Follow TV Tropes

Following

One Of Us / Film Nerds

Go To

    open/close all folders 

    Animated Film Directors, Animators & Voice Actors 

    Comedy actors and directors note   
  • Woody Allen is a geeky intellectual who enjoys referencing culture and philosophy in his work, yet he also enjoys watching baseball. He admires The Marx Brothers, Ingmar Bergman, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Peter Sellers and is a fan of Jazz and Captain Beefheart. He still plays clarinet in his jazz club every Monday evening. His biggest musical influence is Sidney Bechet.
  • John Belushi was supposedly such a big Marvel Comics fan that when he visited their offices one day, he was able to give short but accurate summaries of their comics based on covers alone.
    • His younger brother James Belushi really loves anime. He frequently asks his social media followers for recommendations.
  • Mel Brooks has a genuine passion for old 1930s and 1940s Hollywood movies, self-evident in each of his own spoofs. He admires The Marx Brothers, The Ritz Brothers, Sid Caesar and Woody Allen, but also adores Hollywood musicals.
  • Jim Carrey is a huge fan of classic cartoons like Tex Avery and Looney Tunes. He considers Peter Sellers one of his favorites and said that John Cleese's crazy cook performance in the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Dirty Fork" was a huge influence on his comedy acting style.
  • Charlie Chaplin was a fan of Benny Hill, which flattered Hill too as the opposite was true as well. Hill discovered that Chaplin owned a large collection of Hill video's in his house when he visited the place. Chaplin also allowed Buster Keaton to play a cameo in his movie Limelight, an honor no other comedian who rivaled him was ever given. Chaplin also got along well with Groucho Marx.
  • Danny Devito loves comics particularly DC, playing The Penguin from Batman Returns was a huge honor for him, and he’s writing a Penguin comic for the company.
  • Whoopi Goldberg is a huge Star Trek fan ever since she saw Nichelle Nichols play Uhura as a child and was startled to see a black actress who "wasn't a maid". She asked to be cast on Star Trek: The Next Generation in literally whatever part they could think up for her, no matter how minor it was—making it extra sweet when she was cast in the major role of Guinan. Her sci-fi fandom goes further: she also hosted the Battlestar Galactica finale panel at the UN for the show's fans.
  • Buster Keaton: Keaton admired and respected Charlie Chaplin, despite being his main rival throughout the 1920s. He also played a role alongside Chaplin in his film Limelight. Keaton also admired Jacques Tati and said that he was the only comedian who carried on the Slapstick tradition he and his fellow comedians pioneered.
  • Jerry Lewis is a huge Laurel and Hardy fan, so much that he felt that Stan Laurel was the only person who should have been made immortal so we could still have him around today.
  • Steve Martin:
    • He only agreed to do Looney Tunes: Back in Action if a Dalek was one of the aliens chasing Bugs and Daffy during the Area 52 scene. He got it.
    • Then there's the story of him approaching Olivia Hussey on the set of Roxanne and telling her "You were in one of my favorite movies of all time!" "Oh, Romeo and Juliet?" "No, Black Christmas! I love it, I've seen it 27 times!"
    • He's also a skilled banjo player (not exactly a mainstream instrument), has a degree in philosophy, and is a modern art geek, having amassed one of southern California's finest private collections of modern art. In particular, he's a fan of Canadian artist Lawren Harris, even going so far as to co-curate an exhibit for the Art Gallery of Ontario.
  • Groucho Marx was an avid reader. He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot and corresponded with him by letter.
  • Adam Sandler is a fan of and has been referred to as an expert on Shadow of the Colossus. Playing the main character in the film Reign Over Me, his lines detailing the game's controls were improvised by himself.
  • Peter Sellers: He was an amateur photographer and enjoyed shooting photos and films in his private life. Sellers was also very impressed by Mel Brooks' The Producers. One day after having watched a private screening he took out two full-page newspaper ads at his own expense proclaiming that it was one of the greatest comedies he had ever seen. This exposure gave the film more publicity than it would have in other circumstances. Other comedians he admired were Steve Martin and Robin Williams. Sellers also got along well with The Beatles and, as a special treat, received a tape of rough mixes from The White Album by them. After his death, this tape was auctioned.
