I was watching "Airplane" the other night and did a Pointing Rick Dalton when they showed the control tower scene where the guy is tracking the plane on the Radarange and opens it to reveal a chicken dinner cooking. That actor was a much younger Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) from Breaking Bad. It got me thinking about very recognizable actors and their first film roles before they became well known. After Googling some are shocking because I have seen the movies but never made the connection once they became famous.

Here are a few:

Matt Damon was in Mystic Pizza.
Benicio DelToro was in Big Top PeeWee
Jim Carrey in Peggy Sue Got Married
Keanu Reeves in Youngblood, a badass Hockey movie starring Rob Lowe
Jake Gyllenhahl in City Slickers


Anyone else have other examples?

Christian Slater as an uncredited crewman in the next to last TOS movie (The Undiscovered Country?).

Michael Jackson as "John Jay" in an early Simpsons episode.

Going WAAAY back - Sid Caesar as a random caveman in "History of the World: Part 1". He had been one of the earliest Hollywood blacklisted actors for at least a decade prior.

Wes97 said:

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Kevin Costner in the Big Chill.

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When is Kevin Costner in the Big Chill??

Sex Panther said:

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Wes97 said:

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Kevin Costner in the Big Chill.

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When is Kevin Costner in the Big Chill??

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He's the corpse - all his scenes were cut (flashbacks) he is only "seen" as the dead body getting dressed by mortician for burial in opening scene. You can see his hairline and it's pretty identifiable.

JTT in The Brady's!

Stive said:

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Jeff Goldblum as a gang member in the original Death Wish.

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Jeff Goldblum also has one great line in Annie Hall for all of about 2 seconds.

Gary Oldman in Hannibal. It's a fairly large role, but I had no idea it was him under all of the makeup and prosthetics.

Nicolas Cage was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High as a fast food worker.

Edit: I'm too late.

Bill Paxton as an extra sitting behind Christopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time. Theater scene. I swell up with pride when I remember how quickly I caught that about a year ago.

George Clooney in Return of the Killer Tomatoes

uujm said:

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Alexander Skarsgard as Meekus in Zoolander.

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Damn I watched this last week and didn't realize who that was.

Matt Damon was cast as an unknown for Saving Private Ryan...since Spielberg didn't want it to be obvious who he was in the movie.

Good Will Hunting blew up before SPR released and that all went to hell.

This was all 10 years after Mystic Pizza so MD definitely had to grind it out for a while. He had some great roles in School Ties and Chasing Amy during that period, but definitely wasn't a star.

Not quite what the OP is asking but Nick Carter of BSB appears in Edward Scissorhands for a couple seconds. (Kid running on a slip n slide while Edward is first driven to the house.)

Diggity said:

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Matt Damon was cast as an unknown for Saving Private Ryan...since Spielberg didn't want it to be obvious who he was in the movie.

Good Will Hunting blew up before SPR released and that all went to hell.

This was all 10 years after Mystic Pizza so MD definitely had to grind it out for a while. He had some great roles in School Ties and Chasing Amy during that period, but definitely wasn't a star.

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I seem to remember thinking Courage Under Fire with Denzel and Damon was pretty good too. Came out year before GWH.

Damon had already had some decent roles before SPR Courage Under Fire with Denzel, Rainmaker (pretty much all the Grisham book movies were pretty big at that time), etc. I thought the story there was that Spielberg didn't publicize who was in the Ryan role. Not that he wanted an unknown.

But maybe I'm misremembering that.

agreed. he was getting cast in some good spots in smaller roles. GWH was definitely his first lead though.

Sounds like he can thank Kevin Smith for helping make that happen.

Many of these responses are not unknown