"I came out wanting to be an actor. From my first view of the world, that's what I wanted to be. I'm made of ninety-nine percent ham and one percent water. I was just cooked that way!"
Michael John Myers OC (born May 25, 1963) is a Canadian actor, comedian, singer, screenwriter, and film producer born in Scarborough, Ontario; best known for his run on Saturday Night Live from 1989 to 1995 and for playing the title roles in the Austin Powers and Shrek series of films.
Not to be confused with the fictional serial killer Michael Myers.
Partial filmography
- Saturday Night Live (1989-1995)
- Wayne's World (1992)
- Wayne's World 2 (1993)
- So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)
- Austin Powers series:
- Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
- Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
- Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
- 54 (1998)
- Shrek series:
- Shrek (2001)
- Shrek 2 (2004)
- Shrek the Third (2007)
- Shrek Forever After (2010)
- View from the Top (2003)
- The Cat in the Hat (2003)
- The Love Guru (2008)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (2013) (directorial debut)
- The Gong Show (2017 revival on ABC; hosts as the fictional British TV host
"Tommy Maitland") - Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
- Amsterdam (2022)
- The Pentaverate (2022)
Mike Myers's work provides examples of:
- Acting for Two: Not unlike his good pal, Eddie Murphy, every one of the Austin Powers movies features Myers playing multiple roles. He also plays his own father in So I Married an Axe Murderer and no fewer than eight characters in the Axe Murderer spin-off, The Pentaverate.
- Better than a Bare Bulb: His comedy style is famously self-aware, with characters acknowledging and commenting on the absurdity of the situations they're in.
- Cash-Cow Franchise: Has starred in no fewer than three film franchises, only one of which has received fewer than three installments.
- Dyeing for Your Art: The Cat in the Hat make up was not comfortable to be in, much like Jim Carrey's Grinch make-up. In Austin Powers in Goldmember, he really took the meteor globe swung at full speed to his crotch to get an authentic reaction. You can see him flinch seconds before the hit. The Piñata scene in Cat In The Hat took 25 shots and although he told the other children his junk was off limits to them they didn’t listen and bruised his cock and balls with shots from plastic bats
- Early-Bird Cameo: Before SNL, Myers had used the Wayne Campbell character on shows in Canada, including Citytv's City Limits (which was essentially a prototype for the original format of MuchMusic) and the CBC's It's Only Rock & Roll.
- Fake Brit: Famously affected a spot-on British accent for Austin Powers (and if we're counting the entire United Kingdom, there's also his equally-impressive Scottish accent as Shrek and Fat Bastard). It helps that, while he was born in Canada, both of his parents are British.
- Groin Attack: A staple of his movies, every character he's played has suffered through these. He even played John Wayne Bobbit on SNL.
- Hostility on the Set: Myers is upfront about only doing films that he feels passionate about, which is part of what has caused his many disputes with Hollywood executives, writers, and directors. The whole Sprockets debacle only came about because he never felt satisfied with any of the scripts he wrote.
- I Call Him "Mr. Happy": Austin Powers refers to his as meat and two veg, twig and berries, wedding tackle and under carriage. Dr. Evil and the Love Guru Maurice Pitka use balls to refer to his gonads. Fat Bastard calls his testicles nuts but and his penis "willie", the whole package as the "mommy daddy button".
- Large Ham: Many of Myers' characters are larger than life. Sometimes literally, even!
- Money, Dear Boy: Myers' well-publicized battle with Universal Pictures was a result of his attempts to invert this trope - he wanted out of the Sprockets movie because he felt that the script (which he himself wrote) was not good enough. The trope is played straight with The Cat in the Hat and The Love Guru - he was actually legally obligated to make the former as part of his settlement with Universal.
- The Perfectionist: Myers is infamously his own worst critic, which has caused problems when he feels his work doesn't meet his own high standards. Most notably, the planned "Sprockets" movie was cancelled because he was never satisfied with any of the proposed scripts, all of which he wrote himself.
- Star-Derailing Role: The mixed to negative reception The Cat in the Hat didn't hurt Myers' career that much. The Love Guru ended up being the straw that botched his acting career, then he took a hiatus to take care of his wife before moving into becoming a painter.
- Violent Glaswegian: If there's even the faintest opportunity for him to play a belligerent Scot, he's going to take it by the throat.
- What Could Have Been:
- He was set to play The Who's late drummer Keith Moon in a biopic sometime in the late 2000s, but the project crumbled at the end of the decade.
- Mike Myers was planned to star in a Marvin the Martian live-action/CGI hybrid film playing the titular character back in 2008 with a 2011 release date but it was scrapped. Test footage for the film was leaked in late 2012.
- Myers was planned to play Pepé Le Pew in a similar style film starring the titular character himself with Max Landis serving as writer. The film was scrapped partly due to Landis being accused by multiple women of sexual assault in 2017, which is ironic and a mood point seeing the character's controversial nature in later years which led to Warner Bros. abandoning the character in 2021.