  • Jacques Tati admired many old time comedians like Max Linder, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and particularly Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. When he visited the USA in the early 1960s he was particularly thrilled to meet Mack Sennett, who directed many of the Keystone Cops movies in the 1910s and who was almost forgotten at that point. Tati also met Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton at that occasion, who lent him a great compliment by saying that "Tati carries on from the point where we left off some forty years ago."
  • Robin Williams, believe it or not.
    • In interviews he confessed to an addiction to the internet, being an anime fan, and even referenced Doctor Who in an interview. Really, if you think about it, it's not all that surprising, considering his first television role was an alien in rainbow suspenders. He actually named his child after Princess Zelda. And, according to the Dork Tower webcomic arc that provided the page image, he's a Warhammer player. He was also an active online gamer. Ever been sniped during a round of Call of Duty? It might have been him...
    • It's even better than that for being an anime fan. In One Hour Photo, the Neon Genesis Evangelion toy he gives to the little boy is his, and that line about "It being one of the good guys..." was a little stealth joke by him (apparently he must hate Asuka). He also intentionally mispronounced the word "Evangelion" just to troll fans of the anime. He also auditioned for the role of Gendo in Rebuild. What Could Have Been indeed.
      • He would have probably been offered a cameo as the chairman of SEELE in the trilogy.
    • It's also been heavily implied that he was a goon. At least, he correctly answered the "stairs" question.
    • He also went on record saying that if they ever made a Live-Action Adaptation of Pokémon, he wanted to play Professor Oak.
    • And he expressed interest in playing The Joker for both the Burton film AND the Nolan film!
    • In an interview he said he wanted to be Riddler and if he can't be Riddler he at least wants to be a random loony in Arkham Asylum. The guy desperately wanted to be in a Batman movie in any role possible (don't we all?).
    • Williams was also a huge fan of classic cartoons, especially the works of Chuck Jones. He wrote a foreword to Jones' autobiography, "Chuck Amuck", presented him with an honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and hired him to produce some animated footage that was used in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. He also appeared in the documentary The Life of Chuck Jones: Extremes & In-Betweens: A Life in Pictures (2000).
    • Another cartoon he adored was Popeye, even playing the character in the 1980 film Popeye.
    • His main influences were Jonathan Winters, Peter Sellers, Nichols & May, Lenny Bruce, Jay Leno, Sid Caesar, Dudley Moore, and Peter Cook. Naturally, Williams also loved Laurel and Hardy and The Marx Brothers. He also appeared in documentaries about Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, Sam Kinison, and Monty Python, where he claimed that he found Terry Jones' performances in drag rather touching and homely.
    • Robin and his daughter Zelda starred in a commercial for the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time.
    • Robin also stated he played Battlefield 2 as a sniper, and the 2 stands for "2 in the morning".
    • Williams was also a huge fan of Wizardry back in the day. Considering the difficulty of that series, one can only imagine the hysterical outbursts he would have when his party was wiped out.
    • He was also a big fan of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and helped familiarize Judith Hoag (who played April in the first TMNT movie) with the property.
  • Will Ferrell is a longtime fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, partially owed to the fact that his wife is Swedish. He's followed the contest since 1999, and in 2020 he appeared in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, in which he and Rachel McAdams play Icelandic Eurovision hopefuls. Connecting to this, he also showed up in a special show Iceland put on in the wake of the 2020 contest's cancellation to announce who Iceland's voters had voted for as their favorite act of the year (apparently, it was Italy).
  • Patton Oswalt is a massive fan of avant-garde cinema, as shown in his series detailing his favourite films on the Criterion Channel. He's also a fan of RedLetterMedia, even guest starring on an episode of Best Of The Worst.
  • Brazilian actor Kevin Vechiatto is a huge fan of One Piece, even cosplaying as Luffy after the announcement that a Live-Action Adaptation was coming to Netflix. On his Twitter, he has stated that he would love to play the character in live action.
  • Simu Liu Is a huge fan of Starcraft and has played it since he was younger. This led him to be cast as Warz for the up-coming RTS, Stormgate, made by ex-Blizzard developers.

