The "I didn't realize that was him/her" thread
 

Raiders of the Lost Ark
The dude that steals the idol from Indy in the temple at the beginning - I didn't know that was Alfred Molina.

Big Lebowski
The nihilist girl who sacrificed her toe - I didn't know that was singer Aimee Mann.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: The guy who meets Indy at the airport at the beginning of the movie is Dan Aykroyd (sp)

and if I hadn't heard prior to seeing it, I never would have known, the man who had no face in Hannibal was Gary Oldman

War Of the Worlds: That horrible ham-handed director was actually Steven Spielberg.

But he's usually ham-handed, so how is that surprising?
I'm surprised that almost 100% of what made it into A.I. really were Kubrick's ideas, and not Spielberg's.

I completely forgot that david spade was in Police academy 4.

Also, didnt know that the voice of Apu in Simpsons was the guy from Along Came Polly(the scuba instructor)

Jimmy Fallon as the big-shot manager in Almost Famous.

Orson Welles in Touch of Evil.

When I saw it I knew very little about the movie except that he was in it. The first 20 minutes I kept saying to myself "...that can't be him, can it?".

The Punisher - Didn't know that was Big Sexy Kevin Nash as The Russian aka Tombstone.

Tea Leoni - 1B for Racine
A League of their Own

I was sitting there watching and hey that sorta looks like her, nah.... she's got no lines in the film. Watching the credits, wow, it was her.

Laurence Fishburne as the scrawny little kid from Apocalypse Now. And then later on, Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. :lol:

Daniel Stern - JAFO
Blue Thunder

He's also under the Super Shredder mask in <i>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II</i>.

I remember seeing License to Drive when it first came out on video, thinking that the tanned, brown-haired teenage chick was so hot.
Had no idea that the pale,blonde hot teenage chick in Boogie Nights was the same girl.

Edward Norton as King Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven.

Renee Zellweger in Empire Records. (much cuter back then)

Recently, Gary Oldman as Gordon in Batman Begins.

what's JFAO?

JAFO...


It was a running joke thru the movie...

This one was brief, but I didn't recognize John Ritter in Sling Blade for the 1st scene or 2 he was in. :scratch2:

All through "Ladder 49" I kept thinking that the actress who played Joaquin Phoenix's wife looked SO familiar, but I couldn't think of any other movies I'd seen her in.

When I got home I looked it up on IMDB and turns out she is Jacinda, from The Real World: London. I was a big fan of the show* and I especially liked that season. But it had been ten years and didn't make the connection.

*This was back when The Real World was still watchable.

I've always known Kevin Peter Hall was the man inside the suits of Predator and Harry and the Hendersons, but before either of those, he was the Gorvil that Tom Hanks hallucinates in the made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters. I just watched this again recently for the first time in a loooooong time, and was surprised to see his name in the credits. I was like "wow, I never knew that".

I always enjoyed Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, but only upon watching it recently did I realize that the dumbass trailer trash army brother was Jack Black.

Speaking of, I recently saw I Still Know What You Did Last Summer again and was surprised to see that Jack Black was the dreadlocked pothead.

it's Hank Azaria and he does more than Apu for many years.

he was also the whacked out guy that got blowed up by Bruce Willis in "The Jackal"

Vasquez...Aliens
Irish Mom with kids...Titanic
John Conner's foster mom...Terminator 2

All the same woman. Jenette Goldstein is talented. :eek:

Check out "The List of Adrian Messenger". All parts are played by MAJOR hollywood stars in disguise and you don't know who's who. At the end it is revealed which star was which character. Haven't seen it in years. I remember Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster are two of them.

Jack Black was also the pilot in Waterworld, though it's easy to miss because his face is covered in soot.

if i hadn't heard the dvd commentary i would've never known that the nurse in the 'spa' was Andy Dick

when i was in the theater watching The Day After Tomorrow, i knew i had seen the Asian actress(Janet in the movie i think) somewhere else, like an hour later i remembered and automatically screamed "the girl in Karate Kid 2!"

Wow, you learn something new everyday. DIdn't know that one and I've seen WW many a time. Jack Black is in a lot of movies I've seen but don't recall him in...apparently he's in Demolition Man too...

Back when I saw Goodfellas on DVD for the first time since seeing it in the theater, I was surprised to see that Stacks - the black guy who gets whacked for not dumping a truck used in a robbery - was played by Samuel L. Jackson.

(And he has a a lot of other "I didn't know he was in that" roles in the decade before Pulp Fiction made him a household name.)

And don't forget Near Dark, which she co-starred in with her Aliens buddies Bill Paxton and Lance Henricksen.

And he was hilarious in that film. "Motherfu$#$% PROTOTYPE" YEAH.

I never saw "Near Dark". But yeah, I think she's great.

Between the two, he was raping Charles Bronson's daughter in Death Wish II. And then getting blown away by Chuckie B.

Ioan Gruffudd, now in theaters in The Fantastic Four, was one of the crewmen in Titanic. He was in the lifeboat that looked for survivors. ("Come ABOUT!")

In Coming to America, one of the barbershop scenes has Cuba Gooding Jr. sitting quietly in the barber's chair.

Back when I saw Brubaker and Street Smart, I just couldn't get over the fact that Easy Reader was there! Of course, he's long since eclipsed that role in my memory.

Daniel Craig in The Jacket

Martin Short in Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper ;)

See Near Dark. I mean it.

Oooh yeahhhh that's right.

And <i>Reality Bites</i> for about two seconds.

I didn't realize that Chris Pontius from Wildboyz (Mtv) was in Charlie's Angels:Full Throttle.

He was one of the Irish henchmen in the "pussycat dolls" revue that the angels did. I remember it was driving me crazy that the guy looked so familiar, I had to imdb when I got home.