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There’s a tendency to underestimate how much work goes into being an extra. It’s not just an easy opportunity to bask in the glow of your favourite Hollywood A-listers.
These are long days that alternate between quick bursts of action and hours of standing around, patiently waiting to be called on again.
It’s almost always exhausting. On top of that, you have to accept that you’re one of the many key parts of the artistic process that will rarely get any credit, despite the fact that whatever’s happening in the background can have a huge impact on the mood of the scene.
A great reaction shot from an extra can instantly make us empathise with the situation at hand, while a bad one will quickly make the whole film feel cheap and lazy.
That said, sometimes thinking out of the box is the only way to get noticed. For better or worse, here are 15 movie extras that really made their mark, in the likes of Star Wars , The Dark Knight , and Jaws . And most of them achieved it all without uttering a single word.
Click through the gallery below.
The 15 most memorable film extrasShow all 15 1 /15The 15 most memorable film extras The 15 most memorable film extras Dunkirk (2017) An allied soldier smirks at an oncoming squadron of Nazi planes, before taking his time to duck for cover. While it wasn't quite enough to spoil the haunting power of Dunkirk's first trailer, you can rest assured that the moment was cut from the final film.
Warner Bros
The 15 most memorable film extras Star Wars (1977) It remains one of the most famous movie mistakes of all time. A group of Stormtroopers enter the control room where C-3PO and R2-D2 are located, only for one of them to bang their head on the doorway. Laurie Goode, the man behind the mask, has blamed the mistake on an upset stomach.
Lucasfilm
The 15 most memorable film extras North by Northwest (1959) In a tense scene near the end of Alfred Hitchcock's classic, Eve Marie Saint whips out a gun and fires it at Cary Grant. However, a young boy in the background appears to have precognitive powers: he covers his ears moments before the weapon goes off.
MGM
The 15 most memorable film extras Quantum of Solace (2008) James Bond is a man of many skills. Less can be said of the dock worker hanging around in the background of Quantum of Solace, who is seen sweeping nothing but air.
Eon Productions
The 15 most memorable film extras Being John Malkovich (1999) While raging at Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) on the New Jersey Turnpike, John Malkovich (John Malkovich) is hit in the head by a beer can thrown out of the window of a passing car. According to director Spike Jonze, this moment wasn't in the script, but happened after a few extras snuck beer onto the set. One man threw the can and yelled: "Think fast, Malkovich!" The line made it into the final cut, meaning the extra in question received a bump in pay.
Universal Pictures
The 15 most memorable film extras Independence Day (1996) President Thomas J Whitmore (Bill Pullman)'s speech to the people is, essentially, the scene that the entire rest of the film rotates around. It's inspirational, patriotic, and ends on: "Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!" That said, this extra's salute is the definition of going overboard.
20th Century Fox
The 15 most memorable film extras Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) Another unintended gift courtesy of the Star Wars franchise, this extra didn't quite nail the timing of his fight with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). He flies back without Luke's foot having come anywhere close to making contact with his face. That said, you can count on the Star Wars fandom – they came up with the concept of the "force kick" to explain this mistake.
Lucasfilm
The 15 most memorable film extras Ghostbusters (1984) Look, we all love the Ghostbusters. But no one loves the Ghostbusters as much as the one guy who yells "Ghostbusters! All right!" in the 1984 film. The man in question is Eldo Ray Estes and happens to be an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist. His reason for such an enthusiastic reaction? He just wanted to make sure he was on camera.
Sony Pictures
The 15 most memorable film extras Everything Must Go (2010) Washed up salesman Nick (Will Ferrell) visits an old high-school classmate (Laura Dern), hoping she'll help him through his crisis. It's just another scene from a bog-standard indie comedy, except for the fact that the two children in the background are frozen in place the whole time. Creepy.
Lionsgate
The 15 most memorable film extras Back to the Future Part III (1990) The scene in question takes place right at the end, when Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) rocks up to Hill Valley in 1985 in a locomotive equipped with a flux capacitor. When Doc is introducing Marty (Michael J Fox) and Jennifer (Elisabeth Shue) to his family, his son Verne (Dannel Evans) appears to gesture towards himself and then point to his groin. It's generally thought he was trying to subtly indicate that he needed a bathroom break. Hopefully, someone eventually got the message.
The 15 most memorable film extras Jaws (1975) It's a testament to Steven Spielberg's skills as a director that he managed to make the film's famous Fourth of July shark attack scene so tense, despite the fact that so many of the extras are smiling, laughing, or just generally taking their time to escape the man-eating creature in the water.
Universal Pictures
The 15 most memorable film extras Mr Nanny (1993) An extra with a strange approach to getting screentime or just a random act of animal cruelty caught on camera? A scene from this 1990s comedy sees Sean Armstrong (Hulk Hogan) riding his motorcycle past a shoreline, where we witness a man chuck his dog straight into the water.
New Line Cinema
The 15 most memorable film extras Logan's Run (1976) An extra in this film, based on the book by William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, seems to have gotten their sci-fi universes confused. At the end of the film, a hand shoots up from the crowd and throws a Vulcan hand gesture, recognisable from the Star Trek franchise.
MGM
The 15 most memorable film extras The Dark Knight (2008) Did Christopher Nolan sneak a hidden alien-invasion plot into his Batman trilogy? Or are the bug-eyed facial expressions of this extra, during Harvey Dent's press conference, merely the results of laughably bad acting?
Warner Bros
The 15 most memorable film extras Teen Wolf (1985) We all have our embarrassing mishaps, but few have them immortalised in a beloved 1980s comedy. At least history has allowed the identity of his extra, whose jean zipper is completely undone in the film's final scene, to remain concealed.
MGM
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