In some movies or television series, a character especially well-known among the public appears unexpectedly, playing a completely secondary and irrelevant role. When this happens there is talk of a cameo. Said character can be an actor, but usually it is someone who is very popular and does not engage in acting, for example, a well-known cook, a television presenter, a famous footballer or a renowned writer.
A fleeting appearance that aims to surprise the viewer
Each cameo has its intricacies. Thus, sometimes it is the director of the film himself who appears on stage for a few seconds (directors Quentin Tarantino and Alfred Hitchoock have participated in some of their productions).
Sometimes the cameo is made as a hallmark of a type of film, as it happens with Stan Lee in the saga of Marvel heroes. In most cases, these brief appearances on the screen are intended to promote a film or a series and for this reason famous athletes are used to represent themselves (remember Zidane’s appearance in “Asterix at the Olympic Games «).
In the film “Taxi Driver,” director Martin Scorsese portrayed a neurotic passenger getting into a taxi. In Steven Spilberg’s famous film “Shindler’s List” the director himself wanted to appear in a scene to honor the Jews who were exterminated in the Nazi Holocaust.
In television series, cameos are also very common and with them it is intended to attract the attention of the viewers. In any case, with this type of special intervention a special touch is added to a film or even a chapter of a television series.
The origin of the term
The origin of the word cameo is very curious. In the 19th century, fleeting interventions by famous people began to become popular in some theatrical performances in Great Britain and were called cameos. In English cameo is the word used to refer to a cameo.
The question is forced, what does a cameo (or cameo in English) have to do with a brief intervention in a play, a movie or a television series? If we think about it, there is a relationship, since the cameo is a carved stone that is normally adorned with a human figure inside and the cameo of the cinema, television or theater is also an ornament that serves to decorate a work scenic.
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