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Promoted Fanboy / Live-Action Films

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  • Peter Jackson started to experiment with special effects as a teenager, inspired by such artists as Willis O'Brien, got all the way to making his own high-budget version of King Kong.
  • Tracie Thoms was a RENThead in her younger years, and ended up cast as Joanne in the feature film.
  • The A-Team: Sharlto Copley was an A-Team fan from a young age◊. He stated in an interview that he got to show his audition tape ("Things Murdock Would Do in a Hotel Room") to Dwight Schultz, the original Murdock, who both laughed and cried when he saw it. Sharlto must have had a nerdgasm of epic proportions.
  • Famed aviator and industrialist Howard Hughes was a big fan of movies. So big, in fact, that he bought the film studio RKO Radio Pictures in 1948. Unfortunately for RKO, love for cinema doesn't necessarily equal being a good studio head. Hughes ran RKO into the ground during his seven-year run, firing 75% of the staff in his first few weeks and shutting down production for six months in 1949 in order to investigate the politics of the remaining 25%. Hughes left RKO in 1955, and the studio went out of business two years later.
  • As a child, BRIAN BLESSED used to play Flash Gordon with his brother, and used to actually pretend to be Vultan. Then he got to play Vultan in the movie. He later said that it was one of the most embarassing moments of his life when he shot his first action scene and "I had this big bazooka, and I flew in, shouting "Follow me, Flash!" *boom* *boom* *boom* *kaboom*. And the director shouted "Cut! Brian, we will put in the special effects".
  • Jim Carrey was a Batman fanboy as a child. In The '90s, he got to play The Riddler in Batman Forever.
    • Billy Dee Williams appeared as Harvey Dent in the 1989 Batman. He was a fan of the comics who signed on hoping to play Two Face in a sequel. Unfortunately, when the time came for Two Face to appear in Batman Forever, he was replaced with Tommy Lee Jones. Fortunately, he had a pay-or-play contract, so he got a big check for it anyway. Then he voiced Two Face in 2017's The LEGO Batman Movie.
    • United States Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is an avowed fan of Batman, and has since had cameos in Batman & Robin and The Dark Knight: the former as an extra, and the latter as a guest at Bruce Wayne's party who stands up to the Joker. Since he could have been playing himself or an Expy thereof in The Dark Knight, also counts as Politician Guest-Star. He also appeared in The Dark Knight Rises. Most recently, he played an actual Senator in Batman v Superman!
    • Even executive producer Michael Uslan is a fan of Batman as well. In fact, he collected both Batman and Superman comics ever since he was a child.
  • Another Jim Carrey example: He is also a fan of the late, eccentric proto-performance artist Andy Kaufman, and in 1999 played him in Man on the Moon.
  • The primary reason Rosie O'Donnell played Betty Rubble in the live action movie of The Flintstones is because she was a lifelong fan of the original cartoons.
  • Noomi Rapace is an admitted fan of the films of Ridley Scott and credited him as an inspiration for her acting career. She would then get the lead role in his film Prometheus.
  • AJ LoCascio has been a huge fan of the Back to the Future films from when he was a kid. He now gets to voice Marty McFly in the Telltale games — and has also gotten to meet Bob Gale, Christopher Lloyd, and even Claudia Wells. He has yet to make contact with Michael J. Fox, though.
  • Evanna Lynch grew up as one of the biggest fans of the Harry Potter book series, even going so far as to name her cats after characters in the books. When she was selected to play Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie, her resemblance to the character went a long way toward hyping the movie for fans. Her performance, lauded as one of the best in the film series, led to even more praise for her and the movie. She was such a huge fan (and aware of her resemblance to Luna) that she made herself a custom Luna Lovegood outfit for Halloween, complete with homemade radish earrings. Then she wore the earrings to the audition. Then she wore the earrings — which, again, she made because she was that big a fan of Luna — in the movie, as Luna. Ms. Lynch is the ultimate Promoted Fangirl.
    • J. K. Rowling herself has admitted that Evanna Lynch was such a perfect Luna that she made her way into her writing as the only actor from the films ever to do so. She even says to have heard Evanna's voice in her head while writing.
  • J. J. Abrams had grown up making his own movies and being a huge fan of Steven Spielberg's early work. After being featured in a newspaper article about a Super 8 film festival, Abrams was contacted by Spielberg's assistant and was given the job of editing and restoring his idol's own 8 mm movies. Abrams got to work directly with Spielberg on Super 8, which was the former's love letter to the latter and which was produced by Spielberg himself.
