Best movie cameos

This week’s hot movie. Tropic Thunder, has a trio of hot stars. Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jack Black play pampered movie stars who find their mettle tested when making a Vietnam war movie.

It’s also got a trio of hot cameos. Early reports indicate that Tom Cruise should get a career boost with a screamingly funny extended cameo as a fat, bald, foul-mouthed producer. Matthew McConaughey plays a slick, slick, slick agent, while Tobey Maguire appears briefly but significantly in a preview of the Downey character’s upcoming movie.

Like much Hollywood jargon, “cameo” has a flexible definition. Basically, it’s a small part played by an A-list star whose name is mentioned, if at all, only in the final credits. Let’s take a gander at some earlier cameos.

• Bruce Willis played himself in an Ocean’s Twelve cameo, greeting Julia Roberts like an old friend. Julia’s character, you see, was pretending to be Julia Roberts. It makes sense in the movie. Well, not altogether. Anyway, there was something smug about the “inside joke” that didn’t help the movie. In the original 1960 Ocean’s Eleven, headlined by Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, then a member of Sinatra’s Rat Pack, made a fleeting appearance at a bar.

• In the original Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston played the astronaut stranded in Apeland. In the inferior remake, Mark Wahlberg had the lead, but Heston appeared briefly as the wise simian poppa of menacing ape Tim Roth. As in the first movie, Heston also had the last line.

Pages: 1 2 3