5 Famous Actors Who Play the Same Role in Every Commercial
I would be lying if I said that advertising doesn't affect my perception of things. I'm repeatedly disappointed by my lack of Mr. Freeze powers after chewing multiple packs of Dentyne Ice. I still buy Red Bull in the hopes that maybe the latest one will turn me into an extreme athlete instead of this weird diarrhea monster. Sometimes, when I finish a KFC combo, I scream "I ate the bones?!?" to myself, because it allows me to fantasize about being part of a family that loves to have fun with me. I'm a sucker for a catchy commercial.
Advertising has also changed the way I see some celebrities. Their usual creative output gives me an idea of what I can expect from them, but commercials give me a special insight into both their real personalities and what they'd look like as idiots. After all, the best way to tell what a person is all about is to see how they act when they're paid millions to look like they enjoy something.
Seth Green Is an Asshole
Before Seth Green starred in the second episode of The X-Files and in Jennifer Love Hewitt's best movie, he was a dick, as evidenced by the plethora of commercials all centered on making you hate the hell out of him. Every Seth Green commercial is based on a seemingly joyful, fun product before smug, juvenile Seth Green walks in and ruins everything with his unruliness.
For example, when a young Sarah Michelle Gellar asks an also young Seth Green for help solving the mystery that is "Why are my cookies so delicious?" ...
... he agrees to help ...
... and then does so by eating every tasty cookie in the bag like some kind of not-so-private dick.
Duncan Hines: Fuck your cookies.
In his Fruit Loops commercial, we see Seth Green's friend eating cereal on a pleasant morning.
"Sure am glad Seth Green isn't here."
Finding this to be the perfect chance to kill vibes, Seth Green walks in and immediately pours himself some of his friend's cereal without even asking.
A "Hey, man, can I have a bowl of cereal?" would've been nice, but young Seth Green takes the Dennis the Menace route and Hey-Mr. Wilson!-I'm-stealing-your-breakfasts his way into the kitchen. However, it's all karmic in the end, as Seth has had a terrible nightmare about growing a beak, which would render that little shit completely unlovable.
But make him millions in the porn fetish industry.
It turns out to be all a dream, but he'll stay scared. Scared forever.
The next commercial takes Seth Green to the mall, where he enjoys his NERF gun and has a comb-over that defies all the physics that come with it.
He and his cohort, after spotting a group of girls trapped like sitting ducks on the escalator, announce "Babe alert!" Then, using the same train of thought that put Green in that jacket and gave him that abomination of a skull, he spits out a super creepy "We can hit on them!" with all of the dickishness that the look on his stupid ginger face in this scene implies ...
... and then shoots a girl in the face.
And then spends the next 12 minutes teabagging her unconscious, gape-mouthed body.
Where are your parents, Seth Green? Can someone please rip you in half for the sake of everyone shopping?
He was at his most awful, though, in this commercial for a burger joint that, probably because of this ad, has since gone extinct. In it, he plays an asshole drive-thru operator, as you can clearly see in this shot:
At this point, I'm pretty sure Seth Green had some sort of debilitating hair disease.
As if flagrantly disregarding accepted health code standards with that absurd penis hair isn't bad enough, he reads back a customer's order and, as if profits from burger sales somehow funnel their way directly into the pockets of the lowest level employees, punctuates each item with an obnoxious "Cha-ching!"
And does fucking karate moves every time.
Commercial writers seem to think that a catchphrase will be popular if you just say it enough. The creators of this ad settled on "Cha-ching!" and had to find the one actor who was enough of a young douche to pull it off.
In the late '80s and early '90s, no matter the product, the go-to douche of choice was always Seth Green.
Shaq Is Constantly in Pain
Before his life was finally given the biographical treatment with Pacific Rim, very little was known about Shaq. He was a basketball player, and we could assume that, since every day of his life is akin to the first part of Gulliver's Travels, he hates us regular-sized folk. He was also in the movie Kazaam, which both expressed that hate and stunted the positive pro-genie social movement that started with Aladdin.
He is also in terrible, terrible pain, all the time.
Gravity and a human skeleton made from the combined mass of four human skeletons don't mix. In his first Icy Hot commercial, he introduces the regular patch, made by developers who only planned on serving the general public, and, because he's so goddamn big, he also introduces us to the Shaq-sized Icy Hot patch, because Shaq squash puny human pain relief system.
You really don't want to see the one he did for Trojan condoms.
It's cartoonish, but also incredibly sad. Shaq suffers not from normal back pain, but from Shaq Pain, pain that would kill a regular man, and pain that constantly reminds Shaq of the burden he carries as the last remaining survivor of the Cretaceous Period.
He seems happier in a later Icy Hot ad, because, at this point, I assume that scientists have invented a way to inject the Icy Hot formula directly into Shaq's giant, crackling limbs.
But it's not enough to save him from the constant dilemma that he faces whenever he decides to climb down his beanstalk and dribble a bit: There's also the issue of fitting in an average human car. In a commercial for Buick, the choice for athletes who don't mind endorsing things they will never ever use, Shaq talks briefly about the trials of dealing with the little matchbox cars that populate the Earth, not created with the talented child of Mother Shaq and the atomic bomb in mind.
Nope. Didn't add that phrase to the photo. It's a screenshot of the commercial.
Getting inside those clown cars would be impossible for him and undeniably excruciating. So what does Shaq find? This:
A car with enough space for him to sit inside it without accidentally busting it apart? Sure it is, but just barely. For all the talk about the roominess of a Buick, it certainly seems a little cramped in there. If I'm not mistaken, Shaq's left leg is perched atop the driver's side armrest. That's not how people drive. If this car was built with Shaq in mind, the person who designed the interior had to be working exclusively with mental images drawn from his LSU years.
