"My name isn't "Adam We"... or is it? Who am I? What number did you call? Don't ever call here again. [hangs up] I guess I told him! Nobody messes with Adam We!"
Some actors get... reputations that just won't go away. Maybe they're famous for being divas on the set. Maybe they're famous for only playing certain roles— or even worse, only playing one role. Nobody will let them forget it. They can struggle mightily to earn a new reputation as decent people who can play a variety of roles.
Or they can resign themselves to their fate, and make a career out of it by Adam Westing.
Adam Westing is a form of Self-Parody where actors play either themselves, or a Captain Ersatz of themselves, or a Captain Ersatz of their most famous role...and they play it as a total Jerkass, a total idiot, or both. More rarely, they play the character as the exact opposite of what they're most famous for, but still a Jerkass and an idiot.
While this can be an Affectionate Parody, it can also be a way for the actor to vent their spleen against a part that got old fast and/or ruined their career, until it amounts to a Take That against themselves. Particularly bitter actors will make the parody a Deconstruction of their old part, explaining how it was a horrible role and nobody should watch it. Like all Deconstruction, this can come full circle, with the actor doing a ReconstructionSelf-Parody. Sure, the role was stupid, but they enjoyed it.
Compare closely to the use of Meta Casting, where this can be turned around and made impressionable by playing off this personality.
Adam Westing is most often found among actors who have had certain forms of Type Casting:
Actors who had to act goofy all the time and never got a chance for serious work. If they must be goofy, let it be in mocking goofiness.
Actors known for an incredibly hammy or Badass persona, and people expect them to play the same over-the-top role in everything.
Contractual Purity, who couldn't so much as drink in public and need to cut loose.
See also The Danza, where the character's name is clearly taken from the actor/actress portraying him/her.
Examples:
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Adam West
Adam West, the Trope Namer, couldn't get serious work after Batman. He has embraced it; almost every role he's had since is either a parody of Batman the goofy superhero, Adam West the washed-up actor, or both at once (as in his role on The Fairly OddParents).
In Batman The Animated Series' "Beware the Gray Ghost", he plays a washed-up actor who can't get any decent work because everyone associates him with his role as a cheesy superhero. Incidentally, this portrayal was much more sympathetic and slightly less funny than normal simply because it was the show's way of saying "if that cheesy superhero show didn't exist, this show wouldn't exist." A bit of a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, to say the least.
Supposedly, when he was done with the episode and all of The Gray Ghost's memorabilia is returned, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm handed Adam (instead of scale wage) a $25,000 check and the original Batman costume - which Paul bought for an "undisclosed sum" at an auction. Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, indeed.
He played a washed-up superhero who turned out to be a deluded actor on Kim Possible. His character was even named "Timothy North".
This character was also a parody of the older Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond, making it a meta-Casting Gag (Will Friedle/Ron Stoppable previously played the new Batman on the show).
He played another deluded actor in the pilot for Lookwell, a Conan O'Brien-and-Robert-Smigel produced show. In this version, he had formerly played a detective on TV and thought he could use his actor training as Genre Savvy to solve real crimes.
He played a goofy rendition of himself on The Simpsons, in which he drives the Batmobile from the show (which is now a broken down wreck), complains about the Michael Keaton Batman films (Taps his pecs- "Pure West."), and dances the "Batusi" while The Simpsons slowly back away ("How come Batman doesn't dance any more?"). Another episode has the Simpsons view the TV series Batmobile in a Hollywood museum and comment on how lifelike the dummies sitting in it are - who turn out to actually be Adam West and Burt Ward sitting perfectly still all day.
In the Histeria! episode "The Legion of Super Writers", he voiced a superhero-portrayed Ernest Hemingway.
He did a guest spot on The Critic, as a last-minute guest on Jay Sherman's show. He's quickly bumped off because they managed to book someone else (memory fails me right now) that it turns out is dead, prompting him to lament, "Man I wish I had his agent."
Interestingly enough, McFarlane has stated that he's gone out of his way to ensure that West's history as Batman is NEVER addressed. The inspiration for the character was West's cameo as the mayor on Johnny Bravo. He's simply playing a psychotic version of himself who was inexplicably elected mayor of Quahog.
An episode he co-wrote.
West played superhero the Galloping Gazelle in the TV episode and video game of Goosebumps story Attack of the Mutant. In the TV version, the Galloping Gazelle was washed-up and bailed on the kid protagonist because he thought he was too old for the job.
West starred as an aging TV Space Commando personality Captain Blasto in an episode of Rugrats.
West played a lawyer defending R. Kelly who made a video of himself whizzing on a schoolgirl in The Boondocks. In typical over-the-top West fashion, of course. It's like he doesn't even want to stop Adam Westing anymore.
West appears in 30 Rock as the celebrity guest at Jack Donaghy's birthday party. After he flubs the introduction and gets thrown out, he complains that he was promised a meal.
