The Best Movie Cameos That Impressed Audiences | Wealth of Geeks

Cameo appearances in movies date back at least to the 1920s, and it’s obvious why they caught on.

First, getting asked to do a cameo flatters to the ego. Second, it means maximum exposure for minimum effort; people often remember a star cameo long after they’ve forgotten the movie itself. Third, it’s fun to do. And fourth, it’s an opportunity to get paid more for a day’s work than most people earn in a decade, all without the tedious business of learning lines, studying motivation, showing up on set day after day, or any of the other gross impositions heaped on long-suffering movie stars.

Here, then, to celebrate the noble tradition of movie cameos, find a (mostly) random selection of the best.

1. Alec Baldwin – Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

“Put that coffee down! Coffee is for closers only.”

Thus begins the finest cameo in living memory: Alec Baldwin exploding into the consciousness of David Mamet’s jaded real estate salesmen in the movie adaptation of his 1984 play. Delivering the motivational speech from Hades, Baldwin tears through the scene like a power-suited wrecking ball. At one point he slips off his Rolex to dangle it in Ed Harris’s face. “You see this watch,” he purrs malevolently, sapping every ounce of manhood from his victim. “It cost more than your car.”

2. Forrest Whittaker – The Color of Money (1986)

On the comeback trail, aging pool shark Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) thinks he’s hooked a live one in the shape of chubby, slow-witted billiard hall rat Amos (Forest Whittaker). But as the frames rack up and the money changes hands, the realization dawns that the hustler is being hustled.

When Whittaker asks Newman mildly, the play-acting over, “You wanna quit?” it lands like a slap in the face.

3. Stan Lee – The Marvel Universe

Thankfully, choosing just one of Lee’s movie cameos doesn’t require much thought–we choose all of them. A pre-title compilation of his many appearances – bus driver in Avengers: Infinity War, security guard in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, astronaut in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, etc. – supplants the traditional MCU superhero montage in 2019’s Captain Marvel.

They remind viewers of Lee’s good sportsmanship, but it’s one tinged with sadness. Captain Marvel was the first film released after he passed away. The implication is clear though: Lee was Marvel’s real superhero.

4. David Bowie – Zoolander (2001)

Bringing with him the iciest blast of cool imaginable, The Thin White Duke referees a dance-off between ridiculous male models Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) in Stiller’s savagely funny take-down of the fashion industry.

5. Luke Hemsworth – Thor, Love and Thunder (2022)

Love and Thunder features a ton of great movie cameos– Russell Crowe as Zeus, Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso’s grumpy soccer ace Roy Kent) as Hercules – but Hemsworth takes the proverbial biscuit as a ham actor playing his little bro’s hammer-wielding alter ego in the play-within-a-film.

6. Walter Huston – The Maltese Falcon (1941)

In a pivotal scene from this pioneering noir thriller, adapted from the classic novel by Dashiell Hammett, writer-director John Huston’s dad staggers into private eye Sam Spade’s office, leaking life from a dozen bullet wounds and clutching a rough bundle of rags containing the elusive black bird. In this moment, as the prize falls from Huston’s dead fingers with a resounding thud, Spade (Humphrey Bogart) gains the upper hand in the deadly game of cherchez le Falcon.

7. Johnny Depp – 21 Jump Street (2012)

Alien beings on as yet undiscovered planets knew Depp would show up somewhere in the big screen version of the TV show that launched his career. And he still manages to sneak in under the radar!

8. Christopher Walken – Pulp Fiction (1994)

Brought in to tell the bizarre story of Bruce Willis’ treasured gold watch, this Walken appears at his most Walken-esque: Insane hair, eyes like raw oysters, his entire manner a symphony of twitches, weird cadences, and offbeat emphasis. The performance would make the list for his pronunciation of the word “ass” alone.

9. Alfred Hitchcock – Various

When an actor playing a telephone operator in 1927’s The Lodger, failed to show up on set, Hitchcock decided, on a whim, to stand in for him. A tradition was born, with Hitch making movie cameos in almost all his subsequent films. Here are ten of the best:

• North by Northwest – Having a bus door slammed in his face just as he’s about to board (and just as his credit disappears from the screen).
• Psycho – Glimpsed through an office window wearing a ten-gallon hat.
• Vertigo – Leaving a pet shop with two of his own Sealyham terriers, Geoffrey and Stanley, as Tippi Hedron enters.
• Blackmail – Being pestered by a small boy while he trying to read a book on the Tube.
• Spellbound – Exiting the elevator of the Empire State Building, smoking a cigarette and carrying a violin case.
• Strangers on a Train – On the cover of the book Farley Grainger is reading, and later wrestling a double bass up the steps of a train carriage as Grainger gets off.
• Rope – A flashing red neon sign of his famous profile appears in the background.
• To Catch a Thief – Sitting next to Carrie Grant on the bus.
• Torn Curtain – In the lobby of the Hotel d’Angleterre nursing a baby (the music playing in the scene is “Funeral March of a Marionette”, the theme to the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents).
• Lifeboat – In the “before” and “after” pics of a newspaper ad for the Reduco Obesity Slayer diet plan (an ingenious workaround since Hitchcock did not, obviously, play one of the occupants of the lifeboat).

