Did Superbad Ruin Christopher Mintz-Plasses Life?
Superbad is a raunchy coming-of-age comedy that features a lot of familiar faces. For starters, there’s Jonah Hill who has since gone on to do films alongside several A-listers (Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, among them). Not to mention, he’s also since been nominated for an Oscar twice. The film also stars Oscar winner Emma Stone and comic geniuses Seth Rogen (he co-wrote the movie), Bill Hader, and Michael Cera.
As fans of the movie may recall, the cast includes also Christopher Mintz-Plasse, the actor who infamously portrayed Hawaiian organ donor McLovin in the movie. And despite film launching him into stardom, it seems that Superbad also affected his life negatively in some ways.
He Impressed Everyone During His Audition, Except For Jonah Hill
With Cera and Hill onboard the film, it was time to cast the third guy and this proved to be rather challenging. To find their McLovin, casting director Allison Jones posted several notices as she encouraged high school students in L.A. to audition. In the end, she saw thousands of candidates before coming across the head shot of then-16-year-old Mintz-Plasse on her camera phone. In almost an instant, Jones knew she had found their guy. While speaking with The New Yorker, she revealed that she called director Greg Mottola to deliver the good news news. “I think I found McLovin; he’s like Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird,” Jones recalled telling him. She added, “You could tell he was a kid who probably had seen the inside of a locker.”
Other than a minor role in a tv series, Mintz-Plasse didn’t have any other professional acting experience around the time that Jones was casting for Superbad. But when he came in, the little-known actor supposedly showed up Hill. “I didn't know until maybe two weeks ago that after my audition Jonah was like, I don't want that guy,” Mintz-Plasse revealed during an interview with Collider. Cera as much, telling his co-star, “Literally, right when you left the room everyone was laughing at Chris, and Jonah was like, no.” Of that reading, Hill himself told The Ringer, “Chris just immediately shut me down. So combative. I was really annoyed because this guy wouldn’t let me say anything.” For Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg, that meant Mint-Plasse was “perfect” for the part.
Life After Superbad Was ‘Intense’
When Superbad was released, Mintz-Plasse became an instant star. Everybody knew his name and for the new actor, that was part of the problem. “It was very alarming for a 17-year-old person. I was trying to figure out who I was as a human being at the time and then to have millions of people knowing you as McLovin was very intense,” Mint-Plasse recalled during a recent interview with Page Six. “It was very tough to be a nobody one minute and then, literally, two days after the movie came out, it was me getting recognized everywhere.”
At some point, the actor also admitted that his newfound fame became too much for him to handle. “There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of breakdowns, but I had a great support system of friends and family, a great agent and manager to help me guide a career that I wanted.” Mintz-Plasse also stressed that this particular period of his life was “intense.” Despite this, the actor insists that he “loved” Superbad. At the same time, he also remains grateful for all the opportunities that he got after starring in the movie. As he once told Female.com.au, Superbad “put me on the map.”
He Has Since Pursued More Roles
Shortly after making his film debut, Mintz-Plasse went on to book various other film roles in the years that followed. For instance, he landed the part of Chris D’Amico, a.k.a. Red Mist, in the R-rated Kick-Ass movies. Of getting to star in the first Kick-Ass, he remarked, “Well, I was very excited that they casted me in this movie first off. I didn't think I was going to get it. Then just working with everybody was incredible.” By “everybody,” Mintz-Plasse is referring to a star-studded cast that includes Nicolas Cage, Chloë Grace Moretz, Evan Peters, Elizabeth McGovern, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Around the same time, Mintz-Plasse also ventured into animated films, voicing the character of Fishlegs in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. For the actor it made for quite an interesting experience. “You get to create something completely new, completely different from yourself and you want to try to make kids laugh, which is something I hadn’t done prior to How to Train Your Dragon,” Mintz-Plasse told Computers in Entertainment. “Normally my movies are rated R and so it’s really exciting to try to make six-year-olds laugh, it’s fun.”
From here, Mintz-Plasse also went on to star in several hit films, including Pitch Perfect, Neighbors (which reunited him with Rogen), and Tag. More recently, he also starred in the Oscar-winning film Promising Young Woman. Meanwhile, he’s also ventured in tv shows, becoming a series regular in Friend Me, The Great Indoors and the animated series Blark and Son.
From the looks of it, Mintz-Plasse has adjusted to Hollywood life just fine.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTErZ%2Bippeoe6S7zGiaoaqZqMGwvMeeqWalmaPBu3nPpZisq5VixKmt02afmqigmrumsIyana2domLAtrzEq5manF8%3D