This week, the League of Extraordinary Bloggers is writing about celebrity sightings, and since I live on the east coast and don’t really go to conventions, the only celebrities I get to see are stuffy old white guys in suits — senators and congressmen — yawn. So, I thought I’d take on this topic from a different angle.
I always get excited whenever a celebrity makes a cameo in a movie, especially when the movie was made before that actor even was a celebrity. Band of Brothers is a great example of this. The cast is filled with actors who would eventually move on to bigger and better than things. The HBO miniseries has both Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Captain America’s Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) shows up, and Jimmy Fallon even makes an appearance.
In 2001, the same year that brought us Band of Brothers, Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, Black Hawk Down, was released. That movie is overflowing with familiar faces. Scroll down the full cast list on IMDB and you’ll see what I mean…
- Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor)
- The Incredible Hulk (Eric Bana)
- Legolas (Orlando Bloom)
- Bane (Tom Hardy)
- Lucious Malfoy (Jason Isaacs)
- Shredder (William Fichtner)
- Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd)
- Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)
- Ari Gold from Entourage (Jeremy Piven)
- Aaron Pierce from 24 (Glenn Morshower)
- Tig from Sons of Anarchy (Kim Coates)
- Colt from Justified (Ron Eldard)
- And yes, that is Modern Family’s Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) as an army medic.
If you haven’t seen Band of Brothers or Black Hawk Down in a while, I would definitely recommend a re-watch, just to spot the celebrities that cut their teeth in those productions.
What are some of your favorite movies with great ensemble casts and cameos?
—
If you want to read about some real celebrity encounters, check out the stories from Geeky Vixen, Erik Johnson, Jathniel, and a really great story from the Retro Robot!
Well played Sir. Well played.
Yes – the casts of both movies are fantastic.
One of my “isn’t that” moments was seeing the communications specialist in BHD – Galentine – the face looked familiar – I finally placed it with one of the crazy Marine captains from The Rock.
Gregory Sporleder – Captain Frye. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0819440/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t28
I just started binge watching Game of Thrones and was pleasantly surprised to see the Jamie Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) connection to BHD.
Great post!
And oh yeah – seeing a young Johnny Depp in Platoon is always cool as well.
Good one!
+1 For ‘Band of Brothers’
So good. Easily my favorite mini-series ever. WWII is so wildly interesting.
Simon Pegg also makes a very brief cameo in one of the later episodes of Band of Brothers as well.
That’s right! Another great cameo.
One of my favorite cameos is Jimmy Fallon’s as manager Dennis Hope in Almost Famous. He has one of my favorite lines in the movie: “If you think Mick Jagger will be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”
There were cameos of real soap opera actors in SoapDish that I thought was really cool. I know the movie wanted to poke a little fun at soaps, but being able to see some cameos of real life actors in the soaps I watched, I thought that was a nice touch. Actually, I really like it when I see actors from my soap operas on other things, like in movies or other television shows.