In Drop Dead Gorgeous, he plays the lowest-possible-budget "celebrity" on the video promoting a beauty pageant, complete with words to the effect of "You might even get to meet a... CELEBRITY!" Perfect for the role, too.
In one episode of Diagnosis: Murder, he cameos as a washed-up actor who was made famous by playing half of a crime-fighting duo, Tuttle and the Mummy.
In a 1995 episode of Hope and Gloria - a short-lived television series, he played himself doing a theatre performance of Love Letters with former Batman villainess Julie Newmar also playing herself. The main character was led to believe he was her father. The program referenced his autobiography and his real name of Bill Anderson.
In The Fairly OddParents, he plays Adam West, who believes he's a super hero named Catman.
Timmy: TV's Adam West? West: Where?!
On Newsradio, he appeared as himself and was revealed to be legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper.
On King Of Queens he plays himself in an episode where Spence asks him to come with him to a comic book convention. In doing so, he ditches his original choice, Doug's neighbor Lou Ferrigno (TV's Hulk). On the drive to the convention an irked West explains that Sci-fi actors "look out for each other" and leaves Spence on a busy freeway.
He voiced a young Mermaid Man in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Back to the Past."
A commercial had West going on about his heroic exploits, only to be wheeled off by a nurse: "Time for your medication, Mr West..."
Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as themselves but with their Batman and Robin personalities, where they try to figure out who stole the Batmobile, recalling various moments of their time filming the Batman television series along the way!
A notable (though minor) exception was his role as the villain Breathtaker in the movie and TV series Black Scorpion.
Mad Magazine's parody of "Batman: The Animated Series" ends with Adam rubbing out Batman and Calvin as Robin, along with other characters, so he can finally get a decent job.
William Shatner
Almost every other role William Shatner has had since Star Trek is him playing William Shatner the egotist, or a character who is that under a different name... He specifically avoids the I Am Not Spock effect, by virtue of creating a "SHATNER" persona, of which Kirk is but one mere part. One must wonder, however, if it has reached the level of enlightened self-parody or if he has become genuinely unhinged (MAD once put it that he is trying, thirty years too late, to prove to everyone that he was always "in on the joke") - see his appearance on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross.
Kirk: I can't believe I kissed you! Martia [as Kirk]: Must have been your lifelong ambition.
Shatner plays as a possum in Over the Hedge, who gives an overly emphasized "death speech" while playing dead. Can be seen as a parody of his entire comedy routine style.
Also, Jeff Burk wrote and published a very short literary work called Shatnerquake- "It's the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after a failed terrorist attack by Campbellians, a crazy terrorist cult that worships Bruce Campbell, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner."
During Comedy Central's Roast of William Shatner, when it was his turn at the podium, he donned his Shatner persona and jokingly berated everyone for making fun of him. He stated, "Do you know who I am? I'm William Tiberius Shatner!", and then begins to name some of his accomplishments, most of them actually being Captain Kirk's.
There's a fair bit of Westing in the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before."
Made all the more hilarious by the existence of Zapp Brannigan, a parody of Shatner/Kirk who features prominently in this episode.
In Airplane II: The Sequel Shatner plays the moon base commander trying to help Ted Striker land the shuttle. When he looks into a periscope, the camera cuts to what he sees - the Enterprise. After reacting with surprise, he looks again and we're back to the normal space scene
Subverted in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 where he plays General Mortars. Although the acting is pure Shatner, no Star Trek references were made, and he's surprisingly hard to recognize with a mustache.
In a variation, Eddie Izzard once noted "Some of the characters on Star Trek became bigger than the actors who played them. If you've ever seen that cop show, TJ Hooker, it isn't William Shatner the actor playing TJ, it's Captain Kirk! He's beamed down to earth and got a job as a policeman!"
There is no other way to describe Shatner's stint as Guest Host of WWE Raw.
Other Star Trek examples
William Shatner's co-star George Takei, a.k.a. Sulu, generally Adam Wests in live action, but can get quite subtle and effective in voice acting. A recurring theme, if they don't get into his sexuality, tends to be drinking.
He previously made a cameo in 3rd Rock from the Sun which featured the Solomons charging stuff to his hotel account until he was dragged away by security screaming "You can't do this to me! I'm GEORGE TAKEI, DAMN IT!"
And an episode of Will and Grace where he played a version of himself still in the closet until he was 'finally outed' on a public TV show.
There's also this PSA where he plays a camp gay version of himself for laughs. Wicked, squirm-inducing laughs.
And in Psych, he plays a pompous, egotistical version of himself who simply has to be in the limelight.
Which allowed Shawn and Gus to infiltrate the convention where he was the guest of honor. How did they do it? They pretended to be Takei's personal assistants. When they were confronted by Takei himself, Shawn explained that Takei had fired his previous assistants for incompetence, which he fully believed.
