Mel Gibson’s appearance at the end of Fairy Tails: A True Story was a pleasant surprise and a pretty bow for the sweet packeage that is this film.
Thanks RealityChuck, I was going to post something like that…
As a good example, Robert Deniro in Brazil (as posted earlier) wasn’t a cameo, but merely a very cool guy playing a small supporting role.
It seems like people also confuse being recognizable with being a cameo. For example, any Christopher Walken appearance will inevitably be deemed a cameo, the guy’s aura and reputation has surpassed his ability to get recognized just for acting a simple movie role.
Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, playing two guys on The Dating Game.
I keep thinking that Harrison Ford had a cameo in the end of the Christian Slater/Joe Pesci movie.
Speaking of Robin Williams, how about his cameo as a mime instructor in Shakes the Clown? He’s listed in the credits as Marty Fromage.
This was the first example I thought of when I saw the thread title. I didn’t like the movie much, but I also didn’t like the cameo, because the whole reaction (and in the show I saw, the whole audience cheered) was not because the king had returned, but because it was Sean Connery! In a comedy, a cameo that draws attention to the star, instead of the character, can be funny. But in a drama, it just breaks the fourth wall, and proves that even the filmmakers didn’t think this film was very good, and needed a cheap gimmick to save it.
I was watching Beavis and Butthead Do America, and it came to the part where B & B meet two older guys in the desert who, the implication goes, might just have knocked up B & B’s mothers about 9 months before they were born, and I thought one of the voices sounded familiar. So I watched the credits, and sure enough, it was Earl Hofert! (He’s the guy who played the crusty old seaman in Cabin Boy who asked Chris Elliott if he’d like to buy a monkey. You might more easily recognize his real name: David Letterman.)