Basic Trope: A celebrity not known for acting is cast as the lead role in a movie, TV show, or play.
- Straight: Alice, a Teen Idol pop singer, is cast as the lead in a movie.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is playing herself.
- Alice isn't even a celebrity, or even someone who actually auditioned for the role, but some random person off the street.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is an extra in the film, albeit a very conspicuous one.
- The movie is an indie-film, or something that's to go straight to video, not something people would see at most movie theaters.
- Alice plays a starring role in one particular episode of a series (such as a Victim of the Week in a Crime Time Soap or a Patient of the Week in a Medical Drama).
- A standup comedian is cast in a movie; though he gets to make jokes in it, working with other actors and a plot is still a very different way of performing.
- Justified:
- Alice wants to spread her creative wings and/or needs to make more money to pay the record company back.
- The movie is a "teen movie," and Alice is the big pop star now.
- The movie is a Bio Pic about Alice's career.
- Alice is only there as part of a big dance number or some other Dancing Bear.
- Alice is a White-Dwarf Starlet or a Former Child Star, who doesn't want to step out of the limelight just yet and will do anything to stay in showbiz.
- Alice believes in the movie's Central Theme/Aesop and is thus willing to do it for a symbolic dollar, allowing the producers to put more of the budget toward the rest of the movie.
- It's the Film Of The Song sung from the protagonist's perspective, why recast her?
- Inverted: Alice is a movie star, but records an album, despite having never sung outside of the shower before.
- Subverted: Alice seems like she will star the movie but fades into the background after the first act.
- Double Subverted: Alice soon gains back the spotlight.
- Parodied: The record company is also a Hollywood casting agency.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice does not star in any movies.
- Enforced:
- Alice wants to branch out creatively and/or earn more money.
- Music Is Politics
- Hollywood Hype Machine
- Alice is the director's girlfriend/fiancee/wife, sister, best friend, etc.
- More benignly, the main character was written to be a good singer, and who better to play a singer than...a singer?
- Alice's inexperience adds to the role's comedic value.
- Alice may be a little green in the movie (and she's relatively shy in acting in a way that's not her), but acting as a Large Ham Teen Idol means all the director has to do is tell her to Be Yourself.
- Lampshaded: "Just because she can sing doesn't mean she can act!"
- Invoked: Alice is a celebrity in universe and the main characters are famous enough to rub elbows with her.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice turns down the role, and finds another way to make money.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice is a competent (or even excellent) musician, but in the movie she plays the role of a Giftedly Bad singer, whose musical 'talents' get her into all sort of troubles and misunderstandings. And the role was her idea in the first place!
- Alice is a comically ineffective White-Dwarf Starlet, who also thinks she's far more talented than she really is.
- Played For Drama: Alice is being exploited, such as by putting her on the Casting Couch and casting her in a porn movie to make for a Hotter and Sexier image.
Back to Non-Actor Vehicle
