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The best comic actors are imbued with direction, using their sense of humor as a guide for where and how to act. Combine that direction with a point of origin, and we can better understand the nature of the path they ended up following.
Given an early role, a few comedians test the waters, unsure of their persona, still culling to conform to the collective consciousness of funny. Others come out swinging, dauntlessly steering the zeitgeist to their natural habitat of humor. A comic actor can take a half-page of script and make it legendary. Another will inhabit a whole story, owning a character from Fade In to Black Out.
Before the money, before the fans, when the actor is hungriest and most free; these are the times when the laughter is the most authentic. Following are the best pre-fame films from famous comedians.
16 Jim Carrey - Earth Girls Are Easy
A fever dream of John Waters up and decides it wants to be a sci-fi romance — that's Earth Girls Are Easy in a nutshell.
Geena Davis is thoughtful and beautiful, but her fiancée is too bumbling a philanderer to even properly cheat on her. When three furry aliens land in her San Fernando Valley swimming pool, she ends up falling for one and flying away into space with him. Visually, it's a dream for any fans of costuming, vintage furry work, showy '80s eroticism, and strange dance offs with guys wearing suspenders.
Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans commit to their roles as dopey aliens, providing the comic relief to a movie that combines songs, dance numbers, and interspecies romance. The film is about physicality, big swings, and campy melodrama; so for their part; the funny guys are there to just be funny. Though one wonders what could have been when an actor tries for something new.
15 Amy Poehler - Wet Hot American Summer
When Wet Hot American Summer was being shot, Amy Poehler was already one of the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, the now-famous improvisational academy and performance venue with bi-coastal franchises and a laundry list of commercially successful graduates. At the time, she was still a year away from SNL, and her role in the absurdist ensemble comedy was rather small.
Channeling Reese Witherspoon's insatiably frenetic Tracy Flick from Election, Poehler played an equally obnoxious director of the camp drama program, the stereotypical histrionic control freak who lives and dies by her status. To her, the talent show is akin to a West End Hamlet starring the reanimated corpse of Sir Laurence Olivier. She and her equally obnoxious producer, Bradley Cooper, infect everyone around them with haughty self-importance with such on-the-nose sincerity that it'll send a chill down the spine of anyone who spent even one semester in high school drama.
That same commitment to character and false sense of urgency would come in handy eight years later when she took up the mantle of her beloved type-A Leslie Knope in Parks & Recreation. But in a film with dozens of current or future stars of comedy, her brief role shines.
14 Paul Rudd - Clueless
Writer-director Amy Heckerling was already a bankable director going into the '90s, having struck gold with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Look Who's Talking, and the underappreciated Johnny Dangerously. So when she adapted the Jane Austen novel Emma as a coming-of-age high school movie in mid-'90s Beverly Hills, she had to know that she'd be anointing her young cast as the next generation of comic actors.
Annoint, she did. Brittany Murphy, Jeremy Sisto, Donald Faison, and Breckin Meyer were just some of the supporting cast who got their starts. Before Clueless, star Alicia Silverstone was the Girl from the Aerosmith Videos. After, she became Batgirl.
For a female-centric narrative, the role of the male heartthrob had to be chosen delicately. Particularly since Cher's former stepbrother would be present throughout the film, and only become the romantic interest during the second act reality check. An unknown Paul Rudd was chosen to take the role of prickly Josh, the self-important college-aged intellectual who comes to respect Cher for the thoughtful woman she is underneath. He was handsome in a '90s grunge kind of way, although they managed to polish him up nicely for the closing wedding scene. No doubt even he was surprised when the nerdy pre-law student became People's Sexiest Man Alive 2021.
13 Kevin Hart - The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The only reason that Kevin Hart's scene is in the The 40-Year-Old Virgin is because Kevin Hart is funny. Hart plays a trouble customer giving Romany Malco the runaround on the price of a warrantee for some electronics. The interaction has zero bearing on the plot, and Kevin doesn't appear again.
The only purpose it serves is as a vehicle for Kevin Hart's humor, and it delivers. The hypocrisy of the tiny tough guy, so familiar to fans of Kevin's standup, exposed itself to a whole new audience as he and Malco threw around the n-word, violent threats, and gang references, blithely unaware that they're in a mid-level electronics superstore in suburban Orange County. The funny comes from their transparently hollow fronting, when realistically, either has all the street rep of calico kitten wearing a bowtie.
