It’s called “character acting” and a lot of actors do it. The audience is fully aware they are watching Michael J. Fox.
The truly greats can play a range. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks come to mind.
I don’t know what your source was for these movies, but IMDB lists only the ones I’ve marked with an asterisk. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t in those other movies, just that the editors at IMDB haven’t been convinced of his involvement. Usually that’s because there wasn’t a clear enough image of the person supposed to be him that passed muster in their opinion. There’s a press release from “Downhill Racer” listing his name, and Elliott Gould said that Stallone told him he was an extra in MAS*H, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. I’ll check out the others next time they’re on TCM.
The IMDB editors can sometimes be somewhat haphazard in their standards of proof. They accept Ben Affleck’s and Matt Damon’s accounts of being in the crowd at Fenway Park in “Field of Dreams”–but even if they are, you’ll never find them. So they should not be listed, in my opinion. But Stuart Whitman said that he and James Dean were extras in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (as well as Jonathan “Dr. Smith” Harris), but they are not listed–and I’ve never been able to spot them.
I highly doubt that. Bollywood and Nollywood churn out several films a day.
It would be fairly easy to rack up a string of extra roles in quality movies, IMHO. You just go to casting calls for extras for quality movies. It has nothing to do with being an ambitious actor. I’ve been in a couple big budget movies as an extra and stand in for a famous actor. I’ve never acted. And I’ve never appeared in anything low budget. I just showed up and fit a look. I turned down the chance to travel to the next city with the first movie because I was in school at the time. Maybe one of my few regrets in life (because of the experience but not any delusions of becoming a movie star). I have a friend who lives in L.A. and has a regular job and some side businesses. For quite some time he was a professional extra and even had an agent. He had a certain look and ended up in a string of movies that may not have been Academy Awards level productions but all featured known stars and directors. He didn’t have a passion for acting and making art. He showed up to stand in the background and get his 100 bucks a day or whatever it was at the time.
Yes.
On the 25th anniversary DVD, he says they offered him $50,000 for the screenplay. That was a lot of money in 1976 to a struggling actor with a wife and baby, so it was tough for him to turn down. They began raising the offer, making it increasingly tempting for him to accept. But when the offer reached a certain amount in six figures, he realized that if they wanted the screenplay that badly, he actually had the upper hand. So it became easier to resist selling the screenplay outright, and to insist that he be cast as Rocky.
Incidentally, one of the bankable stars the producers were considering for the lead was Ryan O’Neal. He was certainly athletic enough to be credible as a boxer. But a 200% Italian South Philly boxer? It’s a reminder of what a different era it was, when they cast Charlton Heston as Michelangelo, and John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Come to think of it, casting a guy who looked like Sylvester Stallone as a leading man (and not changing his name to something short and WASPy) in a big-time film was kind of ground-breaking.
Another interesting thing from that DVD which I found kind of surprising: Sly, whose name later became synonymous with being fit and muscular, was anything but when he began work as Rocky. They (director Avildsen IIRC) viewed test footage and told him to lose some weight before actual filming began.
I didn’t say all studio films. For every studio film released, there are maybe a hundred independent films that are shot and go nowhere. And more studio films than you’d suspect fail to find distribution.
Hello, Little Nemo.
You probably won’t know this, but it was me who found Stallone in all of those movies you posted about, but I’ll never be helping the people who run IMDb ever again. If you go on Google, you can find a lot of links where I complained about how stupid the staff on IMDb are.
I basically came across a reputable site that is run by a fan, where he had posted a blog entry regarding a section of a page, taken from a book to do with a play Stallone acted in before he became famous, and it mentioned some films he was in, but it just said he could ‘be seen’ in them. That was all it said, along with the titles of six films, but I cannot get any information for one of them. So I watched Downhill Racer online, and I noticed he was sitting in a restaurant, near Robert Redford. So they added it to his page. After that, some trolls on the IMDb related message boards made out that it wasn’t him. They said it didn’t resemble him, and I got accused of starting rumours. Blah. Blah. Blah. They must have just edited it off of his filmography. He’s not even out of focus, but you only see the side of his face. Also, Stallone was a student in Leysin during 1969, and the film was partially shot in Switzerland.
http://www.stallonezone.com/main/1970/10/sly-scores.html
I also found him in MASH. Again, all I did was find this information online, already public knowledge, because Elliott Gould mentioned that he met Stallone once, and he said to Gould that he was an extra in the movie. He didn’t mention the scene that he is in specifically, but he said it was a scene where the surgeons were cutting time for lunch. I ended up watching the film. In fact, where he appears is in the scene where the guy with glasses first meets Donald Sutherland’s character, in a catering tent. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he is wearing a cap as well, and he walks over to Donald Sutherland. You can see Stallone in that scene for about 2 seconds.
I’m also sure I spotted him in What’s Up, Doc?, because again, I read something online about him being an extra in a movie with Ryan O’Neal. Although the name of the movie wasn’t mentioned. So I just looked up what films Ryan O’Neal was in during 1971. You don’t go by the release date, but the production date. I just happened to see somebody that looked way liked him walking by briefly in the background, although the extras looked too blurry to identify.
Even after showing all of this proof to those in charge of IMDb on their GetSatisfaction (customer service) forums, they said they couldn’t add these uncredited parts. I just gave up bothering after a while. But I said to myself that posting info to help people may as well be a lost cause.
The film you also posted about called The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker is hard to find, but he had a small role as a party goer. I have it on DVD. I got it on Amazon back in 2015, and it came in a white case. The film’s title is just Pigeons, though.
He also plays one of the wedding guests in this film called Lovers and Other Strangers, that was made in 1970. Enjoy the clips!
