Cameo winners and losers: the best and worst cameos of all time

Ash Walker • 28 Nov 2024 Features

Who doesn’t love a good cameo? Or a bad one.

Ah, cameos. Those small walk-on parts that are, most of the time, a sly in-joke, a nod and a wink to the audience. Love them or hate them, they’ve long been a part of moviemaking - and Hollywood’s obsession with the cameo has seemingly only grown in recent years.

Deployed properly, a good cameo can add something special to a movie. But a bad cameo… well, a bad cameo can just about ruin a film.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the absolute best - and, of course, the worst - cameos of all time. The winners and losers. Turns out there are a lot of them, but we’ve tried to limit each list to five.

The Winners

5 - Margot Robbie taking a bubblebath (The Big Short, 2015)

The Big Short, Adam McKay’s 2015 tragi-comic exploration of the 2007 financial crisis, is full of complicated concepts and impenetrable jargon, specifically designed, according to the film, to make people feel stupid, or bored.

Which is why it’s such a genius move to explain one of the movie’s core concepts - subprime mortgage bonds - via famously beautiful actress Margot Robbie, sitting in a luxurious bubblebath, sipping champagne.

It’s a great gag, completely out of nowhere, but Robbie is so good at delivering the explanation that the audience actually takes it in. Or at least enough of it to understand what’s going to happen in the rest of the movie.

Mortgages have never looked so good.

4 - The Asgardian actors (Thor: Ragnarok, 2017)

When 2013’s Thor: The Dark World left supervillain Loki (Tom Hiddleston) secretly sitting on the throne of Asgard, Marvel fans were left wondering just what dark, heinous deeds the God of Mischief would get up to next in his newfound position of power.

No one - absolutely no one - could have expected what we saw in Thor: Ragnarok.

For his own amusement, Loki puts on a cheap-as-chips retelling of the events of the previous film, making sure to position himself as the unsung hero of course. The best part? The play stars a troupe of truly terrible Asgardian actors, played by none other than Matt Damon, Sam Neill and Chris Hemsworth’s big brother Luke.

The troupe returned - with the addition of Melissa McCarthy as villainous god Hela - in 2022’s Thor: Love & Thunder, with once-again hilarious results.

3 - John Hurt ordering the Special (Spaceballs,1987)

Perhaps the most memorable part of Mel Brook’s brilliant sci-fi spoof is this brief scene in which our heroes, Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and Barf (John Candy) take a break in a nearby ‘space diner’.

Things seem perfectly normal - well, as normal as anything in this movie - until one of the other punters, played by John Hurt of Alien fame, begins to choke and convulse. He falls on his back as something monstrous bursts out of his chest.

Hurt’s delivery of the line ‘Oh no, not again’ is absolutely perfect. But then the baby creature picks up a hat and cane and dances along the bar singing ‘Hello My Baby’, like that Looney Tunes frog, making this cameo truly unforgettable.

Lone Starr and Barf’s reaction is just the icing on the cake: ‘Cheque please!’

2 - The cast and crew of ‘Austinpussy’ (Austin Powers in Goldmember, 2002)

The opening of 2002’s Austin Powers threequel is a cameo extravaganza. A blockbuster movie-within-the-movie, this short scene features fast cars, gadgets galore, and stunts spectacular enough to appear in a Mission: Impossible film.

And speaking of, this fake film happens to star megastar Tom Cruise as the titular ‘60s superspy. The reveal is a hilarious bait-and-switch, and is swiftly followed by a slew of other huge cameos; Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito all get in on the action.

But maybe the best reveal is saved for last, as the camera pulls out to reveal the director of this explosive Hollywood version of Austin’s life - none other than Steven Spielberg, the ‘grooviest filmmaker in the history of cinema’.

When Austin has notes on the movie, the camera whips back around to Spielberg, now holding a gleaming Oscar statuette, as he quips: ‘Really? My friend here thinks it’s fine the way it is.’

1 - Everyone in the ‘News Team Fight’ (Anchorman, 2004)

“Boy, that escalated quickly…”

Anchorman is undoubtedly one of the greatest comedy films of all time, but the highpoint of this Will Ferrell-starring gagfest has to be the ‘News Team Fight’.

Wandering through the back alleys of San Diego, Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy and friends (Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and David Koechner) run afoul of a rival gang of newsreaders, led by the obnoxious Wes Mantooth (Vince Vaughan).