  • Andrew Garfield has wanted to play Spider-Man since he was three, and gets his chance in The Amazing Spider-Man. Garfield invoked the trope when he appeared at Comic Con to promote the film dressed in a poorly-made costume and mask, and only revealed himself as the actor who would play Spider-Man when he removed his mask to join the panel onstage.
  • Van Ling was a nerdy film school graduate who loved sci-fi, especially the Alien series. Around the time that Aliens was released, he and two film school buddies built a working power loader costume that could be operated by one person, and was completely mobile. James Cameron's then-wife, Gale Anne Hurd, heard about Ling's project, and had him demonstrate it in the 20th Century Fox parking lot, and eventually referred him to Cameron himself, who hired Ling as a creative liaison and researcher for The Abyss. He would go on to play a large part in many of Cameron's projects, including design and visual effects work for Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
  • John Carpenter has stated one his early film influences was Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World. In 1982, he directed his own version, The Thing.
  • Mike Myers said that the first book he read was The Cat in the Hat and was a huge fan of it. In the Live-Action Adaptation, he would wind up playing the Cat himself.
  • Karen Gillan said that once she was invited to audition for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, she dropped her glass of wine given the original was one of her favorite movies as a child.
  • Tony Curtis grew up being a fan of both Cary Grant and submarine movies, and finally got to work with Grant in the film Operation Petticoat.
  • Marlon Wayans is an admitted fan of G.I. Joe and ended up playing Ripcord in the 'film adaptation.
  • Director Danny Cannon was a big fan of Judge Dredd and had actually won a poster design contest for a planned Judge Dredd film at age 19 with this design◊, proposing Harrison Ford in the leading role of Judge Dredd and Ridley Scott as director. Cannon eventually directed the 1995 film Judge Dredd, though the end product was very different from what he had conceived due to Sylvester Stallone's input on the project.
  • Christina Perri is a big The Twilight Saga fan, so she was absolutely thrilled when the filmmakers asked her to write a song for the movie (which included a free early showing)
  • Rob Bottin was a big fan of horror and monster movies growing up and he admired the work of Rick Baker, one day he sent him a letter along with some monster drawings, Baker was impressed and trained him in and he became one of the most famous special effects artists of all time starting at age 14.
  • Gareth Edwards first became a Godzilla fan watching The Godzilla Power Hour as a kid in The '70s and The '80s before going on to watch the films themselves. He then went on to direct the 2014 reboot of the franchise and has frequently talked about how blindsided he was that only his second film foray, following Monsters, is an old dream come true.
    • The director of the sequel, Michael Dougherty, was also a Godzilla fan since early childhood. However, due to a possible case of Running the Asylum, the movie itself fell into a hard case of Critical Dissonance: Critics ripped into it for reasons such as Contrived Coincidence, poor pacing, bad cinematography, and a botched attempt at a Well-Intentioned Extremist villain (who instead came across as an Unintentionally Unsympathetic, hypocritical, poorly-written, erratic madwoman who is treated as justified in her horrible actions), overly-flashy spectacle, and "too much monster fighting." There were also accusations of the plot being a bit hard-to-follow for people who weren't familiar with the lore and mythos of the franchise. Fans, on the other hand, gave the film a much warmer reception, due to the facts that flashy spectacle and monster fighting was what they came to see. It should also be noted that the villain mentioned above is one of the more hated and contentious human characters to the fans of the franchise as well. Also, there was a copious amount of the non-sexual variety of fanservice in the film as well via use of the classic monster leitmotifs and roars and numerous nods to other films, TV shows, and games- it's seen by many as like the Cult Classic Showa Era Godzilla films, but with modern CGI. Tellingly, the film did poorly in American and European markets, where the older films are cult classics at best and total unknowns at worst, and the new films were only starting to revive interest via Popularity Polynomial. The film did much better in Japan, home field of the kaiju genre and therefore where the lore of Godzilla is much more widely known. All in all, the whole debacle proves that this trope can be a double-edged sword.
  • Benicio del Toro himself had been a long-time fan of Lon Chaney , especially of his performance as Lawrence Talbot. He reveals in an interview that he always wanted to portray him, and wouldn't you know it, he got his wish.
  • James McAvoy is an avid sci-fi/fantasy geek, and he has become a very lucky fanboy in his acting career.
  • Daniel Radcliffe had idolized James McAvoy when he was a teen, so he considers it a great privilege to act alongside the man who inspired his acting career in Victor Frankenstein. Daniel mentions in the Nov. 2015 issue of Empire that he was star-struck when they first met on set.