12 Adam Sandler - Bulletproof
Although known for silly voices, non-sequitur songs, and his cotarie of regular comedic castmates, Adam Sandler has proven himself an outstanding dramatic actor. First, as a troubled lover in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, and a down on his luck degenerate jeweler in the Safdie Brothers' fervent Uncut Gems.
It was an early turn as small-time crook Archie Moses, paired with undercover cop and former best friend Rock Keats (Damon Wayans) in the often overlooked Bulletproof in which he first transfused his trademark dopiness with a little bit of heart to form a more fully-fledged character. Moses, an errand boy for crime kingpin James Caan, brings his best friend Keats into his circle of corruption. When he finds out that Keats is actually an undercover cop, he carries his broken-hearted betrayal with him throughout the film, constantly badgering for an apology for Keats' treachery.
It's a fairly weak script with a predictable twist, but the action comedy beats and authentic love-hate chemistry between the friends-turned-rivals-turned-friends is enjoyable enough. Sandler would go on to carry his dramedy bona fides into successful fare like Big Daddy later on.
11 Owen Wilson - Bottle Rocket
Before Wes Anderson was an Oscar-nominated auteur with cast lists filled chock-full of A-list stars, he was an unknown, eccentric Texas native with a couple of college buddies named Luke and Owen Wilson. He and Owen would collaborate on a script called Bottle Rocket, about wayward, quarter-life misanthropes with no jobs who decide to rob a bookstore.
Their skill as petty thieves is limited, as is their devotion to a life of crime. Luke Wilson plays Anthony, the sensitive one of the group, who fesses up to his recent stay in a mental health facility to just about anybody who will listen. Verifiably fragile, he nonetheless uses emotional candor to find strength, which puts him at odds with Owen's Dignan, the cocksure mastermind behind the robbery. It takes a breakthrough for Dignan to finally admit that he's as emotionally troubled as Anthony.
The film is a tragically funny, in that these characters lack purpose, like the 1,001ist puzzle piece mistakenly included in the box. It ended up establishing the early careers of both Wilsons, and is a fun, easy-to-watch stepping stone to the unique style and poignant arcs that Wes Anderson would come to be known for.
10 Kristen Wiig - Knocked Up
In Knocked Up, Katherine Heigl's Alison is a producer for E! Network News who gets called to the office of her boss, Jack, and informed that she's being promoted to on-air talent. The seat next to her is occupied by Jill, played by Kristen Wiig, whose sole reason for existing seems to be to ape Jack in a professional tag team of corporate doublespeak. The pair play stereotypes of power players with chiseled jawlines, perfect presentation, and a soulless husk of a personality, long bereft of true human connection. Their presence makes the audience recoil with an immediacy usually reserved for tiny venomous scorpions or that furniture leg you always stub your toe on.
"This is Hollywood. We don't like liars." - Jill
Wiig, in particular, plays her part with such transparent dishonesty, you can practically see the trail of chewed up underlings in her wake. She's passive-aggressive and cutting in the most hilarious way possible, alternating between professional approval and personal spite in such rapid succession that Alison can hardly keep up, leaving her mostly confused by this non-person speaking to her. It's a role with maybe a dozen and a half lines in total, but Wiig's unparalleled character work allows an entire personality to bubble just below the surface, leaving us begging for more.
9 Bernie Mac - Don't Be a Menace...
Bernie Mac was a favorite of Def Jam Comedy, opening a legendary second season set by grabbing the mic and saying, "I ain't scared of you mother f***ers." He repeats the phrase at least a half dozen times, stalking the audience like a predator. His patterned, rhythmic speech patterns and call and response with the DJ punctuated his act, his confidence emanating with every moment he's on stage. He's a firebrand, and it didn't take long for casting directors to notice.
Honestly, he could be on this list for any one of several bit parts in House Party 3, Friday, or Booty Call. Still, it's the 60-second rant against blackness, a parody of the racist cop from Boyz n the Hood, given by the aptly named Officer Self Hatred from Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, that has the biggest impact. Officer Self Hatred hates Shawn Wayans because he's black. He also hates black pepper, black piano keys, and "the back of Forest Whitaker's neck." His ferocity in the role, his every word, speak to a talent that could have easily played the dramatic role that his comedic one is based on. Luckily for us, he chose comedy instead.