One wonders who he used as a model for this performance.
Takei had a more dignified cameo as Prowl's martial arts teacher Yoketron in an episode of Transformers Animated.
Also had a cameo as "Mr Sulu" on The Simpsons episode where Homer joins the Naval Reserve.
There is also a Muppets Tonight episode where Takei bores the pants off of Beaker and then some penguins on the subject - his role in Star Trek!
Little-known Canadian sci-fi-com Alienated has him showing up and ordering a "Gin and.. Gin."
I dare you to watch Ricardio the Heart Guy and tell me that isn't Takei giving "Best-Friend massages". They're completely... consensual.
He was also the voice actor for Lord Hakkera in Freelancer, and was most often met with in a bar.
Another Star Trek actor, the late James Doohan also turned to Adam Westing due to finding it hard to get work after playing Scotty on the show.
In the attempted reboot of Knight Rider, Knight Rider 2000 he plays himself, who has become an old crazy man spewing lines from the TV show while trying to pull large sums of money from an ATM machine.
Stephen Hawking
The quintessential Real LifeGenius Cripple thoroughly enjoys cameos as himself. One comes to suspect that the reason he refuses to upgrade his vocalizer is because of the sheer awesomeness of snarking in a Machine Monotone (although he did get an upgrade to give it a better British accent).
Hawking: Your idea of a donut shaped universe is fascinating, Homer. I may have to steal it.
Homer mistook him for Larry Flynt.
He has twice appeared on Futurama, once as himself and then as his preserved head.
Fry: Hey, aren't you that physics guy that invented gravity? Hawking:Sure, why not.
Hawking: Welcome. I am the pickled head of Stephen Hawking, on a way cool rocket.
Leela: Black Hole Hawking? If I knew I was going to meet you I'd have done something with my hair! Hawking: You should have.
He also showed up as himself in The Fairly OddParents, hired by Remi Buxaplenty to prove that 2+2=5 to Mr. Crocker, Hawking's old college roomie.
Advertising
Every time Tay Zonday has appeared on national TV he was definitely Adam Westing for himself... but nowhere is this more obvious than in the Cherry Chocolate Rainvideo, which he did as an advert for Dr. Pepper's Cherry Chocolate flavoured soda.
This commercial starring Michael Bay. Particularly effective since his real-life persona is so close to what one would expect, given his movies.
Donald Trump seems to revel in parodies of himself, even appearing in a series of OREO commercials with Darrell Hammond (Hammond was Saturday Night Live's longest-running white male cast member and one of the show's best and most frequently-used celebrity impersonators — he has 107 as of this writing, with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, actor Sean Connery, real estate mogul Donald Trump, and a lot of George W. Bush's Cabinet members [Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld] being the most popular and/or frequently seen) impersonating him. Of course, if you're worth two billion and change, you can afford some self depreciation.
Mickey Rourke appeared in a commercial for a Dutch beer where he ruthlessly spoofs his own image, portraying himself as a childish, spoilt ass who loves only booze, little dogs and women. He throws a tantrum (and a minibar...) when he finds out they only serve alcohol free beer in his room, per example.
Famous romance-novel-cover model and sex symbol Fabio did a stint advertising I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! in the most over-the-top, sexy manner ever. He even recorded personalizable dialogue for a promo website, ramping up the ridiculousness.
His appearance on Big Time Rush was played straight...apart from the quirk that he was promoting a pocket-sized portable grill, and so was constantly producing different varieties of grilled meats (stop smirking) from his pocket, and offering them to people.
Virgin Money ran an advertising campaign starring various celebrities from the 1980s (Geoffrey Hayes, presenter of Rainbow; ska icon Buster Bloodvessel; and David Van Day from the pop duo Dollar) lampooning the fact that they had blown all their money and were now reduced to working menial jobs - respectively, as a taxi driver, guest house owner and running a mobile burger van.
A tourism ad for California featured a bunch of different people Finishing Each Other's Sentences. It ends with someone saying "This won't be your first visit to California...", followed by a cut to Arnold Schwarzenegger himself finishing that sentence with "...you'll be back."
Detroit-area electronics chain ABC Warehouse features company founder Gordon "Gordy" Hartunian playing a comically-goofy version of himself in its radio and TV spots.
Snickers has begun an entire ad campaign consisting of a series of celebrities doing this to represent how unpleasant a random guy is while hungry. So far Betty White, Aretha Franklin, and Joe Pesci have appeared.
The Gag Dub of Super Milk Chan includes live action segments centered around the cast and crew of ADV Films, in which they play themselves as a dysfunctional group of misanthropes and prima donnas.
Seiyuu Yuko Goto in Lucky Star playing as hyper masculine biker gang member called 'Gothouther-sama', named after her favorite character in Fist of the North Star, making fun of how she is always cast as sweet, Yamato Nadeshiko girl, while in reality, she's a hardcore biker.
