- Bill Hader, Superbad, 2006. While shooting an episode of Undeclared, Canadian actor-writer Seth Rogen showed his Superbad script to producer-director Judd Apatow and arranged a reading with the TV cast. The future Numb3rs TV star was Office Slater but Hader patrolled the actual movie, an autobiographical, “four-letter raunch-a-rama with a heart, and an inordinate interest in other key organs,” said Chicago critic Roger Ebert.
- Samm Levine, Inglourious Basterds, 2008. Due to scheduling conflicts, the Freaks and Geeks TV star was unable to be Pfc Hirschberg (tthe baby-faced soldier cliché . Audie Murphy lives!) on the German locations of Quentin Tarantino’s Wild Bunch take on The Dirty Dozen. QT used David’s screen brother, instead (he was a great fan of their series). Levine also played a painter in the background of the first scene featuring Martin Wuttke as Adolf Hitler. Reviews were mixed. From Roger Ebert’s rave – “a big, bold, audacious war movie that will annoy some, startle others… a director of quixotic delights” – and The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw’s “exasperatingly awful and transcendentally disappointing,” while Christopher Hitchens compared it to “sitting in the dark having a great pot of warm piss emptied very slowly over your head.”
- Owen Wilson, Midnight In Paris, 2010. This was Woody Allen’s 2006 project with David in the main role. When it proved too expensive, he put it aside for his second consecutive UK film, Cassandra’s Dream. Once he gathered in Euro money for Paris, choices were booked up. The result was, as Roger Ebert simply put it, magic. It won Woody his fourth original script Oscar (the first for 25 years), a 23rd directing nomination, plus for the first time, a beyond a global $100m box-office.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 3