8 Jackie Chan - Rumble in the Bronx
Golden Harvest
Surfing the wake of predecessor Bruce Lee's impact on Western cinema, Jackie Chan gained leverage with his martial arts gift to carve out a niche usually relegated to Hollywood's golden age: a physical comedian. Turns out he was never Bruce Lee, he was Buster Keaton.
A lot of action set pieces tell a story, or, at their best, reveal character. Jackie's signature action style does none of that, concentration instead on the majesty of the performance itself. Combining high art and low, masterful kung fu meets slapstick, Rumble in the Bronx is like watching Baryshnikov take a pie to the face and get sprayed with seltzer.
Jackie would later succumb to studio interests and sign up to be the buddy of every 2000s comedic actor for another hackneyed imitation of his most successful role ("Rush Hour, but in the Old West!"), ultimately suffering from over-saturation. But his early work was pure, beautiful, and wildly dangerous. But above all, funny. Check out the ladder scene from Jackie Chan's First Strike. It belongs in the Library of Congress, next to High Noon and Kind of Blue.
7 Dave Chappelle - The Nutty Professor
In 1996, Dave Chappelle was still trying to decide what kind of actor to be, having quickly arisen as the darling prodigy of the New York standup comedy scene. In looking at his early career, what jumps out are the number of attempts there were to fit him into an established comedy niche. He did Mel Brooks, action comedy Con Air, and the now-defunct black best friend archetype in Who's Got Mail. He even mixed life with art in behind-the-scenes talk show series The Larry Sanders Show, playing a version of himself unhappy with the direction of a script meant to be his vehicle.
His varying degree of success in these roles speak to the myopia of studio interests, unwilling or unaware of how to best utilize his massive talent. It's not difficult to see from where his rash of anti-establishment bits come from, and why those tend to be his most poignant.
It was The Nutty Professor, however, that allowed him to work with comedy's elder statesman, Eddie Murphy. Having dipped his fingers into so many creative pies, the freedom to improvise opposite the king of off-the-cuff humor in their shared scenes (Chappelle played a Def Jam comedian who gets his comeuppance from Eddie after making fun of him early on), spoke to Chappelle's capabilities, even while portraying a hacky insult comic so antithetic to his own think-piece identity. Chappelle would later credit Eddie with encouraging him to write his own material. When he finally went to air with Chappelle's Show in 2003, one imagines it was with thoughts of Eddie's consecration.
6 Amanda Seyfried - Mean Girls
It's pretty easy to write off Amanda Seyfried's role of Karen in 2004's Mean Girls as insubstantial. She has very little bearing on the plot as the second fiddle to the second fiddle of Rachel McAdams' queen bee, Regina. Particularly in a movie where the supporting cast of Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, and Lizzy Caplan are all scoring the laughs. Come to think of it, Karen is rarely ever all that mean. So instead of going for laughs, she goes for character.
"So if you're from Africa, why are you white?"
"Oh my God, Karen. You can't just ask people why they're white."
As the stereotypical ditzy blonde, it would be easy to throw on some pink lip gloss and phone-in a valley girl accent. After all, her character is largely one-dimensional: she's just kind of dumb. Plus, she can put her whole fist in her mouth — wanna see?
It wasn't until Amanda spent a career playing introspective characters of depth and intelligence that we could truly understand how far the real Amanda was from Karen. A real dumb person is so dumb they can't imagine anyone else being smarter than them; so playing a dumb person actually means playing it smart. Karen is a foggy young woman, but her truth is that she's trying her best. And it takes a lot of intelligence to understand that. Amanda sure did.
5 Albert Brooks - Taxi Driver
Albert Brooks was perfectly cast in Taxi Driver.
Robert DeNiro's Travis Bickle represents masculinity. While driving a taxi, Travis bears witness to the city surrounding him, and it disgusts him. He subjectively regards the whole world as immoral, though never once examines his own emotional fragility. Ultimately, he urges for heroism, and transforms himself into a violent man to save a defenseless underage girl from a life of prostitution.
Simultaneously, he's unable to communicate with his crush, Cybill Shepherd, whom he spends the other half of the movie staring at. A hero in his world, but with her, he is awkward and aggressive. His metamorphosis was never about valor, it was about overcompensating for being perceived as undesirable.