    Straight actors 

    Live Action Film Directors 
  • One disappointment of Akira Kurosawa voiced about his career? Not directing a Godzilla film.
  • French director Alain Resnais was a huge fan of comics, especially American comics and fan of The Sopranos and Alias.
  • Alfred Hitchcock was such a fan of the cartoons of Charles Addams that the two struck a friendship. Hitchcock owned two cartoons of Addams in his private collection.
  • Bryan Singer is a big science fiction fan, and is especially fond of Star Trek.
  • Christopher Nolan is, oddly enough, a huge fan of The Fast and the Furious. While interviewed by Stephen Colbert he was indignant about Colbert never having seen any movie from the series and sounded ready to explain the lore to him in the same way a Star Wars fan might try to convert someone.
  • Edgar Wright has been quoted as saying on his TV show Spaced, "It's a show by geeks, for geeks." Also, he casually mentions the difference between the Green Goblin and Hobgoblin on the commentary track to Hot Fuzz. And this is before we get to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
  • Watch Eli Roth in any list show about horror movies; you can tell he's still amazed he gets to make horror movies for a living. He attends the Ain't It Cool News annual film festival Butt-Numb-a-Thon (a 24 hour straight showing of classic and new films in Austin, TX) religiously...whether or not he has a film to promote.
  • Federico Fellini was a huge movie fan and especially adored Laurel and Hardy and The Marx Brothers. He was also a colossal comic book reader and enjoyed drawing cartoons and caricatures his entire life. Apart from that he has a fascination with clowns and the circus, an obsession that went back to his childhood and would be referenced countless times in his work.
  • James Cameron had such a strong desire to make a Battle Angel Alita movie, that he had a fleshed out script and more than 1 year of design work completed before teaming with Robert Rodriguez to finally make it. Also, his answer to question 'Have you seen Inception?':
    "I haven’t. I’ve been traveling. I think this is what happened with people and Avatar. I want to see Inception the right way. I’m not going to watch it on an airplane. I’m not going to grab it on the run. I want to have that experience."
  • George Lucas shares a passion for Walt Disney, along with his friend Steven Spielberg. But he is also a huge comic book fan. He wrote the foreword to the republication of classic comic books stories like Tales from the Crypt and the Donald Duck stories of Carl Barks. The "rolling boulder" scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark was directly inspired by a similar scene in a Donald Duck story by Barks
  • Guillermo del Toro:
    • He has said that "video games are the comic books of our time... It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia."
    • He thinks BioShock has one of the most immersive worlds out there.
    • He enjoys Left 4 Dead partly because he had an idea very similar to the game, and someone else made. Once, at a book signing, he even defended video games as an art form, and teased a massive game he worked on, called Insane, which THQ cancelled in August 2012.
    • His film Pacific Rim has been openly stated by him to be a love letter to giant robot and mecha fiction, with notable influence from Neon Genesis Evangelion (though he has claimed to have never watched it) and, to a lesser extent, Gunbuster (Hideaki Anno is even given special thanks in the credits to PR). He has also been spotted holding personally-purchased copies of the two Puella Magi Madoka Magica films.
    • He's also a fan of Gravity Falls. He tweeted Alex Hirsch that it was "one of the best realized, most compelling series around".
  • Jordan Vogt-Roberts, director of Kong: Skull Island, has shown himself to be an avid Metal Gear and Gundam Fan since childhood, even at one point reccomending Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, calling it one of the greatest anime series of all time. When a video was published where he talked about the Gundam movie, people were very quick to notice that he owned a Metal Structure Nu Gundam - an extremely rare kit that often goes for upwards of $3,500. Safe to say, the live-action adaptations of Metal Gear and Gundam are in good hands.
  • Kevin Smith:
    • Often references comic books and Star Wars in his films, and mentions various other nerdy interests of his Evening With Kevin Smith movies.
    • He named his daughter Harley Quinn.
    • He founded a charitable organization named The Wayne Foundation, after both Wayne Gretzky, and Bruce Wayne's fictional charity.
    • Being a friend or close associate may automatically grant One of Us status. Seriously, just listen to any random show on the Smodcast Internet Radio network.
  • John Carpenter, as it turns out, loves video games more than his involvement with F3AR would indicate, although horror games aren't as prominent as one would think.
  • Peter Jackson:
    • He personally selected developer Michel Ancel to develop the King Kong (2005) tie-in game because he was a fan of Beyond Good & Evil, and because of the inconsistent quality of The Lord of the Rings games. He was supposed to do a new Halo game with Bungie, but that ended up being cancelled.
    • Peter Jackson allegedly got hooked on Halo 2 online multiplayer during the production of King Kong, leading to his attempts to adapt or work on a Halo property, which eventually became District 9.
    • He also has a friendship with the Perry Twins (the two original sculptors for Games Workshop), and is taking sculpting lessons from them in his spare time.
    • He is also a huge Tintin fan, which explains why he and Steven Spielberg made a Tintin movie in 2011.
    • He is apparently so much of a Doctor Who fan that he offered to direct an episode in exchange for a life-size Dalek.
  • Robert Rodriguez:
    • He was such a huge fan of Sin City that he shot a scene from Booze, Broads, and Bullets in his basement, and then showed it to Frank Miller as proof that he could make a loyal adaptation of the comics.
    • He also started playing video games with his kids in order to make Spy Kids 3 more realistic.
    • Which is to say nothing of his Hetero Life Mate, Quentin Tarantino.
    • And he teamed up with James Cameron to make an adaptation of Battle Angel Alita.
  • Stanley Kubrick admired the films of Max Ophüls, Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman. He was an avid reader of Franz Kafka and liked Woody Woodpecker so much that he want to put a cartoon of the character in all of his films, but Walter Lantz refused to give him permission. Kubrick also loved to watch Roseanne, The Nanny and The Simpsons during the last years of his life. According to the show's creator, Matt Groening, it must have been a strange experience for him, because Kubrick movies are referenced so often in The Simpsons.
  • Paul Thomas Anderson has a very passionate and eclectic taste:
