Film students: don’t be shy about asking actors or actresses with a bit more experience than the typical cast member of a student film has to appear in your movies.
Seventeen year-old Liam Hooper wrote a letter to Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder, The Other Guys, Alan Partridge) asking him to appear in his £1,000 student film. Hooper believed that while the script was very much in the vein of Coogan’s humor he wouldn’t actually hear back from the popular comedian. I mean, who knows if the letter would even reach Coogan?
Turns out Hooper was wrong — not only did he hear from Coogan, but even more surprising, Coogan agreed to cameo in the film.
Hooper tells RTE that Coogan’s involvement “brings a real wow factor to the movie and it has been an incredible opportunity to work with one of my idols.” About the film he says that Coogan appears in a “pivotal” moment, adding “The film is about a group of pupils who look after a haunted house for a £50,000 reward, but start disappearing one by one. There are some scary moments, and a very high body count, but mostly it’s meant to be funny.” Actually that sounds more interesting than most movies coming out in the multiplexes these days! This is a great example of an actor doing something very cool that he really doesn’t have to. After all, I doubt Coogan is receiving not much more than the coffee and donuts I used to “pay” the casts of my awful student films for helping me out. I hope Hooper’s shoot goes well for him!
