# Actors and Actresses Who Have "Played Themselves"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 12, 2003, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258 "2003-06-12T01:30:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/61 "2003-07-01T02:11:27Z")
Just watched the last half-hour of _In Cold Blood_ and Capote does not appear. ---
**Author:** ![Splanky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@Splanky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Splanky)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/62 "2003-07-01T03:38:10Z")
Carson Daley plays himself in _Joe Dirt_ He helps Joe find his parents via call-in ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/63 "2003-07-01T07:59:28Z")
Since it would be the time to mention her, Katharine Hepure played an uptight socialite turned rather wooden and limited actress in Stage Door, at a time when she was widely percived to be an uptight socialite turned rather wooden and limited actress. (No, I’m not maligning the dead - she turned out to be none of those things 🙂 :() ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/64 "2003-07-01T11:38:43Z")
Larry King has been Larry King in several movies. Not sure I would refer to his bits as “acting” though. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/65 "2003-07-01T12:39:20Z")
Wasn’t Richard Dawson (from _The Family Feud_) the game-show host in _The Running Man_? ---
**Author:** ![refusal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@refusal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/refusal)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/66 "2003-07-01T13:50:06Z")
Film director Rob Reiner played film director Marti di Bergi in This Is Spinal Tap. ---
**Author:** ![Bruce\_Daddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@Bruce\_Daddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruce_Daddy)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/67 "2003-07-01T14:17:11Z")
Larry David plays himself in _curb your enthusiasm_. The episode I say last night had a guy at a party asking him if he got residuals for Seinfeld. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2003, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258/68 "2003-07-01T18:10:23Z")
Tom Cruise tends to play good looking young men of no particular talent or intellectual merit. Mark Wahlberg has played several inner city kid/drug users and in real life he was a drug using inner city kid. I can’t belive nobody has mentioned SUNSET BLVD. It featured Gloria Swanson as a faded and forgotten silent screen superstar and Erich von Stroheim as a formerly brilliant silent film director turned toady.\* Dana Plato played a former child star in love with her black co-star in a soft core porn film entitled Different Strokes. Ellen Degeneres played a lesbian named Ellen. Eddie Izzard played a glam afficianado in VELVET GOLDMINE. Tammy Faye Bakker had a hilarious cameo as Mimi’s make-up crazed mother on the Drew Carey Show (her entry line: “Oh me, if I’d have known you were coming I’d have thrown on my face…”) Roseanne Barr Arnold Etc. played a megalomaniacal acid tongued half-Jewish housewife on ROSEANNE, a character closely modelled after her real life persona prior to standup. Brett Butler played a displaced Alabamian recovering from alcoholism and an abusive marriage in GRACE UNDER FIRE (a series that started well then tanked when it became too morbidly serious). (Differences: In real life, Gloria was nowhere near as out-of-touch or as rich as Norma [in fact she did the movie for the $50,000 paycheck] and von Stroheim’s career ended because he was impossible to work with and tended to go disastrously over-budget; people who worked on SUNSET said that he drove them nuts by constantly trying to rewrite scenes [among other things he wanted one in which Max washes Norma’s underwear], giving director’s pointers, and waiting until the day that Max is supposed to drive Norma to Paramount to mention the fact that he couldn’t drive [the Isotta Fraschini was pulled by a truck].) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-and-actresses-who-have-played-themselves/181258.md?page=3)