    Radcliffe: I was nine when I met Maggie Smith. I didn't know who Maggie Smith was, so there was no fear of being awestruck or anything. But when I met James... I had grown up watching Inside Im Dancing, Atonement, The Last King of Scotland... He was somebody I always really looked up to, so I think easily the first week or two it was just a lot of me being like, "Oh my god, he's so good."
  • Tye Sheridan was exhilarated that he got to work with with James McAvoy, his idol, in X-Men: Apocalypse.
    Sheridan: I came back from having a week off and it's my first scene to shoot with James McAvoy, and let me tell you something—James McAvoy is my idol! We get along great, and I've told him how big of a fan I am, but just to even be working with him—just to meet him and talk to him is amazing. But having a scene where I'm one on one with him—my god, it's insane!
  • Will.i.am was a fan of the X-Men franchise who identified Nightcrawler as his favorite character and was subsequently cast in X-Men Origins: Wolverine to play a mutant with similar teleporting powers.
  • Pat Regan became a fan of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at five and is now a celebrated expert on diving suits and building replicas of the submarine. He also wrote and published a prequel to the film, Vulcanium''.
  • Hugh Bonneville, Nicole Kidman and director Paul King all had fond memories of Paddington as kids, hence why they all agreed to work on the film adaptation.
  • Most of the cast and crew of Into the Woods signed on because they enjoyed the musical the film was based on. James Corden has stated that he always wanted to play the Baker in a West End version.
  • Mara Wilson mentioned in an essay on her website (and in many interviews) about how Roald Dahl's book Matilda was a favorite of hers and her family's, and how she and her brothers used to play Matilda games and recite lines from the book. When her mother mentioned in passing that one of the scripts she was reviewing for her daughter to audition for was called Matilda, she leapt at the chance and intended to do as best a job as she could at playing the title role, as the book had meant so much to her. Later, she got to review Matilda The Musical and gave it and its star her approval and enthusiasm.
  • Tom Hardy has been a diehard Gary Oldman fan dating back to his drama school days in the 1990s, repeatedly referring to him as his "all-time hero" and similar terms. As of 2015, they've starred in four films together (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Dark Knight Rises, Lawless and Child44)
  • Chris Pratt was a big Jurassic Park fan growing up. In 2015, he was one of the two protagonists of the fourth movie.
  • Michael Sheen was apparently such a big fan of TRON that his agent actually hid that fact while negotiating Sheen's deal to be in TRON: Legacy, fearing Sheen would accept any lowball offer just to be in it.
    • Unsurprisingly, so were Daft Punk (who cite the 1982 film's composer Wendy Carlos as an influence). Allegedly, they spent their meeting with Disney executives regarding the film's score asking, in effect, "is this gonna be done right?"
  • Donald Sutherland and Elizabeth Banks both approached the creators asking for their roles in The Hunger Games because they were huge fans of the books. Additionally, they both requested major expansions for their chosen characters (President Snow and Effie Trinket, respectively) based on their own ideas — and got them!
  • Octavia Spencer who plays Johanna in the Divergent films describes herself as "a huge fangirl of the books" and saw the first film twice in one weekend.
  • Anton Yelchin grew up a fan of the Terminator films, and got to play Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation.
  • Lily Collins was a big fan of The Mortal Instruments books and made several calls as soon as she heard a movie was being made to get an audition for Clary.
  • Cable mogul/Renaissance Man Ted Turner's favorite movie is Gone with the Wind — in 1986, he purchased MGM for 74 days, then sold it back, but kept the library, hence making him the owner of the movie, and he launched both TNT and Turner Classic Movies with a broadcast of the film (indeed for the former, it was the first time the movie had aired on cable at all).
  • Pierce Brosnan was a fan of the James Bond films from an early age, after seeing Goldfinger in theaters. His first wife Cassandra Harris played Countess Lisl von Schlaf in For Your Eyes Only and noted then that he'd be perfect as Bond one day. Sadly, she passed away before it happened.
  • In a rare occasion where he was willing to talk about Alien³, David Fincher said "I wanted to do an Alien movie. I wanted to do one since I was 16. (...) The fact that I wasn't allowed to was my own fault. But, you know, that was a world that I loved that I couldn't get enough of."
  • Brittany Ishibashi, who stated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "was absolutely my childhood", went to audition for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows hoping the "female soldier" in the casting call was Shredder's daughter Karai, and once she won the role, indeed it was!
