Is it because the part was so small, you expected him to have bigger roles at that stage?

If it was Larry THE Lamb, I would understand your nomination.

[MuteBanana]

By the time Larry Lamb made that second appearance in the Superman franchise he'd already starred in Fox and Triangle. Perhaps that would make such a minor role unlikely for an established actor.

[Doomy Dwyer]

The mighty fine 1978 remake of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' has a brilliant cameo from original star Kevin McCarthy and a strangely eerie appearance from Robert Duvall siting on a swing while dressed as a priest.

Has anyone mentioned Scorsese's 'Cape Fear'? Original stars Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck appear in a kind of playful moral role reversal type thing.

'JFK' by Oliver Stone is full of cameos, but the best must surely be the real Jim Garrison playing Justice Warren, head of the Warren Commission (obviously).

[Ignatius_S]

By the time Larry Lamb made that second appearance in the Superman franchise he'd already starred in Fox and Triangle. Perhaps that would make such a minor role unlikely for an established actor.

And those roles would mean what to Hollywood producers? Although you could say Lamb was established in British TV, he wasn't in movies - those kind of film bit parts wouldn't be unusual.

The mighty fine 1978 remake of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'...

Very nice calls!

[Tiny Poster]

The mighty fine 1978 remake of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' has a brilliant cameo from original star Kevin McCarthy and a strangely eerie appearance from Robert Duvall siting on a swing while dressed as a priest.

Has anyone mentioned Scorsese's 'Cape Fear'? Original stars Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck appear in a kind of playful moral role reversal type thing.

'JFK' by Oliver Stone is full of cameos, but the best must surely be the real Jim Garrison playing Justice Warren, head of the Warren Commission (obviously).

Those are what I consider to be wholly likely cameos.