10. Peter Jackson – The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, etc.

Taking his cue from Alfred Hitchcock, Jackson makes regular movie cameos in his films, sometimes for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, sometimes as a character with some bearing on the plot. With due respect to his role as Bilbo’s father in The Battle of the Five Armies (which he plays in the form of a painted portrait, almost literally a cameo), the top spot goes to his lonely mountain dwarf in An Unexpected Journey, for no other reason than his magnificent prosthetic nose.

11. Dan Akroyd – Casper (1995)

Employed by whiny heiress Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty), Ghostbuster Ray Stantz gives her newly inherited mansion a once-over. “Who you gonna call?” he quips, exiting hurriedly a few moments later. “Someone else.”

12. Keith Richards – Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

As it was common knowledge that Johnny Depp based woozy Buccaneer Capt. Jack Sparrow on the Stones guitarist, hopes were high that he’d put in an appearance at some point. Richards didn’t disappoint. Playing Sparrow’s father Captain Teague, he’s the triumphantly raddled real thing next to Depp’s spirited but pale imitation.

13. Tom Cruise – Tropic Thunder (2008)

Needing a PR hit after his bizarre couch-jumping turn on Oprah, Cruise took the tried-and-trusted comic cameo approach. Donning fat suit, facial prosthetics, and fake chest hair, he hits it out of the park as rage-monster studio exec Les Grossman, foul-mouthed overseer of the titular film-within-a-film.

The best bit of a movie that never lives up to its promise, Cruise getting it on to Flo Rida and T-Pain’s “Low” over the end credits is a moment of movie magic on par with Marilyn’s billowing skirt in The Seven Year Itch, the spaghetti dinner in Lady and the Tramp, and Meg Ryan’s fake climax in When Harry Met Sally.

14. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall – Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946)

When Balkan Prince Henry (Dennis Morgan) takes his seat on a plane, he can’t believe his luck. Screen goddess Lauren Bacall sits next to him. His reverie is short-lived, however. Looking up from a tap on the shoulder, he’s confronted by a dour-faced Humphrey Bogart, Bacall’s real-life hubby.

15. Mike Tyson – The Hangover (2009)

Squeaky-voiced bruiser Tyson plays a heightened version of himself – a self not exactly low-key to begin with – in director Todd Philips’ bawdy tale of a bachelor party gone wrong. Best bit? Undoubtedly Tyson air drumming to the break in Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” accenting the downbeat by punching Ed Helms full in the face.

16. Martin Scorsese – Taxi Driver (1976)

Scorsese takes time out from the director’s chair to play one of the most disturbing characters in a film that has no shortage of them. As a strung-out jilted husband, he skulks in the back of Robert de Niro’s cab, speculating on what a .44 Magnum would do to a certain part of a woman’s anatomy.

Later de Niro, as psycho cabbie Travis Bickle, acquires a .44 Magnum for his climactic, blood-soaked killing spree.

17. Bill Murray – Zombieland (2009)

Could there be anything better than Bill Murray playing himself in a cameo? Yes, Bill Murray playing himself in a cameo as a zombie.

18. Stephen King – It, Chapter 2 (2019)

King has made so many movie cameos in films adapted from his books – 24 and counting – it’s now part of the fun to try and guess where he’ll pop up next. Here, he’s the sinister hock shop owner from whom James McCavoy tries to buy his childhood bike.

In a pleasing moment of self-referential meta-ness, King refuses an autograph from McAvoy’s character, a bestselling author, because he doesn’t like his endings.

19. Dolly Parton – Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005)

When Sandra Bullock’s FBI agent Gracie Hart collars a Dolly Parton impersonator suspected of aiding a kidnapping, she’s about to slap on the cuffs when… Doh!

Just when you thought you couldn’t love Dolly Parton any more than you already do…

20. Raymond Chandler – Double Indemnity (1944)

Given that Chandler, one of the greatest crime novelists in history, didn’t even like having his photo taken, it’s extraordinary that he agreed to appear on screen in Double Indemnity, the classic noir he co-wrote with director Billy Wilder.

So muted is his appearance that no one realized for years that it was him. But there he is, seated outside Edward G. Robinson’s office engrossed in a book, glancing up as insurance agent Fred MacMurray walks by.