Similarly, John Turturro has a part in every single Spike Lee movie, even if its just a quick voiceover (such as the voice of the dog that orders Son of Sam to kill people in “Summer of Sam”.)
If you appear – and especially if you have a line of dialog – you get paid. But I’m sure he did it for the SAG minimum.
Most famous movie people have early careers and it is interesting to see where they turn up. One that caught me off guard was watching a rerun of “Have Gun Will Travel” and seeing Gene Roddenberry credited as the writer of the episode.
Was watching the 1967 movie “Countdown” last night on Turner Classic Movies (irtatttfl). A sci-fi about sending the first man to the moon on a one way trip to live in a previously landed habitat until a ship that could make the round trip was built.
I came into the show fairly late and every time a character in the control room turned around it was a case of I recognized the face and usually put a name to it. Some of which were…
It was a James Caan festival so it wasn’t surprising to see him as the astronaut.
CapCom was Robert Duvall - Frank Burns in the original MASH movie.
Michael Murphy - Me Lai Marston in the original MASH movie
Charles Aidman - was a nasty Colonel in an episode of the MASH television show.
Mike Farrell - Bee Jay from the MASH television show.
Ted Knight - as the Public Relations announcer for NASA.
William Conrad - voice only, newscaster. Recognized his voice from his narration on show about moose and squirrel.
Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit is one of my favorite science fiction films. It’s vastly underrated, although it has more fans now, I think.
The – well, not the villain, really, but the main opponent of Professor Quatermass is a military officer played by a young Julian Glover. He got more and higher-profile roles in the 1980s. You know him better as the AT-AT commander in The Empire Strikes Back, as Kristatos in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, and as Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, although maybe nowadays he’s more familiar as Maester Pycelle in Game of Thrones.
Mike Farrell first movie role was (uncredited) a bellhop in The Graduate. And MAS*H’s Jamie Farr was a student in the movie version The Blackboard Jungle, credited as Jameel Farah.
As everyone knows (I think, but I’ll mention it anyway) Richard Dreyfus was the kid who offered to call the cops in The Graduate. Norman Fell (Stanley Roper in Three’s Company) owned the boarding house Benjamin was kicked out of.
Jamie Farr was one of the pilots of the B-25 Andy Griffith and Nick Adams bailed out of in No Time for Sergeants.
Just had Quantum Leap on. Suddenly heard a Klingon shouting “You have no honour!”.
It’s General Martok from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. The actor playing a disgruntled father-in-law.
Also the voice of (I think) Armed Forces Radio in MASH movie.
Two more examples from The Graduate: Marion Lorne and Alice Ghostley (Aunt Clara and Esmerelda from Bewitched) are both in the receiving line for the Singleman party at the hotel.
I was watching a clip of the great Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, in a scene where the insomniac Lincoln is talking about Euclid’s axioms to a pair of junior War Office clerks. The camera cut to one of them, and I thought, “Huh! So that’s where Kylo Ren started his military career!” Adam Driver I think is the actor’s name.
Ratzenberger must have the perfect actor’s career. He created an iconic character on one of the most beloved sitcoms ever, so he’s famous enough to work whenever he wants (and, between Cheers and his Pixar work, never has to worry about making the next mortgage payment); but he’s not so huge as to have to fight off paparazzi or worry about TMZ digging through his trash.
I was surprised to re-watch the failed Gene Roddenbery pilot The Questor Tapes and seeing Mike Farrell in the next-to-leading role.
I never noticed Jamie Farr in a lot of the films at first, but after watching MASH for a few years I started noticing him in a lot of places. He’s one of the conspirators in Who’s Minding the Mint? (an underappreciated comedy). If you check out his imdb page you find lots of TV appearances.
Peter Falk shows up as a cab driver in *It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World. And he’s among those who showed up in The Twilight Zone as a kinda Fidel Castro clone.
Leonard Nimoy was supposed to play the role of the android in that pilot, but for some reason it was given to Robert Foxworth instead. Nimoy didn’t find this out until he arrived at the studio to be fitted for his wardrobe.
Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (Jack Benny’s sidekick) and Leo Gorcey (“Slip” Mahoney from The Bowery Boys) were also cab drivers in World.
I saw Carroll O’Connor in an episode of The Time Tunnel. He had a dual role as a British army officer in 1968 and his ancestor in 1812. He did a pretty decent English accent and I wouldn’t have recognized him except for his name in the credits.
I saw an episode of The Naked City with a very young Martin Sheen, along with Peter Fonda. I was struck by how much he looked like his son Charlie when he was that age.
And I saw DeForest Kelley on the Lone Ranger playing, guess what? Hint: “I’m not a gunslinger!”
I also saw Martin Milner in another episode of the Lone Ranger in his first TV role.
Adam driver was an actual US Marine before becoming an actor.
I was surprised to see Viggo Mortenson as Weps (the weapons dude) on the submarine drama Crimson Tide.
Nitpick: Doug and Tony were at the Battle of New Orleans, which took place in January 1815 (three weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed).
That episode of Time Tunnel used a lot of footage from The Buccaneer:
He was Phillip Stuckey in Pretty Woman, probably the first time I saw him.
Or Michael Dorn using that famous voice at a Naked Mole Rat from the future in Kim Possible’s ‘Sitch in Time’.
That turned my head in a hurry. The fun begins about 50 seconds in.
Along with James Gandolfini, aka “Tony Soprano,” playing some other officer.
Meh. I was close. At least I didn’t say it was during the Revolutionary War.
Interesting anecdote* about that film (and episode): The director wanted the bagpiper toward the end to fall along with the rest of the British casualties, but he refused because he was playing actual period pipes and was afraid of damaging them. This is why he kept marching toward the camera while all of the Brits around him were dying like rats.
*Source: A professional piper I knew when I worked for the Minnesota Historical Society.