Movies where people (literally) play themselves

I'm not talking celebrity cameos, or even, say, John Malkovich in "Being John Malkovich." I'm thinking more like Howard Stern et al. playing themelves in "Private Parts," or those terrorist-thwarting guys playing themselves in that Clint Eastwood movie, or the actual anti-big tobacco lawyer appearing as himself in "The Insider." I know there are at least a few others ...

Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems. Abel (The Weeknd) Tesfaye is in there too, though that one is more of a cameo.

Ooh, good one! (And recent, too!)

There's also Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up, which has various real-life people re-enacting an incident, though whether that film falls under "fiction" or "documentary" is debatable (and kind of the point). Beyond that, there was a film (which I haven't seen) called To Hell and Back in which Audie Murphy played himself in an adaptation of his own WWII memoir.

Edward McDonald, the federal prosecutor in Goodfellas

Joan and Melissa Rivers in Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story.

Theresa Saldana in Victim for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story.

I was going to say LeBron in Trainwreck, but I think he plays a comically fictionalized version of himself, like Malkovich.

United 93

Muhammad Ali in The Greatest

Graham McPherson in Take It Or Leave It. John Hasler in Take It Or Leave It. Michael Barson in Take It Or Leave It. Christopher Foreman in Take It Or Leave It. Daniel Woodgate in in Take It Or Leave It. Lee Thompson in Take It Or Leave It. Mark Bedford in Take It Or Leave It. Cathal Smyth in Take It Or Leave It.

Madness made a movie about themselves starring themselves?

no!

the head of Stiff Records made a movie about Madness, starring themselves

it"s a full-on biopic of their pre-fame years, shot two years after their first album, in between recording their third album

Graham Parker plays himself in "This is 40," right? I guess things get complicated when we try to differentiate true stories from fiction from heavily fictionalized true stories. For example, Parker plays himself in that movie, but in a fictionalized context. Same with Prince et al in "Purple Rain" or Run DMC et al. in "Krush Groove." They are "themselves" (or, in Prince's case, "The Kid"), but they are acting in essentially fictionalized stories. Or much of the cast in "Cigarettes & Coffee," who are more in the Malkovich mode as themselves but invented versions of themselves. Hmm ...

40-year-old Elvis Costello plays 20-year-old Elvis Costello in 200 Cigarettes, looking exactly like middle-aged hat-wearing Elvis.

35-year-old Rowetta plays 24-year-old Rowetta in 24 Hour Party People, being the only member of the Happy Mondays who had not been notably ravaged by the eight years since their split.

I can't tell from the opening post whether Fritz Lang in Contempt is or isn't an example of what you're looking for.

Do all those music films of the 60s and 70s count? Slade, Abba, The Beatles etc? I guess Slade in 'Flame' counts.

Didn’t Jackie Robinson star in his own biopic?

I'll second Hard Day's Night and Help!

Slade are specifically not playing Slade in Slade In Flame tho

Right yeah, i forgot that.

Yeah, I've already kind of muddied/muddled it, but I was thinking of essentially non-fictionalized accounts. So the Beatles are playing the Beatles, but in a made-up movie not imitating or recreating events from real life. Same with Krush Groove and Purple Rain. But Howard Stern in "Private Parts" is playing Howard Stern, based on the memoir by Howard Stern. He is himself playing himself as himself, if that makes any sense.

Lang in "Contempt" is a fictionalized Lang. That is, he's playing himself, but as this character in the film where he is working on an adaption of "The Odyssey," which was not a thing Lang actually did or attempted, afaik.

Ditto Truffaut in Day For Night.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_for_Night_(film)

Day for Night chronicles the production of Je Vous Présente Paméla (Meet Pamela, or literally I want you to meet Pamela), a clichéd melodrama starring aging screen icon Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), former diva Séverine (Valentina Cortese), young heartthrob Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and a British actress, Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), who is recovering from both a nervous breakdown and the controversy over her marriage to her much older doctor.

In between are several vignettes chronicling the stories of the crew members and the director, Ferrand (Truffaut), who deals with the practical problems of making a movie. Behind the camera, the actors and crew go through several romances, affairs, break-ups and sorrows.

do you mean the "act of killing" guy is more like howard stern than the beatles?

You mean besides the fart jokes?

I never saw it, tbh, but isn't that the one where the documentary maker has the real-life perpetrators of violence recreate those acts for the documentary? That is, it's a documentary with them providing reenactments? That seems like something different, like "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."

