Sometimes, one-line cameos are the best kinds of movie cameos. They're certainly the most efficient when it comes to memorable punchlines: People remember dirt-covered Rob Schneider showing up in The Waterboy to yell "you can do it!" more clearly than 99% of most actors' actual speaking roles. There's just something automatically funny about a big established actor showing up just to play a tiny, stupid part in a movie, and it never gets old.
Here are some of the most memorable cameos where famous people showed up in a movie just to deliver one line.
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X-Men: First Class was the first full X-Men film since the highly controversial X:Men: The Last Stand in 2006.
It was the beginning of a prequel series leading directly up to the events of the original X-Men trilogy, so of course, it was wildly exciting when Hugh Jackman's Wolverine appeared in the film. He did, only to tell young Erik and young Charles to go "f***" themselves in his one and only scene.
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The mastermind behind the satire-comedy Airplane doubled down on the meta-Hollywood humor in the sequel to Hot Shots, Hot Shots: Part Deux. In possibly the best cameo on this list, Charlie Sheen's character passes a boat carrying Martin Sheen's character from Apocalypse Now.
As the two pass each other, they both point and shout out "I loved you in Wall Street!" at the same time. It doesn't get any more meta than that.
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Mel Brooks' Silent Movie is another meta-flick about a Hollywood director (Brooks) who tries to save his career by convincing his studio to produce a throwback silent film in the mid-1970s. The film is completely silent with intertitles instead of dialogue. The only word that is audibly spoken during the film actually comes from legendary professional mime Marcel Marceau, who picks up the phone and, when Brooks asks if he wants to be in his movie, shouts "Non!"
Brooks' companions then ask him what he said, to which he replies, "I don't know - I don't speak French."
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The legendary musician Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News appears in Back to the Future as a high school teacher who auditions Marty's band, The Pinheads, for the school talent show.
After jamming to a heavier rendition of Huey Lewis' "The Power of Love" (which also happens to be the films' theme song), Lewis's character cuts them off and explains that they are just "too darn loud."
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Legendary Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, known for films such as The Ten Commandments, The Omega Man, and Planet of the Apes, made a late-career appearance in Wayne's World 2 as a gas station attendant. When the original attendant sucks at delivering his one line, Wayne breaks the fourth wall and asks the crew if they can get a better actor for the part. They bring in Heston, whose "directions" turn into an emotional monologue about a lost love he once knew.
The directions are so moving, they bring Wayne (and everyone watching the film) to tears.
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Legendary English comedian Bob Hope, known for his Road To... film series, made a brief cameo in the 1985 Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd comedy film Spies Like Us. In the film, while Chase's and Aykroyd's characters are stationed in a tent in the middle of the desert, a golf ball flies in out of nowhere. Hope walks in after it, playing a round of golf in the middle of the desert, and asks, "Mind if I play through?" before whacking the ball back out of the tent.
The cameo is an homage itself to Hope's Road series of films, where random characters would appear, speak a line or two of dialogue, and never be seen again.
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Cheech Marin, one half of the infamous stoner comedy duo Cheech and Chong, appeared in Ghostbusters II as a dock supervisor who calls the police when he sees the ghostly Titanic docking in New York City.
As the ship arrives with a gaping hole from where the iceberg hit, the dock supervisor watches in shock before uttering the film's best line: "Well, better late than never."
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Bob Saget, a stand-up comedian who most households got to know as the family-friendly Danny Tanner in Full House, made an appearance in Dave Chappelle's stoner comedy Half Baked as a recovering coke addict. When Chappelle's character shows up to rehab for his alleged pot addiction, the more serious addicts all get mad at him, and a frustrated Saget stands up and yells out "Marijuana is not a drug," admits to trading sexual favors for coke, and asks if Chappelle has ever done anything like that for his so-called "addiction."
Saget happened to be filming another movie near the set of Half Baked, so he agreed to come on and record the line as a fun throwaway joke - but people on the street still yell it out to him over two decades later.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger was originally Hollywood's most lovable man-giant before Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson took over that mantle in the 2000s. In the action-comedy film The Rundown, Johnson's character, an expert bounty hunter, passes by a random bar patron (played by Schwarzenegger) who simply just smirks and tells Johnson to "have fun."
It was a clear "passing of the torch" moment from one generation's action star to the next.
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There are plenty of good cameos in Little Nicky, from Ozzy Osbourne to Quentin Tarantino, but none are as hilarious as Henry Wrinkler's brief appearance in the film.
After Adian (Rhys Ifans) takes over from Satan as the ruler of Hell, he holds a massive ritualistic party in the middle of Central Park where he summons The Fonz, AKA Henry Wrinkler, to join the fun. It's not until Wrinkler says "good evening!" that Adrian covers him in a swarm of bees. He is the devil incarnate, after all.
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It wouldn't be a classic Adam Sandler movie without a cameo from Rob Schneider yelling "You can do it!" In The Waterboy, Schnieder appears as a local townie who cheers on Adam Sandler from the audience by constantly shouting "You can do it."
Schnieder's cameo and catchphrase have now become a staple of Sandler films, also appearing in Little Nicky, The Longest Yard, Bedtime Stories, Click, and 50 First Dates.
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Jonah Hill appearing in Tarantino's revisionist Western film Django Unchained was extremely unusual, even by cameo standards, but still priceless.
Hill appears as a member of the local KKK, who have come to track down Django. The only problem is, they can't see out of their masks' tiny eyeholes, then get into an argument about how impractical the masks are and whether they should wear them or not. Hill's character rips his mask while trying to make the eye-hole bigger, then asks the group if anyone brought any extras.
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Disney's The Country Bears is a film about a famous country act made up of, you guessed it, bears. The film revolves around a young and hopeful bear named Beary (Haley Joel Osment) embarking on a cross-country road trip to reunite the band members.
Near the end of their trip, they come across Elton John while looking for the last member, Ted. Elton recognizes them all right away, but they mistake him for a lowly gardener before brushing him off.
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Mark Holton certainly isn't a huge star on the level of many other actors on this list, but he co-starred in back-to-back '80s classics Teen Wolf and Pee-wee's Big Adventure, then followed it up by appearing in The Naked Gun as a random baseball spectator who shouts out four words (which became arguably the most quoted line in the movie.) Leslie Nielsen's character, Lt. Frank Drebbin, impersonates a classical opera singer named Enrico Pallazzo and sings the national anthem to get down onto the baseball field where a hit is afoot. He then goes undercover as one of the umpires and ultimately saves the Queen of England's life.
When Drebin saves the day and removes his mask, a spectator (Holton) screams out "Hey, it's Enrico Pallazzo!" and the crowd chants "ENRICO! PALLAZZO!" It's a hilarious - and unexpected - punchline.
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Peter Jackson loves to cameo in his own films, and The Frighteners was no exception. In the 1996 horror-comedy film about an architect turned necromancer, there's a scene where Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) bumps into a man covered in piercings and leather while exiting a building. The man (Peter Jackson) calls Frank an a**hole before flipping him the finger and storming off.
Just eight years later, that man would be on stage accepting a record eleven Oscars for Lord of the Rings: Return Of The King.
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