No matter what talent has shot them to the upper echelons of fame, every celebrity wants to be a movie star. On the flip side, being a movie star can get tiring, so it’s tempting to drop the mask and just be yourself.
Specifically, the most exaggerated, entertaining version of yourself, because no matter what you’ve learned from social media, nobody actually wants to see movie stars sitting around in sweatpants and eating Pringles. Unless you manage to get the Pringles can simultaneously stuck on your hand and in your pants because you were trying to reach for a chip and scratch your balls at the same time. Now that’s a great celebrity cameo.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to involve embarrassment. An effective celebrity-as-themselves cameo can be over-the-top awesome, simply out of character or hilariously in character. Every stripe was represented when user Netwinn asked r/AskReddit, “Who had the best ‘as him/herself’ cameo in a movie?”