In the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Brendan Fraser plays D.J. Drake, a security guard and former stuntman. When Daffy doesn't believe the latter, he claims he was in the Mummy movies "more than that guy Brendan Fraser was." At the end of the movie, he meets the "real" Brendan Fraser (obviously also played by Fraser), who acts like a total Jerkass to D.J. prompting him to punch Brendan in the face.
Robert De Niro in Analyze This — he takes every psycho Mafioso character he's ever played, and lampoons them with gusto.
Michael Madsen in Being Michael Madsen - a mockumentary that implies he's just Mr Blonde as an actor, which is terrifying enough as a mental image. Some of his voice acting for video games counts too, as does the fact that in more recent movies (such as Kill Bill) the movie almost relies on you to know what a Michael Madsen character is "supposed" to be like, so it can confound your expectations.
In Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a quasi-mockumentary about filming an adaptation of the novel, Gillian Anderson (as herself) gets the part of the Widow Wadnam because the producer loves her as Scully on the X-Files. Gillian wants to get away from her most famous role, and is later annoyed when her scenes as the widow are cut from the movie. Many, many more layers of meta in this film.
Elements of Adam Westing are incorporated into the film Tropic Thunder: Robert Downey, Jr.'s character, an award-winning Australian actor, was revised after he was cast to include attributes of the real-life actor, including his propensity for staying in character for extended periods of time and a turbulent relationship with the press.
Bruce Campbell plays "A sleazy version of himself" in My Name is Bruce. In this case, at least partially, Campbell was playing the opposite of his normal persona. His character was bitter about being a B-movie actor. In real life Campbell loves being a B-movie actor because it's fun and not very hard.
Jack Slater in Last Action Hero is an over-the-top parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "action hero" roles. The actor also appears as himself in that movie, prompting a brief encounter between Refugee From TV Land Slater and Arnold.
Stan Lee often shows up in non-Marvel-licensed movies as an excessively comic-obsessed Stan Lee with delusions of being a super hero himself. It's hard to tell how much is acting since his real life personality is almost an Adam Westing of himself anyway.
His cameo in Iron Man could be considered an Adam Westing of his renowned womanizing: Tony Stark mistakes him for Hugh Hefner. It's an honest mistake, really, as Stan was dressed in a bathrobe and surrounded by supermodels.
In perhaps the most multi-layered display of Adam Westing in film, Roger Moore appeared in Cannonball Run as the bored Jewish heir to an underwear tycoon, who posed as actor Roger Moore to impress a succession of high-tone women, also adopting the mannerisms and gadgets of James Bond, most notably his Aston Martin DB5. His performance therefore incorporated a straight self-parody of how he'd been typecast as Bond, a parody of his suave-sex-symbol image, and a Captain ErsatzTake That (as Bond's name is never mentioned) toward his most famous role.
Elisabeth Shue played "herself" in Hamlet 2. Her character in the movie quit acting to become a nurse in a sperm bank, and it's implied that she's a nymphomaniac.
Security Cop: "Excuse me sirs, but we have 10-07 on our hands." Matt Damon: "Jesus, Ben. Not again." Ben Affleck: "Noooo, bullshit! I wasn't WITH a hooker today! Aha-ha!"
Matt Damon: Hey, shove it, Bounce-boy. Let's remember who talked who into doing this shit in the first place. Talking me into Dogma was one thing, but this... Ben Affleck: Hey look, I'm sorry I dragged you away from whatever gay-serial-killers-who-ride-horses-and-like-to-play-golf-touchy-feely-picture you're supposed to be doing this week. Matt Damon: I take it you haven't seen Forces of Nature? Ben Affleck: You're like a child. What've I been telling you? You gotta do the safe picture. Then you can do the art picture. But then sometimes you gotta do the payback picture because your friend says you owe him. [They both take a beat and look at the camera] Ben Affleck: And sometimes, you have to go back to the well. Matt Damon: And sometimes, you do Reindeer Games. Ben Affleck: See, that's just mean.
Mark Hamill may have Captain Ersatzed himself in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, not as his most famous role (Luke Skywalker) but his role as the voice of the Joker from Batman The Animated Series. Here, he plays Cock-Knocker. While the "bongsaber" duel was certainly a play on his role as Skywalker ("Don't fuck with a Jedimaster, son"), the outlandish character of Cock-Knocker with his colourful costume, and in particular the bright yellow wig, will remind some of his voice work as the Joker.
The costume, at least, was probably inspired by his role as the Trickster in the 90s TV series The Flash.
Neil Patrick Harris's appearances in the Harold & Kumar movies portray his former child star self as a womanizing (even though Harris is gay in real life) drug addict.
Alan Alda, in And The Band Played On. After becoming famous as the Good Guy doctor in M*A*S*H, in this film he plays a jerk doctor who is arguing with other doctors over the discovery of HIV.