Merv Griffin's cameo as himself is one of the funniest parts of The Man With Two Brains.

Audie Murphy, To Hell and Back

good one!

Ann Jillian as Ann Jillian in The Ann Jillian Story.

Frank Wills in All the President's Men

That weird thing where half the cast of Taxi played their twenty-years-younger selves in Man on the Moon.

along those lines Charo played her 20+ year-younger self on That '70s Show and so did Alice Cooper, I guess these are celebrity cameos basically

With Charo, she could have been the same age on That 70’s Show as she was in the actual 70s.

The world will never know exactly how old Charo is. It is weird that her That '70s Show episode is now as far back in time as the actual '70s were to that episode.

I don't know if it fits, but the film Radiant City stars people who live in the suburbs irl playing people who live in the suburbs being profiled for a documentary film about the suburbs.

It's actually not a bad little film, I had my students watch it this semester.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare?

I thought about that one, but it's still a fictionalized version of everyone, or at least tricky because it's sort of (from memory) ... a fictionalized version of themselves playing a fictionalized recreation of the making of the first movie? Something meta like that.

Wes Craven is being pitched to come back and make another, better Nightmare film but is dubious about doing so, Heather Langenkamp (the survivor girl from the first one) has a kid who's being chased by "real" Freddy in his dreams, Robert Englund is still making cash-in fictional Freddy sequels and adverts and whatnot

yeah there's a bit where Heather says she saw Freddy in her dreams and Robert Englund asks "me?" and she says something like no, an actual real Freddy, emphatically that it wasn't Englund playing a role

John Saxon plays John Saxon

Wasn't he always.

I just assumed we were listing mostly fictionalized versions of real people playing themselves. Don't know why New Nightmare wouldn't count.

Jennifer Tilly and (briefly yet memorably) Redman in the latter Chucky films.

xpost I mean unless the purpose of the thread is "people who accidentally walked onto the set of a movie and began having conversations with fake characters as their real selves and didn't realize they just accidentally appeared in a movie", yeah i think it counts too

I can't come up with a single example at the moment, but I know there are people who've played their own parent in a movie.

Sophia Loren maybe?

I think the line Josh is trying to draw is between people playing plausibly real-world versions of themselves, and couldn't-really-happen versions.

The spectrum probably runs:

22-yo members of Madness playing 19-yo members of Madness in a Madness biopic

Rowetta playing Rowetta in a cameo in a Madchester biopic

Howard Stern playing Howard Stern in a heightened Howard Stern biopic

Middle-aged Declan McManus playing young Elvis Costello in a tiny cameo in a fictional movie

Kevin Garnett playing a fictional Kevin Garnett going nuts over a rock during the real actual basketbal season of x year

the IRL Prime Minister of Australia greeting fictional Barry McKenzie and his retconned aunt at the airport and saying "arise Dame Edna," with such authority that the fictional aunt who'd spent 20 years as a Mrs then spent the next 40 as a Dame, even when "she" acted as a real person playing a fictional character on Ally McBeal

Marshall McLuhan telling a mansplainer "you know nothing of my work" (could totally happen IRL, he just wouldn't be hidden behind a standee by fictional nebbish Alvy Singer)

Elon Musk playing real Elon Musk sending Machete into space to kill an evil fictional businessman based on Elon Musk, played by Mel Gibson (on the orders of a POTUS played by Carlos Estevez, the IRL son of the West Wing POTUS actor Ramon Estevez)

Wolf Blitzer playing Simon Pegg in a Wolf Blitzer mask in Mission Impossible 6

The real-life girl who played Nancy in Nightmare On Elm Street entering her fictional real-life son's dreams to fight a fictional real-life version of the fictional dream monsters from Nightmare On Elm Street and a hundred spin-offs

PEN15 is based on teh principle though bot the leads are in their 30s playing themselkves of=r a slightly fictionalisedf version thereof 20 years younger. Only started watching this this week so not aware of this before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJofODuHbco

IRL Prime Minister of Australia greeting fictional Barry McKenzie and his retconned aunt at the airport and saying "arise Dame Edna," with such authority

an on-camera ad-lib by the PM btw, a rare instance of him publicly addressing someone as anything other than "comrade"

Fred Smith in Castaway? Doesn't seem like Malkovich territory, but FedEx has never had a marooned guy on an island before either.

