Top 5 Oddball Celebrity TV Cameos

Sometimes when a star turns up unexpectedly in a movie or TV show, it can be funny and entertaining but sometimes it can be plain weird. We at JOE decided to focus on the latter.

By Leo Stiles

Anyone who saw the excellent Zombieland will appreciate the value of a good star cameo with *SPOILERS* Bill Murray in that film providing the best laughs of the movie. The same goes for the likes of The Hangover and Anchorman, but sometimes there are walk-ons and bit parts for famous people that just defy reason; such as the recent news that Stephen Fry is learning Irish for an upcoming role in TG4 soap Ros na Rún. Does it get any crazier than that? Glad you asked, here's our top five unlikely celebrity TV cameos.

1. Risteárd Cooper in Batman Begins

Batman Begins is stuffed to the gills with both the cream of Irish acting talent as well as a number of Fair City alumni in background roles. Even with this amount of familiar faces peppered throughout the cast, nothing prepares you for the moment when Risteárd Cooper turns up as a Gotham cop. The man who has embodied Bill O’Herlihy for a decade shows up towards the end of the movie, says his line and then just disappears again

2. Shirley Manson in the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

The Garbage front woman’s role in the short lived Terminator TV show from a couple of years back was in reality more of a recurring role but we just had to include it here because this is perhaps the only character in TV history that is introduced as a recently-used urinal that turns into a angry Scottish singer. We can only imagine the lies Shirley Manson’s agent must have spun to get her to agree to this but we doubt it would have involved the diminutive singer getting pissed on.

3. Sir Ian McKellen in Coronation Street

He may have spent a number of years shepherding hobbits around Middle Earth and given Hugh Jackman a beating across three X-Men films but that didn’t stop Ian McKellen from turning in the most unlikely cameo in Coronation Street as con artist Mel Hutchright. Despite having to chew on soap-grade direlogue, McKellen tries his hardest to bring his trademark gravitas to the role, something Ken Barlow doesn’t seem to be impressed with.

 

4. Colin Farrell in Veronica Guerin

Our own resident bad boy has played his fair share of action heroes but that doesn’t mean he can’t shake thing up on occasion. This time Farrell makes for a disturbingly convincing scumbag as he comes on to the crusading journalist (played by Cate Blanchet) in a tiny scene that serves no particular purpose other than to get him in the movie.

5. Brad Pitt in Dallas

Less a cameo and more of a career beginning, the man who shares a bed with Angelina Jolie got off to a horribly earnest start in this scene from 80s juggernaut, Dallas. Holding true to the strange laws of soapland, Pitt plays a teenager who has no problem taking orders from his girlfriend’s father and gets through his lines by giving puppy dog eyes to everyone as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.