Paris Hilton in Repo! The Genetic Opera. She plays an airheaded heiress who prostitutes herself for drugs, to numb herself during the plastic surgery she's addicted to, because she wants to be a singer but keeps getting booed off the stage. Although the part wasn't originally written for her, she insisted on getting it and played it with great enthusiasm.
Jean-Claude Van Damme, after years of getting typecast as a hero in straight-to-DVD action movies, had JCVD, in which he plays himself reacting to a bank robbery mostly with fear and begging.
Michael Cera is turning into this, particularly when he plays "himself" in Paper Heart, a Mockumentary in which, technically, he is merely playing his typical role.
Joaquin Phoenix attempted to do a double-ironic post-meta version of this for his film I'm Still Here, a mockumentary/documentary of Phoenix's nervous breakdown/rap career, which turned out to have been staged as a publicity stunt for I'm Still Here. Somehow, audiences were unimpressed.
David Hasselhoff appears in the family comedy Hop as himself, host and judge of the talent competition "Hoff Knows Talent" - riffing on his recent exit from America's Got Talent.
Goes as far back as the Doris Day classic, It's A Great Feeling which featured cameos from Edward G. Robinson failing to live up to his tough guy persona to Joan Crawford slapping the two main characters just because she does it in all her movies.
Arguably, Diddy's (or P. Diddy or Sean Combs) appearance in Get Him to the Greek could be this. He plays the crazy record executive Sergio Roma with multiple kids and issues with his baby mamas. In real life, he is a producer and does have multiple kids by multiple women.
Nicolas Cage's current career is arguably based on this. Roger Ebert suggests he is doing a career experiment where he only takes the very best and the very worst films that are offered to him.
In Postal, Uwe Boll claims to finance his films with Nazi Gold, gets shot in the dick, and dies while screaming about how much he hates video games.
Jack Benny himself was arguably an example of this, what with the whole "vain, egotistical miser" bit.
By the end of the fifth season of Degrassi, the show had gotten so melodramatic and earnest that the actors (and the writers) needed to relax and let off steam. They did it with a truly epic amount of Adam Westing, both on their show and others. To take maybe 1 percent of what they did:
Craig, the show's Tragic Hero, is a sensitive, emotional musician who has very tragic teen romances and often ruins things with his grandiosity. Craig's actor guest-starred in Radio Free Roscoe as an incompetent wannabe musician, dripping with self-indulgent Wangst and more-artistic-than-thou pretentiousness, whose "sensitive, tortured soul" is an act that he uses to seduce girls.
In TV specials and "behind the scenes" pieces, actress Stacie Farber (who played the shows' grim Goth) never lost an opportunity to point out that in real life, she's a preppy fashionista who loves all the things the goth found phony.
The Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead" guest stars Penn and Teller as Rebo and Zooty, an even more irritating comedy duo of the future.
Wayne Brady appears in an episode of Chappelle's Show as an over the top, violent and vulgar comedian out to steal the title character's show — a complete opposite of what Wayne Brady is like in real life, and a result of one of Paul Mooney's characters saying "White people love Wayne Brady, because he makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X."
Tom Baker's work on Little Britain as The Narrator is an exaggeration of his on-and-off-screen eccentric personality. "Have you ever done it gaywise? It's a hoot."
Tim Stack as "TV's Tim Stack" on My Name Is Earl. The character is a narcissistic drunk who holds beauty pageants and parades. Tim Stack is actually a writer for a few of the episodes.
Jon Favreau appeared on as a name-dropping, overly-pretentious jerkass version of himself who'd come to New Jersey to make a movie. Star-struck gangster Christopher was delighted to hang out with "Jon"... until "Jon" stole all his ideas. The real Favreau is a much nicer person.
When Christopher pitches his idea for Cleaver to Sir Ben Kingsley, the actor comes off as a total materialistic snob, completely disinterested in anything Christopher's saying. So instead, they have to settle for Daniel Baldwin.
The same episode stars Lauren Bacall, who seems nice at first but turns out to have quite a dirty mouth (granted, she was being mugged at the time, but it's quite hilariously shocking to hear the F-word coming from her).
In a The Catherine Tate Show sketch for Comic Relief, Tate's character of Elaine Figgis was in a relationship with Daniel Craig but had no idea who he was and seemed put off by Craig's constant affections. This was definitely more along the lines of affectionate self-parody, as the character (and Craig's participation) shows him as a normal guy, in contrast to his characters in Layer Cake, Casino Royale and other films who tend to be rather icy and brutal.
Extras was a show devoted to this, with highlights including:
Kate Winslet as a calculating Oscar climber playing a nun in the Holocaust for Oscar Bait. This was made even more delicious with her Oscar win for starring in a film centered around the Holocaust (The Reader). Ricky Gervais called her on it when he hosted the Golden Globes — "Well done Winslet, I told ya, do a Holocaust movie, the awards come, didn't I?" — with the result of her turning beet red and nearly falling off her chair laughing.