  • Martin Scorsese: He is on record as a huge fan of The Rolling Stones. He used their music in many of his movies, even directed the concert movie Shine A Light. Apart from that Scorsese was also a technician on Woodstock in 1969 and devoted an entire documentary series Martin Scorsese Present The Blues about his love for blues music. Two of his other documentary series A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese expressed his love for both American and Italian movies. Scorsese is a huge admirer of Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini and also loves to watch Fawlty Towers.
    • While most of today's filmmakers operate with an "out with the old, in with the new" mentality, Scorsese is president of The Film Foundation, which is dedicated to the preservation of film (including the very obscure, very old ones). For this passion alone he is adored by many a fan of silent film and classics alike. A good part of the reason Hugo works so well is because of this.
    • During his childhood he would constantly borrow a certain book from the New York Public Library featuring photos from various films up to 1950, and a few times succumbed to the temptation to clip a picture out.
    • Watch his documentaries about American and Italian cinema to see Scorsese in full-on film geek mode.
    • Scorsese once surprised Dave Chappelle by saying he was a fan and fanboyed about "The Playa Haters Ball" in front of Dave and Robert DeNiro, including dropping the quote "What can I say about that coat that hasn't been said about Afghanistan?".
    • In the book "Monty Python Live," there's a little anecdote about how Scorsese went to dinner with the Monty Python troupe soon after Mean Streets premiered. This became a Hilarious in Hindsight moment for the Pythons as they had no clue who Scorsese was.
    • Martin Scorsese is also quite a Godzilla fan. When he met Ishiro Honda, director of the original Godzilla (1954), during the production of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, he took the opportunity to thank him.
  • Michael Bay is a huge anime fan, and says that was part of why he agreed to direct the Transformers Film Series.
  • Steven Spielberg:
    Spielberg: "The reviewer was saying that I must have been a real fan of Hergé, because there was such a similarity between the two worlds. It was comparing my movie with the Hergé adventures but that was the first time I had come across Hergé. I immediately had my assistant get me a book, in French, and I loved the storytelling. I understood everything, even though I couldn’t read the language. I then quickly read all the books in English, and I was completely enthralled. I understood the comparisons with Indiana Jones, and thought the Tintin stories would make fantastic motion pictures.''
  • Terry Gilliam is a huge fan of MAD, Tintin, the early Walt Disney cartoons, Jan Švankmajer, Philip K. Dick, Gustave Doré, Stanley Kubrick, Walerian Borowczyk, The Goon Show, the Ealing Comedies, Stan Bridges, Ernie Kovacs, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, Stanley Donen and Federico Fellini. Much like Fellini he too is a cartoonist who eventually became a film director. He also likes all kinds of animation, from Eastern European Animation, Walt Disney, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, underground 1960s and 1970s cartoons,... to South Park.
  • Wes Anderson has placed Neon Genesis Evangelion on his list of top 5 DVDs.
  • Sergio Leone was enormously influenced by the works of Akira Kurosawa and John Ford. A Fistful of Dollars is mostly the same plot as Kurosawa's Yojimbo, who sued for credit and received it. Many of Leone's spaghetti westerns have shots and characters that are direct references to many classic westerns by Ford. Leone was also a fan of Flash Gordon' and was offered to opportunity to direct the 1980 picture Flash Gordon, but declined because he felt the script didn't resemble Alex Raymond's original work. Other comic book adaptations he planned on doing, but never got around to, were based on The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. Leone also read regular novels and planned both a film adaptation of Journey to the End of the Night and a remake of Gone with the Wind, despite liking the 1939 movie adaptation.
  • Quentin Tarantino is virtually the definition of a film geek. He fills his movies with zillions of pop culture references to movies, music, comics, books and other stuff he enjoys.
    • He is a big fan of Soul, bubblegum pop, comic books, martial arts movies, Elvis Presley, Ennio Morricone, Nirvana and Bob Dylan.
    • Tarantino admires the work of Howard Hawks, but especially worships Sergio Leone, whose influence can be seen in most of his own work. When Leone died in 1989 Tarantino claimed it was the first time he cried over the death of someone who wasn't a close family member or friend. Several of Tarantino's films since Kill Bill have music by Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack.
  • Oliver Stone loves the work of H. R. Giger, even going so far as naming him the sole person who "accurately portrayed the soul of modern humanity. A few decades from now when they talk about the twentieth century, they will think of Giger." He also adores The Doors, which wouldn't surprise anyone since he directed the biopic The Doors about them.
  • Sergei Eisenstein admired Walt Disney and even met him personally. He remained a die-hard fan of his works even throughout the 1940s when many intellectuals felt Disney was getting rather kitschy. He called Bambi "the work that crowns, of course, the whole study on Disney."
  • Orson Welles cited John Ford as the greatest director of all time. Before making Citizen Kane he rewatched Stagecoach countless times. Welles also loved Charlie Chaplin and said: "... But you must see City Lights. You'll see Chaplin in "City Lights". He also claimed that: "Out of all the younger movie filmmakers Stanley Kubrick strikes me like a giant." In 1983 Welles was a member of the jury during the Festival of Cannes and laughed his head off with Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, which he wanted to award the Palme d'Or. His wish didn't come true, but the movie did win the Special Jury Prize.
  • Joel Schumacher is a lifelong comic fan, and his original version of Batman Forever was much more in-line with the tone of the first two films. Executive Meddling lead to what we ultimately got for the third film as well as the fourth.
  • Samuel T Weston is a troper. He's active on the TV Tropes forums. He has a troper page. And he's here on this page.note 
  • Zack Snyder is a huge comic fan, to the degree that he originally refused to direct the adaptation of Watchmen — because he agreed with the fandom's general opinion that the book was inextricably tied to the comic book medium itself, and was thus unfilmable. He only reconsidered when he realized that his refusal just meant that the studio would get somebody else and that somebody else probably wouldn't share his reverence for the original novel (and would thus be more amenable to Executive Meddling).