Insults are traded, weapons are wielded - including a hand grenade, of all things - and the situation soon escalates into a full-on brawl, where the only rule is no touching of the hair or face.

The cameos come thick and fast as other news teams join the frey: Luke Wilson! Tim Robbins! Ben Stiller! It’s hilarious chaos; Wilson gets his arm lopped off and one guy gets fully impaled by a trident before the whole thing is broken up by the police.

The concept was massively expanded in the sequel, 2013’s Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, ballooning into a near-ten-minute battle royale featuring the likes of - deep breath - James Marsden, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kanye West, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, Marion Cotillard, Will Smith, Liam Neeson and John C Reilly as the ghost of Stonewall Jackson.

Not to mention Harrison Ford as veteran newsman Mack Tannen, who transforms into a were-hyena before joining the battle. Comedy gold.

The Losers

5 - Donald Trump giving directions (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 1992)

Not a terrible cameo in and of itself, but regardless of your feelings on the 45th (and 47th) President of the United States, it’s definitely jarring to see him pop up in this otherwise light, fun holiday classic.

The scene itself is mercifully brief: Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), finding himself alone in the Big Apple, wanders into the lavish Plaza Hotel and asks a passing businessman how to get to the lobby. That businessman, unrecognised by Kevin, is Donald Trump.

It’s so short and inconsequential that it’s actually been edited out of some TV broadcasts since Donald was elected.

See also Elon Musk’s cringeworthy cameo in Iron Man 2.

4 - Michael Jackson begging for a job (Men in Black II, 2002)

There’s a running joke in the Men in Black films that certain celebrities are actually extraterrestrials, living among us in secret. Dennis Rodman. Sylvester Stallone. Elvis, of course, who didn’t die but ‘just went home’.

Most of these jokes are just off-hand references or blink-and-you’ll-miss-them visual stings… and then there’s Michael Jackson’s cameo in Men in Black II.

The King of Pop appears on the giant screen in MiB headquarters, reporting on a completed mission while inexplicably surrounded by penguins. He’s hoping that his success will bag him a spot on the team, but Z (Rip Torn) brushes him off.

‘I could be Agent M!’ Jackson cries before being cut off. The whole thing is weird and a little uncomfortable.

3 - Quentin Tarantino doing the worst Australian accent ever (Django Unchained, 2012)

There’s a moment in Tarantino’s Western epic Django Unchained where the whole movie slows to a crawl. Django (Jamie Foxx), the freed-slave-turned-bounty-hunter on a quest for his stolen bride, has narrowly escaped the Candyland plantation and needs to regroup before heading back for the final battle.

That’s when he’s picked up by a group of scuzzy miners, one of which is Tarantino himself. Of course, the director often cameos in his movies, but this time he inexplicably decides that his character should have an Australian accent - which he definitely can’t pull off.

It’s terrible and distracting, and this whole situation goes on for far too long. It’s a relief when Django finally blows him up with a stick of dynamite.

2 - Nicolas Cage fighting a giant spider (The Flash, 2023)

At the climax of Andy Muschietti’s troubled superhero epic, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) accidentally breaks the multiverse by trying to change the past. As infinite worlds begin to collide, we catch glimpses of other DC movie and TV universes, past and present, including the ‘66 Batman and George Reeves as Superman.

Then the camera zooms into one world that we’ve never seen on screen before - Tim Burton’s ill-fated Superman Lives, a movie that died during pre-production back in the ‘90s, but would have seen none other than Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel.

Finally, we get to see him - or at least a terrible CGI version of him - fight a giant spider before turning to smoulder at the audience. And it’s bad. Very bad.

Maybe some things should stay buried. Which brings us to…

1 - The digitally resurrected actors (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 2016)

There’s been a troubling trend in recent years of digitally recreating actors who have passed away. At best it’s distracting and takes you right out of the movie, at worst it’s an ethical nightmare.

Even if studios have the blessing of an actor’s family - which they often claim to - they’re still using that actor’s likeness without their consent. Some, like Peter Cushing, who ‘reprises’ his role as sneering baddy Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, died before CGI was even really a thing.

It makes you wonder what Hollywood will look like in the future; will popular actors get a full-body scan and appear in movies forever, long after they’re dead? Will they get their brains scanned next, to provide that authentic performance? Are we just living in a Black Mirror episode?!

Hopefully the CGI will improve, at least - Tarkin and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in this movie look less convincing than the rubbery aliens all around them. See also a certain resurrected character in this year’s otherwise excellent Alien: Romulus.

When will they learn?