Chris Martin of Coldplay plugging the (then) new greatest hits album on everything from a sitcom to a public service announcement to his shirt in every scene he's in.
Orlando Bloom as an egotistical heartthrob who starts pursuing Maggie because she tells him she doesn't find him attractive and so he is therefore absolutely determined to enlighten her as to his hotness.
Orlando: Kiss me. Let me show you how I do it.
Maggie: Well okay, if it'll shut you up.
Comedian Les Dennis as a pathetic, broken shell of a man. Les himself contributed several anecdotes from his own life to make his character even more pitiable.
Patrick Stewart talking about how he wanted to do a movie as a character based on Professor Xavier of X-Men... who used his vast mental powers primarily to make the clothes of nubile young women spontaneously fall off.
Stewart: They try to cover up but I've seen everything!
Ronnie Corbett and Moira Stuart as cokeheads,
Keith Chegwin as a hardcore racist and homophobe.
Luisana Lopilato in Casados Con Hijos (the version of Married... with Children licensed for Argentina) spoofed the teenage starlet characters she played in shows such as Rebelde Way and Floricienta.
Cybill had Cybill Shephard, fallen actress... as Cybill Sheridan, fallen actress.
Carl Weathers plays himself as a constantly broke, scheming and cheapskate opportunist on Arrested Development.
Saturday Night Live guests frequently invoke this trope, especially in opening monologues: eg. Bob Saget gives an autograph to a child fan (though the "autograph" turns out to just be a string of dirty words since Saget was exhilarated to be on a show where he could actually use them), who asks for his pen back afterwards; Bob refuses, then reveals that the interior of his jacket is lined with pens stolen from the many kids who sought his autograph.
Everyone who appeared as a guest on the spoof talk show The Larry Sanders Show was doing this. Worth mentioning is David Duchovny, who played himself in love with Larry, propositioning him backstage wherever he appeared.
Anthony Stewart Head appeared on Spooks as a smart, well-educated international terrorist who was notorious for duping naive young women into helping him carry out his attacks. He apparently had a particular thing for blondes...
portrayed himself as a Moe fan who needs Jenna to act as his beard to cover up his relationship with an anime body pillow.
Half the regulars on 30 Rock (Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Jack McBrayer, and Judah Friedlander) basically play comically exaggerated versions of themselves.
NBC newscaster Brian Williams shows up frequently on the show as himself, and his character is wackier each time.
Tommy Chong appeared as a guest on The George Lopez Show and as a semi-regular on That 70s Show, playing essentially the same character: A burned-out not-so-ex-hippie stoner.
Jennifer Grey as Jennifer Grey on It's Like, You Know..., an out-of-work actress who had just received a rhinoplasty... much like the real Jennifer Grey.
In A Colbert Christmas, country singer Toby Keith appears as himself, singing an even more hyperbolic take on his post-9/11 hit "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" meant to spoof conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly's declaration of a "war on Christmas." He also enters and exits the holiday special carrying an assault rifle.
On Just Shoot Me! Finch, a big Star Wars fan, meets Mark Hamill and pesters him. Hamill agrees to spend the day with Finch at his job in the Blush magazine offices. After a while Hamill annoys Finch to the point where Finch asks him to leave and Mark reveals was just acting so irritating to teach Finch a lesson.
Hamill does a similar role on 3rd Rock from the Sun where he's hounded by the main cast for his performance as Luke Skywalker. While he publicly bemoans his fans only remembering that part, he's shown alone in his hotel room re-enacting it in front of his mirror with a hair dryer as a blaster.
Matthew McConaughey did this in an episode of Sex and the City, playing the classic Hollywood jackass.
During Comedy Central's roast of Larry the Cable Guy, Gary Busey spends a good 5 minutes insulting himself.
Busey: "How did they manage to get Gary Busey here? Did somebody turn on the batshit signal?"
Duncan James, previously of the Boy Band Blue, played an obvious parody of himself and how he is perceived in the media in the UK SitcomPlus One, to the extent that his character was only ever referred to (even in the credits) as 'Duncan from Blue'.
Olivia Newton John on Glee plays an uber-Jerkassish version of herself in the episodes 'Bad Reputation' and 'Journey'.
Particularly in one episode where the family is trying to throw off a reporter who nearly discovers Miley is Hannah Montana. Miley pretends to be a delusional girl who only thinks she's Hannah Montana, while Jackson pretends to be Elvis. The final straw however, is when Billy Ray's character throws on a huge mullet wig and says he's Billy Ray Cyrus. The reporter declares that the whole family is crazy and leaves.