Or maybe his fourth grade yearbook.
Until they start hollowing out tanks, the state of modern auto design will likely keep Shaq in Icy Hot patches for the rest of his days.
Pitbull Lives in a World of Magic
When it became evident that Pitbull, the Latin American rapper famous for hits like "Don't Stop the Party" and "International Love," didn't have enough swagger to pull off making Bud Light/Pepsi look cool, advertising teams racked their brains attempting to think of a way to incorporate him into the spots that they'd paid decent money for. Then they had a game-saving idea: They'd give him magic powers. Now, whenever you see Pitbull advertising a product, it's not just Pitbull, the rapper. It's Pitbull, the rapping warlock.
In the first of the Bud Light ads, we see Pitbull, by himself, in a club.
Everything seems perfectly fine to the layman, but to Pitbull's dark magic senses, there is something awry. The girls aren't dressed skanky enough.
Prude.
Oh, sure, they're nice-looking girls, but if their boobs were sort-of showing, wouldn't they be 10 times as Pitbone-able? Well, with the twist of a cap and that old witch's spell (which just happens to be Pitbull's catchphrase), boom!
See the difference? Sure, these girls were having fun before, but they were boring Plain Janes and almost 95 percent unfuckable. That waitress didn't even have her hair down. What kind of party is that supposed to be? Now, they've been given cleavage and sultry looks, which, if you're pounding back Bud Lights, is really the most you can ask for.
In his second Bud Light ad, we see Pitbull's I Dream of Jeannie Dreaming of Partying Dreaming of Pitbull, as we enter the interior of a Bud Light bottle (a party) ...
... and zoom into the interior of another Bud Light bottle (similarly and oddly containing another party).
Strangely, he doesn't correct that entirely overdressed woman.
We repeat this process until we make our way to the master bedroom of parties, which is an entire crowd of people holding Bud Light while they bounce to Pitbull delivering a Nazi salute as he performs.
If this was Bud Light attempting to create a propaganda film, it was as effective as possible, and better luck next time, beer guys.
Channing Tatum Will Do Anything for a Soda
Back when he was only known for dancing, Channing Tatum starred in a Mountain Dew commercial centered on the lengths that he'd go to to get a Mountain Dew.
He's Channing Tatum. The man finds dollar bills falling out of the cracks between his abs, but here, he's so stressed about losing his calorie-packed soda that he puts his friend's life in danger to go back and get it.
"CUT! You can't be screaming the word 'shit' every time he ramps."
He even pulls a cool car-flipping stunt.
But he hasn't reached the point of his career where he's decent at acting yet, as the look on his face mid-flip reads, "They said this will all be fixed in computers later. What am I supposed to do now?"
I find it hard to believe that, considering Channing's physique, he is that into getting his sugary soda fix, but in this Pepsi ad, I'm proven wrong. Channing is a DJ who discovers that he has the power TO MANIPULATE TIME ITSELF using only his turntables.
And what does he do with this most incredible of super powers? He uses it to get his hands on a Pepsi ...
... that just narrowly escaped his clutches.
He slaughters the whole fucking place.
For one thing, if that was his Pepsi, that waitress would have brought it to him. He's being an asshole about this. Why not just order your own Pepsi and then use your magic turntables to make the waitress return immediately? Instead, with a quick rewind of the record ...
... he brings the waitress back ...
... and finally gets his hands on the liquid that is apparently the core staple of his diet.
Yay, magical theft!
His thievery is rewarded when he's approached by a mysteriously drenched lady who, impressed to find out that God was invited to the party, immediately wants to sleep with him.
And who is Channing to say no? He has the power to fast forward and slow down time. This is going to be either done in a second or the shortest 50 years of this woman's life.
Orson Welles Was Terribly Lonely
Before we invented Peter O' Toole or the concept of an Expendable, all that was left for creative types on the tail end of their careers to do was drink themselves into oblivion. Much has been said about Orson Welles' fall from grace. He went from creating the top movie of everything, Citizen Kane, and scaring the piss out of people with a Martian warning to being unable to justify his participation in a commercial about burgers.
Tom Cochrane once said that life is a highway, and Orson Welles didn't so much drive it all night long as he got about halfway down the highway, blew one of his tires, and screamed into the night sky for fucking hours until morning came.
Commercials didn't help his waning reputation much. He was promoting either some kind of alcohol or a product that he enjoyed so much that he needed to monologue about it. No matter the product, though, one thing always remained the same. Orson Welles was a terribly lonely man. Sure, he could sometimes be found in the company of the people entrusted to bring him a fresh bottle of booze at 15-minute intervals:
But beyond that, if Orson Welles was selling anything, he always ...
... did it ...
... in complete and total solitude.
I've never seen a worse job of making a person look attractive on TV. They may as well have set a bowl of Cool Whip beside him and had the entire room laugh at it for 60 seconds.
Commercials nowadays don't expect the audience's attention span to last past the third second, which makes Orson's trend of being placed in a flatly lit room, armed with only the product and his own personal demons, seem very quaint and even more depressing.
In what I consider to be my favorite of these ads, Orson Welles talks about WABC Talk Radio.
Since that's promoting sound waves, which are nearly impossible to see on television, they have nothing to cut away from and are stuck on Orson's vicious gaze.
He scolds the programs of other radio shows for sounding alike, which is a weird, ironic statement on Orson himself, since the only two things that change in all of Welles' ads are the jacket that he's wearing and the electronic device that he barely explains.
If you don't like Pitbull, tell Daniel on his Twitter. Spoiler: He disagrees.
