Michael Austin Cera (born on June 7, 1988 in Brampton, Ontario) is a Canadian actor.
His career started in Canadian children's TV doing voiceover work for cartoons as well as live-action comedies. His first major role in the U.S. was in the hit comedic show Arrested Development. From there, Cera's career began to skyrocket, as Hollywood realized this guy was good at playing characters with an almost Charlie Brown-esque tone to them, and as the saying goes, "que Cera, Cera."
As a side note, he apparently liked the fight training he went through to prepare for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World so much that he's now studying martial arts for real. You have been warned.
Notable roles:
- Arrested Development: George-Michael Bluth
- The Berenstain Bears: Brother Bear (seasons 1-2)
- Braceface: Josh Spitz
- Childrens Hospital: The PA announcer.
- Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus: Jamie
- I Was a Sixth Grade Alien: Larrabe Hicks
- Juno: Paulie Bleeker
- The LEGO Batman Movie: Robin
- Molly's Game: Player X
- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: Nick
- The Noddy Shop: Butch in "Big Bullies" (his first acting role)
- Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank: Hank
- Pecola: Robbie Rabbit
- Real Kids, Real Adventures: Michael Adkins
- The Ripping Friends: BoyBoy
- Rolie Polie Olie: Young Uncle Gizmo
- Sausage Party: Barry
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Scott Pilgrim
- Superbad: Evan
- This Is the End: As Himself
- Twin Peaks (Season 3): Wally Brando
- Wayside: Todd (2005 pilot; succeeded by Mark Rendall in the series proper)
- Year One: Oh
- Youth in Revolt: Nick Twisp and Francois Dillinger
- Barbie (2023)
Notable memes inspired by Michael Cera's prancing:
This actor provides examples of:
- Adam Westing:
- The new season of Burning Love has his character playing up all of his typecasting.
- This Is the End takes it to a whole new level, playing a horribly exaggerated jackass version of himself.
- I Am Not Leonard Nimoy: Partially as a result of Typecasting causing him to play practically the same character in every film.
- Older Than They Look: He can easily pass for a person in his late teens-early twenties despite being mid-thirties.
- Only So Many Canadian Actors: Mostly avoided during his adult life, with most Canadian productions he's done happening during the years he was a child actor. In his adult life, he's only appeared in one Canadian work, Scott Pilgrim.
- Playing Against Type:
- As of 2013 and 2014, he seems to be making a real concerted effort to do so. There were elements of this in Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and since then his roles in films such as This Is the End, Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy have all been very different to his established type.
- Continues the trend in Molly's Game, playing as a Hollywood star who is clearly a sociopath.
- Troll: He was a photobomber before photobombing really took off. He'd stand in the background of pictures to make people think the photos were fake because he was in them.
- Typecasting:
- Many of his characters are a socially awkward teen/young adult who has trouble talking to girls. Even in Year One where he played a caveman, he was still a nerd with a crush on a girl who's out of his league. On the other hand, there is Youth in Revolt, where he plays an awkward lovelorn teenager who takes on a diametrically opposite alter-ego, both taken to comedic extremes.
- He played against type in This Is the End, in which he played a lewd, cocaine-addicted jerkass version of himself.
- What Could Have Been: He was supposed to have been brought on for the third season of Veronica Mars but was unavailable. The character who replaced him was revealed to be part of the rape plot which could have been some nice Playing Against Type for Cera.