Don Adams after Get Smart was typecast to the point where Maxwell Smart was the only character he could play (see The Nude Bomb). He did do voice work for Tennessee Tuxedo but that was just his Maxwell Smart voice.
And in Inspector Gadget, where he offers a glimpse of what Robocop might have be if he'd been rebuilt out of Maxwell Smart instead of Alex Murphy.
In Party Down, Steve Guttenberg plays himself as a cartoonishly enthusiastic and accommodating host who takes a bunch of clueless waiters under his wing for a night. No matter how idiotically his guests behave, he continues to smile indulgently and congratulate them for sharing. After spending the whole night encouraging his guests to "go for it," he steals one of their dates.
In Episodes, actor Matt LeBlanc ("Joey" from Friends) plays a (presumably) fictional Jerk Ass version of himself, using his own name and Friends backstory, but with some fictionalized elements including (presumably) a Gag Penis, and two sons instead of his real singular daughter.
Triple H had a role in an episode of Pacific Blue as a porn king's bodyguard...whom everybody calls "Triple H" and wears a Degeneration X shirt. Maybe in this universe he fell on some hard times?
An episode of The Golden Girls featured Lyle Waggoner and Sonny Bono as caricatures of themselves fighting over Dorothy's affections. In the end, it's revealed that the whole thing was All Just a Dream...and a recurring one, at that.
In the 2011 FOX sitcom The New Girl, Zooey Deschanel plays a character who can't get a guy because she's too weird. Of course, most of her fans like her becauseshe's so weird, but that's beside the point.
Isaiah Mustafa (aka Old Spice Guy) appears in Chuck as a character almost as implausibly awesome as he is in the Old Spice adverts - super confident, imposingly strong, and a perfect shot with a sticker gun at 30 feet (shooting behind his back). He even gets a tooth-gleam effect when smiling.
Jack Black's character in Community is an overenthusiastic, deluded, half-crazy large ham who breaks into song at inappropriate moments. When trying to persuade the group of his value, he describes himself as a "Chubby agile guy" before accidentally high-kicking Jeff in the face.
Music Video
David Bowie's Jazzin' for Blue Jean (1984), a Short Film / long-form video, is partially built around this via his playing two roles. One is Adorkable hero Vic, who is trying to maintain a Celebrity Lie. The celebrity in question is Bowie's other character, Screamin' Lord Byron, a rock star with an elaborate, Arabian Nights-inspired onstage look and a way with the ladies...plus a diva-ish attitude and presumably decadent offstage life — when we first see him in the flesh, his handlers are carrying him to his dressing room because he's passed out; he's even hooked up to a portable oxygen tank. Bowie had just had a Newbie Boom thanks to 1983's Let's Dance, and it's possible newbies didn't realize "Mr. Screamin'" was a spoof of his 1970s personas (Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, etc.) and excesses. As Vic chews him out at the end:
"You conniving, randy, bogus-Oriental old queen! Your record sleeves are better than your songs!"
Video Games
Saints Row: The Third has Burt Reynolds as the Mayor of Steelport. Unlike Adam West however, Mayor Reynold is an in-universe Memetic Badass.
In Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, every main character was the voice actor doing a self-parody. The patients were all stand-up comics replaying the 'total neurotic loser bits' from their own stand-up acts, to animation. Dr. Katz is the only one with original lines.
The Futurama movie "Into the Wild Green Yonder" featured Penn Jillette as a head who barely fit in his jar and worked with a Teller who was dead and the act was pretty much the same.
In The Simpsons episode "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister," Lisa gets a restraining order against Bart and Bart is given an instructional video on restraining orders narrated by Gary Busey, who enters on a motorcycle, introduces himself with an Evil Laugh, and concludes his parable on restraining orders thusly;
Busey: I'm gonna let you in on a little secret; John is me. And Mary is a composite of twelve women and one major film studio that couldn't deal with me because I'm too real.
In another episode, Stan Lee plays a slightly crazy version of himself who will not leave Comic Book Guy's shop, breaks a toy Batmobile in an attempt to make a The Thing figurine fit inside it, thinks he "made it better" and believes he can turn into the Hulk.
Stan Lee: But I did it for real once!
Comic Book Guy:Please. You couldn't turn into Bill Bixbi.
They also had Michael Moore respond to a request for a source on his claims, with "Your mom!"
In "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder", Penn and Teller also appear as themselves with Penn portrayed as Ax Crazy and Teller as an abused victim:
Teller: Will you shut up?
Homer: Hey, I thought you never talked.
Teller: Uh, I didn't mean to. It just slipped out. Oh, God, now Penn's going to beat me.
Teller: No it isn't! Don't leave me alone with him!
Penn: [to Homer] You've ruined the act! I'm going to kill you!
Teller: He'll do it! I'm not the first Teller!
