The Studio: 10 A-List Cameos and Where You've Seen Them Before

Seth Rogen’s comedy The Studio, where he plays a movie executive who is unexpectedly made head of a studio, has quickly become notorious for cameo appearances that see big stars send themselves up. Many A-listers have taken the plunge and played themselves, but where have you seen them before? Find out with our guide to the show’s best cameos, and where you can stream the actors’ previous work.

Paul Dano

We know straight away that The Studio is going to drop plenty of crumbs for proper film buffs when the first episode opens with uber-authentic There Will Be Blood star Paul Dano agonising over his acting technique. There’s even a mention of Wildlife, Dano’s debut as an arthouse director. After a strong debut in indie flick L.I.E., Dano appeared in Little Miss Sunshine before breaking through properly in There Will Be Blood. Since then, you might have seen him in 12 Years a Slave, The Batman and The Fabelmans, as well as playing Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy.

Martin Scorsese

Obviously he directed GoodFellas, Taxi Driver, The Departed and so on: you don’t need us to tell you who Martin Scorsese is. His role as a brittle, stroppy version of himself in The Studio takes his willingness to laugh at himself to a new level, but he has always loved a comedy cameo, with self-ironising turns in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage and 30 Rock. Plus he’s in a bunch of his own movies: in his early period he was in most of them somewhere, and if you can’t see him you can listen for his voice in The Wolf of Wall Street and Bringing Out the Dead. 

Charlize Theron

These days Charlize Theron is as much a producer as she is an actor, so she’s not quite as ubiquitous on screen as she was just after the turn of the millennium. She won Best Actress at the Oscars for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, then was nominated for the same award for North Country before starring in Young Adult, Mad Max: Fury Road and The Fate of the Furious. In The Studio she only has one line, but it’s extremely memorable as she forcefully tells Seth Rogen’s character that he isn’t welcome at a star-packed industry party.

Steve Buscemi

Following his appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 breakthrough Reservoir Dogs, Steve Buscemi became one of the most sought-after character actors of the 1990s and 2000s: if Buscemi was in it, you knew it would be cool, unless it was one of the Adam Sandler movies in which he also regularly played supporting roles. His most memorable film turns include Con Air, Ghost World, The Death of Stalin and many Coen brothers movies such as The Big Lebowski. On TV he was the lead in Boardwalk Empire and had an unforgettable one-season arc as the doomed Tony Blundetto in The Sopranos.

Sarah Polley

No doubt drawing on her own experiences as she appears in The Studio trying to film a scene in the face of budget restraints, meddling executives and unhelpful actors, Polley is a respected film director best known for 2022’s Oscar-winning Women Talking. You probably recognise her from her previous acting career, however, which includes Splice, The Weight of Water and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. For an underrated Polley gem, check out her lead performance as a terminally ill young wife and mother in devastating 2003 indie weepie My Life without Me. Mark Ruffalo co-stars.

Johnny Knoxville

In The Studio he’s a version of himself who insists that his new movie Duhpocalypse, a horror in which zombies attack humans by squirting diarrhoea into their faces, is “a dark satire about medical disinformation”. In real life, Johnny Knoxville rose to fame, and repeatedly physically harmed himself, as the leader of the gang in notorious prank/stunt show Jackass. He usually appears as himself but has an acting career as well, most recently on TV in Reboot and The Luckiest Man in America.

Ron Howard

A generation of Americans know Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, and as one of the lads in American Graffiti, but you’re more likely to know his work as one of Hollywood’s most respected directors. He’s the man behind the hit 1980s comedies Splash, Cocoon and Parenthood, as well as more serious fare like Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. Creator/star of The Studio Seth Rogen credits Howard himself for coming up with the funniest bit of his cameo, when the director throws his trademark baseball cap at Rogen’s out-of-his-depth studio boss.

Anthony Mackie

Mackie is in the very funny Ron Howard episode of The Studio, starring in the fictional Howard-directed movie Alphabet City, a serious neo-noir drama which is much, much too long: as well as dealing with a producer who is infatuated with him, the Studio version of Mackie also gets involved in a storyline about Howard being persuaded to cut a scene that has great personal meaning for him. Elsewhere, Mackie is one of the stars of the Captain America movies The Winter Soldier and Brave New World, as well as the TV spin-off series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Nicholas Stoller

You most likely won’t recognise Nicholas Stoller in the opening episode of The Studio, since he is normally purely a writer and director, not an actor. You’ll certainly have seen some of the films he’s been involved with, though, be it Forgetting Sarah Marshall and its sequel Get Him to the Greek, or the likes of Bros and the hit 2011 movie version of The Muppets. He’s a very game participant in The Studio, since the gag is that most of the above are, shall we say, somewhat mainstream fare, which means idealistic executive Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) doesn’t initially want to work with him…

Greta Lee

Lee has had prominent supporting roles in two big TV hits in the past few years, namely Russian Doll on Netflix and The Morning Show on Apple TV+. She’s best known, though, for the highly acclaimed 2023 movie Past Lives, where she plays Nora, one half of a pair of old childhood sweethearts who reconnect later in life. The self-parodic version of herself Lee plays in The Studio has let the acclaim for Past Lives go to her head: she didn’t get a private jet for the press tour, and now she is obsessed with getting one for the film she’s making next.

Check out our guide below on where to watch all the shows and movies in our The Studio cameo guide, streaming in the United Kingdom!