PEN15 is a fascinating possibility. I guess that's similar to Private Parts in conception, the actual people playing themselves as themselves, recreating (heightened, movie version) scenarios from their youth?

the characters do not have the same names as the actresses, so the titular parenthetical would be even more strained

they also weren't childhood friends, so I don't think it really qualifies

There was that Clint Eastwood movie from a couple years ago about the terror attack on the Paris train where the real guy starred as himself iirc

Chris Martin of Coldplay played himself on Walking Dead, though the credits insisted he played a character named "Zombie #2"

The world will never know exactly how old Charo is. It is weird that her That '70s Show episode is now as far back in time as the actual '70s were to that episode.

oof, that does my head in. just recently reconciled the fact that Friends is as old now as Gilligans Island was when I watched it every morning at 9 AM during Summer Vacation

tbh the one 70s Show cameo that stands out is two of the boys from The Brady Bunch, I thought that was genuinely clever

I suppose the movie This Is The End fits here, I think all the actors are just playing themselves

pretty much the whole of The Player, if that fits the criteria here?

The mention of Rowetta in 24HPP made me think of Coogan, Brydon and a few others iirc all appearing both in character and as plausible versions of 'themselves' in A Cock And Bull Story.

not a movie but the latest Tim Heidecker special is sort of this, albeit in a very strange and meta way. Tim Heidecker is "Tim Heidecker", an offshoot of his "Tim Heidecker" On Cinema character, who then later comes out as "Tim Heidecker" to play a couple of songs, though he sometimes lapses into his ""Tim Heidecker"" persona from the rest of the special???

THe Trip is Coogan in a semi fictionalised form alongside Rob Brydon in similar not 100% the real him guise innit.

"I'm not gonna bury another Batman"
"How many Batmans have you buried?"

That's a good example of something that comes close. They're playing themselves sort of as sightly heightened versions of themselves, and while it's a fictional scenario, is a very mildly fictional scenario. Versus This is the End, where they are indeed very heightened versions of themselves but in a totally insane scenario. Or even a TV show like extras, with Kate Winslet or Danielle Radcliffe playing themselves, but sort of ridiculous ott versions of themselves.

Now, if The Trip were recreating an actual trip the two took, that would nail it.

I mean are you looking for home videos

No! Just the actual people playing themselves as themselves in a real life situation they previously experienced. like in my opeing examples.

still think United 93 (mentioned upthread) is kinda the best version of this. non-acting people who were actually officials on 9/11 recreating what they did on 9/11 (which had to be an emotional rollercoaster).

xp just realized you mentioned the eastwood movie in the first post, smdh at myself here

Coogan has played about half a dozen fictional characters with his own name, almost all of them exaggerating some of his worst character traits. The Man Who Thinks He's It, Coffee And Cigarettes, Tristram Shandy, "Everyone's a bit of a cunt sometimes," The Trip...

xpost

Very few of the speaking roles in The Player are people playing themselves (though the warm bodies are worth noting) - the Buck Henry improv during the opening tracking shot is a good example though.

Waht role doesn't count as a 'speaking role' in an Altman film, really.

Also perhaps notable is the lead actress in Human Centipede 2 is iirc playing a plausible version of herself (in a story desperately keen to persuade you the premise could totally happen).

hah yeah I read a synopsis for it and thought "that's kind of clever actually", not that I would ever actually see it

Yeah, United 93 is a great example.

Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts in Oceans 12 are a pseudo example, since they are playing probably close versions of themselves, but in a goofy made up situation.

Babe Ruth and a few other Yankees in Pride of the Yankees

the mention of Being John Malkovich reminded me that Malkovich briefly plays himself on the set of Being Malkovich at the start of Adaptation

Malkovich

Dean Martin in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). The first movie to feature an actor 'playing himself,' even if it's a parody of the popular image of Martin.

Al Pacino in Jack & Jill as Al Pacino, Dunkin Donuts spokesman, sadly a very plausible scenario

I'm not sure if this counts or not, but doesn't everybody play themselves in Godard's King Lear? Godard, Mailer, Molly Ringwald, etc.

Al Pacino in Jack & Jill as Al Pacino, Dunkin Donuts spokesman, sadly a very plausible scenario

― Doctor Casino, Monday, October 26, 2020 11:40 AM (forty-seven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

masterfully meta, Al Pacino playing being a hack by playing himself being a hack

masterfully meta, Al Pacino playing being a hack by playing himself being a hack

correction