They made a return appearance during "The Great Simpsina", a stage-magic-based episode. This time, Teller's the domineering one (claiming that Penn "only does the talking on stage.") Also, when a variety of dangerous objects are thrown at Penn as a distraction, he starts juggling them, seemingly on instinct alone.
Also plays the Director of the CIA Bullock in sister show, American Dad (based on his character from Conspiracy Theory)
Bullock: Naturally, recapturing this fugitive is our top priority. Then we can track down the bastards that have been harboring it and punish them brutally. I mean, really brutally. Weird stuff. Butt stuff.
Family Guy also has James Woods, who plays himself as a recurring psychotic villain. In one episode, Rush Limbaugh also showed up playing himself (well, Fred Savage in a suit, but that's another episode....)
In Megas XLR, the character Magnanimous was, as a whole, a parody of Bruce Campbell... voiced by Bruce Campbell. His second appearance even had a chainsaw-and--shotgun-toting mech!
Gary Owens was known for voicing Hanna-Barbera's limited animation superheroes like Space Ghost and Blue Falcon. In Disney's Raw Toonage, he voiced a parody of those guys: "Badly-Animated Man."
Robot Chicken does this a lot, as a surprising number of the celebrity parodies feature the actual celebrity. Special mention has to go to the fourth season premiere, which starts with co-creators Matthew Senreich and Seth Green (himself someone that can't stand the thought of only having a major role in a hit TV show paying hundreds of thousands) looking for jobs from a Joss Whedon as an overly dramatic egotistical nut-job who thinks he has the right to kill them, a Ron Moore who writes Battlestar Galactica by throwing darts to decide who's a Cylon (and decides to kill Seth Green because he thinks he could be one) and Seth MacFarlane as a guy with the reality-warping power to rewrite history to include any random past event he offhandedly mentions, which he does constantly. All of them were voiced by the actual people.
Some other memorable examples have been Rachael Leigh Cook in a parody of her "This is your brain on drugs" PSA where she goes completely bonkers and starts running around destroying things with the frying pan until finally leaping off building to her death; Joey Fatone playing himself as Karate Kid to revenge the deaths of his fellow N'Sync bandmates; Corey Haim and Corey Feldman as failed-child-actor would-be superheroes; Tila Tequila in her MTV reality show, revealed to be a Terminator-esque cyborg programmed with the sole goal of being a pop celebrity; Stan Lee and Pamela Anderson as the co-hosts of a comic book gossip show, with Stan making increasingly un-subtle innuendos until finally leaping out a window to prevent anyone from finding out his secret identity.
Ryan Seacrest parodied his own public image during a guest spot on this show.
Gore: "Finally! I get to save the world with deadly lasers instead of deadly slideshows!" Gore: "If we don't go back there and make that event happen, the entire universe will be destroyed... And as an environmentalist, I'm against that."
In The Venture Bros., Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman The Animated Series, does an absolutely hilarious parody of his performance as the caped crusader, in the form of Captain Sunshine, complete with massiveHo Yay directed towards his deceased sidekick, Wonderboy.
A Manatee Gag on Family Guy had Alyssa Milano appear in person to file a defamation suit against the show, spoofing a lawsuit she'd filed in real life.
Family Guy also had a gruesome spoof of Scooby-Doo, using the actual voice actors.
Archer did it with Burt Reynolds, who turns out to be just as much a crack stunt driver and world-class ladies' man in real life as in the movies that Archer is obsessed with.
Other
Nearly every role R. Lee Ermey has played in the last couple decades is a pastiche of his role in Full Metal Jacket.
Jerry Lewis occasionally does this. What makes him stand out is that he's played this for tragedy rather than comedy, using an exaggerated version of himself rather than the wacky characters from his earlier comedy films. In his appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit he played Detective John Munch's mentally disturbed uncle Andrew, drawing on his experience with his own mental decline to give what is widely regarded as one of the most moving performances in the franchise's history.
With Willie Nelson, it's hard to say where the personality ends and the Adam Westing begins. Some guest-starring self-parodies are obvious, like making fun of his pigtails on The Simpsons or his tax problems on King of the Hill. His frequent marijuana jokes anytime he appears in person might be a self-parody (he's pretty old to be smoking anything at this point), or might just be himself talking about himself.
"Do you smell that?" "No I don't, and you don't either."
Ichiro Mizuki of JAM Project, in works he appears, is known for being a Large Ham and reveling in it.
Jay Leno is quite fond of making movie cameos and having a laugh at his own expense.
Former Child StarDanny Bonaduce worked his way into radio by Adam Westing his life after acting, particularly his notorious coke habit.
Real Life
While attending UC Berkeley, Jeff Cohen, who played Chunk in The Goonies, became student body president, using "Chunk for president!" as his campaign slogan, and would also do the "Truffle Shuffle" at home games, even though he had lost weight as an adult.
Rebecca Black seems to be forever tagged to Fridays as she starred as herself in Katy Perry's Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F) music video.