Enter Albert Brooks. In the early '70s, he was a standup regular on The Tonight Show. His round, friendly smile helped disguise his quasi-existential humor as clowning, serving his brilliant irony with a side of fries to entice his audience. He was perceived as intelligent, sophisticated, and funny; or the exact opposite of Travis Bickle. His role as a coworker of Cybill is brief, but his purpose is to remind the viewer what base-level decent human male is supposed to look like.
4 Mike Myers - So I Married an Axe Murderer
So I Married an Axe Murderer is such a product of the '90s that even the title sounds like a lilting punchline from Chandler Bing. Mike Myers plays Charlie Mackenzie, a serial dater and beat poet writer-performer in San Francisco. Fighting his usual fear of commitment, he invests in a relationship with Harriet, played beguilingly by Nancy Travis, even after a combination of oddball coincidences point to Harriet having killed multiple husbands with an axe. Myers also plays his own father, Stuart, with his ubiquitous Scottish accent, almost transparently trying to get his coworkers to break character.
The film has a talented supporting cast with hilarious premises, such as Phil Hartman's Vicky, a solemn Alcatraz tour guide, or Alan Arkin's police Captain anti-archetype, the straight man who's nothing like the cops on TV.
The clever b-plots help keep the laugh meter up, but its Mike Myers' charm that steals the show. It's a true romantic comedy in that way, relying on relationships and charisma to make two characters believably attracted to one another, simultaneously exposing the funny guy's mating ritual with the intelligent, sensitive woman who goes for it. Plus, somebody in there is an axe murderer. No spoilers.
3 Chris Rock - I'm Gonna Git You Sucka
In I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Chris Rock walks into a BBQ joint to order one rib. Not a rack, not a serving, but a single rib. The interaction with the proprietor, played by Issac Hayes, is about as funny a single scene as you can get in a movie.
"Check this out, why don't you let me get a sip for fifteen cents?"
"My cups cost more than fifteen cents."
"Alright, f*** the cup. Pour it in my hand for a dime."
It's short, to the point, and legendary. It helped establish Chris Rock early on, and the movie helped bridge the gap between the comedy stars of the '70s and the future comedy stars of the '90s.
2 Kate Hudson - Almost Famous
Rarely comes a time when a single performer can capture a role, embody the spirit of a movie, and become the "aw, shucks" crush of an entire generation. Lauren Bacall did it in To Have and Have Not. Marlyn Monroe did it in The Seven-Year Itch. And Kate Hudson does it in Almost Famous.
She plays a largely comedic role, the free-spirited Penny Lane, who lives for the music she follows on the road. Her sincerity, goofiness, and kindness to rock n' roll rookie journalist William Miller endears us to her immediately. We yearn for her. Her life, her creativity, her confidence. That, and she's madly in love. What could be better?
"That groupie? She was a Band-Aid! All she did was love your band. And you used her. All of you! You used her and threw her away. She almost died last night while you were with Bob Dylan. You guys are always talking about 'the fans, the fans, the fans.' She was your biggest fan! And you threw her away. And if you can't see that, that's you biggest problem. And I love her! I love her!"
- William Miller
Penny's inevitable tragedy is the indelibility of her spirit being treated as disposable. It's a crime of love when something special is ignored, and it stabs us through the heart. We feel for her, and we love her just as much as William, when he chooses his last words on Earth to be about her.
1 Steve Martin - The Jerk
Steve Martin has spent a career as a hypocrite. He's subversive, and yet mainstream. Prematurely gray, yet perpetually boyish. Ignorant, but smug. The Odyssey of his character in The Jerk, Navin Johnson, takes him from the throes of poverty to abject wealth and back again, constantly falling into new situations with drastic consequences, kind of like a Forrest Gump that you're allowed to laugh at.
The Jerk is a force of nature. It's a little bit like trying to describe the feel of sunshine on your face, or pinpoint the odor coming from the back of your fridge. It simply exists, and defies categorization. Steve Martin's standup factored largely into the premises and bits of the movie, but was channeled sublimely by Carl Reiner's straight laced filmmaking acumen; knowing when to cut as much as knowing when not to.
It's hardly the greatest comedy of all time — it may very well be inaccessible for many modern viewers, given how many times it's been imitated. But as far as breakouts go, it's one of the best.