  • Ben Schwartz is a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and aspired playing the title role for years before finally getting the opportunity to do so for the live-action film adaptation.
  • Taika Waititi was a die-hard comic book fan since he was a child. Though he had a small role as Tom Kalmaku in Green Lantern (2011), he fell face-first into this trope by writing and directing multiple movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, along with playing Korg, the rocky alien introduced in Thor: Ragnarok.
  • Growing up, Johnny Depp was a huge fan of the Supernatural Soap Opera Dark Shadows, particularly the character Barnabas Collins, and when Warner Bros. bought the film rights in 2007, he convinced his longtime pal Tim Burton to helm it and cast him as Barnabas.
  • Hailee Steinfeld was already a big fan of the original Pitch Perfect, to the point of even admitting to family members that this was the type of cast she'd want to be working with. To say she was over the moon getting the role of Emily in the sequel would be an understatement. It might also be somewhat meta given how Emily herself is an Ascended Fangirl of the Bellas.
    Steinfeld: I still remember seeing the first movie in the theaters and thought, "If there's ever another movie like this I have to be a part of it." I hadn't even thought about there being a sequel then, and once I saw they were casting I was like "I have to get this part." It's been very surreal.
    • Is anyone is wondering why members of the Green Bay Packers make a rather unexplained cameo during the riff off in Pitch Perfect 2? Well it turns out they were huge fans, and director Elizabeth Banks asked them to come on once she learned the fact. Several of the cast members even admitted that the football players memorized all the choreography to their performances in the first movie.
  • Sia describes ''Annie'' as her favourite musical as a kid, and describes working on the soundtrack of the 2014 film a "bit of a dream come true".
  • Pedro Pascal received influence from Nicolas Cage as an actor, and would eventually perform opposite him in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, as a Nick Cage fan appointed to co-write his next movie.
  • Walker Scobell, who plays 12-year-old Adam in The Adam Project, is a massive Deadpool fan, who can recite entire monologues from the film (and has recited the opening monologue to Deadpool 2 in multiple promotional appearances, leading to a Cluster F-Bombnote .) This was actually in his favor, because the filmmakers realized that it was easy for him to play Ryan Reynolds' younger self.
  • Mylène Demongeot was a huge fan of Alexandre Dumas' novels, and Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers was her favorite character out of them all. She lobbied hard to get the role when she learned of the 1961 production, and obtained it, even accepting a ridiculously low paycheck.
  • Most of the pilots involved with Top Gun: Maverick were ones who enlisted in the Navy after watching Top Gun. Meanwhile, Jon Hamm didn't even bother to read the script before agreeing to join the film.
  • Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett took Blair Witch due to being such huge fans of the original The Blair Witch Project to the point where they didn't want any other film maker to "mess with it". While Ed Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, original creators of The Blair Witch Project, were originally trying to pitch their own Blair Witch 3 to Lionsgate, they saw Blair Witch and gave Wingard and Barrett their blessing, which Wingard and Barrett were grateful for. Wingard and Barrett had previously worked with Sánchez and the producer of The Blair Witch Project, Gregg Hale, on V/H/S/2.
    • Jason Constantine, a bigwig up at Lionsgate, got the ball rolling on getting Blair Witch started because he was a fan of the original, having seen it at its premiere.
  • Older Than Television: Margaret Hamilton was a huge fan of L. Frank Baum's Oz books for many years before she was cast as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, which ended up becoming her most famous and iconic role. She was even a member of a prominent Wizard of Oz fan club later in life.
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once paired Michelle Yeoh with two pairs that grew up watching her martial arts movies, writers\directors DANIELS and fight choreographers Brian and Andy Le of MartialClub.
  • Jeff Bridges said he did King Kong (1976) because "I used to ditch school, pretend I was sick, so I could watch the original on TV."
  • Austin Butler is a massive Quentin Tarantino fan, and especially loved Pulp Fiction so much that he printed out the script and would read it aloud to his mother on the way to rehearsals and acting classes as a child. He would eventually get the chance to work with Tarantino in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
  • Tony Robinson and David Jason were both Discworld fans long before they were cast in Hogfather (and, in Jason's case, The Colour of Magic), and jumped at the chance to be in it.
  • Anthony Mackie's such a big fan of The Falcon that he was actually disappointed when he found out the filmmakers weren't going to have him wear the red spandex costume the character wears in the comics.
  • It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): Jess McLeod is a huge fan of Justin Long, and so working with him was a major appeal of the film for them.
  • Carry On... Series:

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