Michael Cera considered quitting acting after becoming super famous with Superbad
Michael Cera found his peak of fame after the 2007 hits Superbad and Juno to be "overwhelming"
Aux News Superbad
2007 was a big year for Michael Cera: both Superbad and Juno came out that year, sending him into a new stratosphere of fame after starring in the cult hit Arrested Development. If you know a bit about Cera’s public persona, it might not surprise you to learn that this level of fame made him pretty uncomfortable. In fact, he tells The Guardian that in the years following, “I really didn’t know if I was going to keep being an actor.”
At the very least, he “wanted to stop taking jobs that would make me more famous.” He even turned down a Saturday Night Live hosting gig at the time: “I was kind of having a bit of a crisis … I was really not enjoying the level of heat.”
Superbad super fame “was sort of overwhelming,” he explains. “I didn’t know how to handle walking down the street. Fame makes you very uncomfortable in your own skin, and makes you paranoid and weird. There were lots of great things about it, and I met a lot of amazing people, but there’s a lot of bad energies, too, ones that I was not equipped to handle.”
This is not the first time Cera has reflected on fame, nor his struggle with “how to respectfully establish my own boundaries” when it came to interactions with “toxic” fans. “I’m just a very sensitive person, and very sensitive to the people that I meet and to other people’s energies,” he previously described himself. “I think when you get really famous, you’re just like a magnet to people. And all kinds of people come up to you, and I just can’t handle it. I’m not really cut out for that level of interaction with so many different types. I don’t have a strong enough personality for that.”
This was compounded by the fact that he was only 19 when his fame peaked, as he shared with The Daily Beast in 2022. “I think if you kind of get famous and you’re my age now or you’re 40 or something, you have your own sense of personal boundaries that you’re able to uphold. But I was just 19 and I felt so confused about how to be graceful in those situations with those people, especially when you feel very imposed upon and very encroached upon, even physically. It took me a long time to kind of get my hands around that whole aspect of my life and figure it out.”
Fame “was embarrassing,” he admitted to the outlet. “More than anything, it was embarrassing because I would be hanging out with friends, walking down the street, and people were constantly shouting things at me and recognizing me and wanting something. And I just felt embarrassed. It kind of made hanging out with friends difficult and not that much fun for me or for them. I really bristled at it.”
While he adds that “obviously it was great” to have success in his career, “all of the social challenges that suddenly arose were challenging”—no wonder he “kind of freaked out a little bit.” It seems that Cera has achieved a better balance (and better boundaries) now, even if he’ll never be Jack Black-levels of comfortable with the spotlight.
22 Comments
Quit?I’m still waiting for him to start.
Ah yes. It’s that guy. I’m pretty sure that starring in one of the most popular movies of it’s genre counts as acting but, by all means, go ahead and shit on the guy if it makes you feel good.
Buddy, this was the most gentle Statler and Waldorf-esque ribbing comment for you to get upset over. Take a break for a bit.
Or it was a dumb comment by someone that couldn’t get cast in an elementary school play, and you didn’t need to weigh in caping for it. Potato, potahto.
It’s probably not the ribbing but the repetitiveness of the joke. It’s tired. Like those “try acting, my dear boy” comments on an article about method acting.
Gotta defend millionaire comedians from extra mild jokes!
Just like Chris Evans.
His real breakout role was in The Social Network, according various misinformed people.
No, his break out was Lex Luthor in the Snyderverse movies
I never got this joke. He and Jesse Rosenberg look nothing alike.
Who’s this Jesse Rosenberg you speak of?
still can’t believe they gave him the chair
Looks like his facial hair DID quit
Yeah that is a real bad look. Not everyone can grow amazing long beards but if its still growing in that patchy just give up and let it go. Try again in a decade and see if it comes in better
Maybe it’s like Robert Pattinson deliberately not showering and dressing like a hobo during his Twilight days to ward off overzealous fans. I imagine if I saw that Michael Cera on the street, I’d cross to the other side before shouting back “I’m a big fan, Mr. Manager”
This is bad advice. Quitters never win and winners never quit. The best path through a patchy beard is to grow the shit out of a patchy beard, be diligent with a skin care routine, and don’t trim it yourself…
I always ended up buying durries and piss for the other guys at school using this one weird trick which I called “not growing a patchy teenage beard that just screams ‘I’m a 17-year-old desperately trying to grow facial hair in order to buy durries and piss’”.
I know people who have hung out with Michael Cera, and he is reportedly a DEEPLY weird dude. Like, that Taran Killam impression of him on SNL wasn’t super far off.
Maybe your friends are extreme normies.
That beard is definitely a warning signal.
My personal favorite: Wally Brando
He’s so overwhelmed he’s going around disguised as Cat Stevens.