    Porn Actors & Directors 
  • Former porn star Jessica Steinhauser (better known as Asia Carrera) is a member of Mensa, a classically trained pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall as a child, builds her own computers, and plays Unreal Tournament. Her review of one version of Photoshop was published in Maximum PC magazine. On a side note, she has discounted Sharon Stone's claim to being a member of Mensa.
  • Loads of porn actors and actresses are secret geeks. For example, Stoya is a huge sci-fi fan and has been an IT nerd from a very early age.
  • Alt Porn Star Darling/Dee Williams has talked about her love of role-playing games. Both pen and paper/board and Live action varieties. She has also compared BDSM roleplay to LARP.
  • There is a porn star named Phoenix Askani.
  • And another who goes by Diana Prince.
  • And another one named Lenina Crowne.
  • Avena Lee has the Dragon Ball dragon tattooed on her lower back.
  • Porn star / import model Francine Dee has a tattoo of Mew down there.
  • Nicki Hunter has ComicCon on her yearly list along with the AVN Expo, and even starred in a porn parody of Avatar.
  • There's a pornstar named April O'Neil. If that wasn't enough, she is a Doctor Who fan and played Deanna Troi in a parody, which she considered a dream role. She also gave the world what Wil Wheaton described as "probably the most meta cosplay in the world".
  • This video makes it very clear that Bobbi Starr knows her video games quite well.
  • Alana Evans is not only a hardcore gamer but actually hosts a show about sex and gaming on SiriusXM.
  • Phoenix Marie plays World of Warcraft and is a classic car buff who restores her own cars.
  • Tanya Tate has a DeviantArt page where she cosplays as superheroes and fantasy characters like Cersei Lannister, Emma Frost and Invisible Woman.
  • Tommy Gunn has his own truck specially modified in case of a Zombie Apocalypse, which he later sold.
  • Mercedes Carrera used to be an aerospace engineer before she entered the porn industry.
  • Manuel Ferrara is an anime and videogame fan who hosts gaming live streams with other porn stars. He also seems to be friends with Benzaie.
  • Mia Malkova streams video games on Twitch.tv. She loves fantasy novels and Game of Thrones.
  • Madison Ivy is a huge fan of anime, most specifically being Dragon Ball Z.
  • Riley Reid listens to Sam Harris podcasts.
  • Eva Lovia, aka Candice Horbacz, runs her own "philosophytube" podcast.
  • Ella Hollywood might be one of the biggest nerds in Porn. Ella’s Instagram Sodacattv is filled with video game and cosplay content, aside from a few posts its hard to tell that Ella does porn at all.

Top