Michael Cera

Capable of capturing his characters’ unpredictable sides, with a peculiar “man-boy” persona, Michael Cera (birthname: Michael Austin Cera) seems at once an actor out of time and also particularly current. While first establishing himself with a wide viewing audience in the long-running sitcom, Arrested Development (2003-2006, 2013, 2018-2019), Cera’s unclassifiable style has allowed him to flourish in indie movies and defy the typecasting so common in studio fare, while also co-star in such Oscar-winning movies as Juno (2007). 

While devoting the bulk of his young career to television, Michael Cera appeared as a child performer in a handful of significant feature films, starting with Gregory Hoblit’s science fiction thriller, Frequency (2000), with Noah Emmerich, Dennis Quaid, and Andre Braugher, followed by the Robert Greenwald/Bruce Graham biopic of Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Movie! (2000), with Vincent D’Onofrio and Janeane Garofalo. Cera was 13 going on 14 when he played young Chuck Barris, aged 8 to 11 years old, in George Clooney’s stunning directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), with Sam Rockwell as Barris, Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Drew Barrymore.

Michael Cera didn’t appear in the movies for another five years, but 2007 was a breakthrough year for him, appearing as a co-star in two hits of different stripes: The tender yet gross-out coming-of-age comedy Superbad, directed by Greg Mottola and co-written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and co-starring Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Rogen, Bill Hader, and Emma Stone; and the Oscar-winning Juno, directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, with a superb cast featuring Elliot Page, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, and J.K. Simmons.

Over the next three years, Michael Cera amassed an interesting body of credits in a range of different comedy styles, from the super-broad Extreme Movie (2008), with Will Forte and Andy Samberg to the more nuanced romance of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008) with Kat Dennings, from the wacky caveman humor of Year One (2009), with Jack Black, to the pointed social satire of Youth in Revolt (2009), with Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, and Steve Buscemi. But Cera’s artistic triumph came in 2010 with, ironically, one of his poorer box-office performers but a now-legendary cult hit—Edgar Wright’s masterful comedy, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, often described as one of the first mainstream movies to visualize the metaverse and bring comic book graphic art to kinetic life in new ways. 

By contrast, Cera veered off course into a rather disastrous terrain with a pair of movies made back-to-back by the Chilean filmmaker, Sebastian Silva, and both commercial failures: Crystal Fairy & The Magic Cactus and Magic Magic (both 2013). This was the same year that Michael Cera wrote, directed, and starred in two short films (Bitch and Failure) while playing a cameo in filmmaker friends Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s This Is the End for Sony Pictures, with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Rogen, Jay Baruchel, and Emma Watson, which finished with a worldwide gross of $126 million.

Michael Cera continued to explore the limits of his distinctive comedy with independent filmmaker Rick Alverson in the Caustic Entertainment (2015), with John C. Reilly, Tye Sheridan, and Amy Seimetz, and the debut of writer-director, Janicza Bravo, Lemon (2017), with Brett Gelman and Judy Greer. Recently, Cera has expanded his repertoire in two different directions: First, in dramas like Sebastian Lelio’s English-language debut starring Julianne Moore, Gloria Bell (2018), and Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game (2017), with Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, and Kevin Costner; and as a vocal actor in a range of studio and independent animated features, including the hilarious The Lego Batman Movie (2017)—with Cera voicing Robin—to the Sundance hit, Cryptozoo (2021), written and directed by Dash Shaw, with Peter Stormare, Zoe Kazan, and Lake Bell, and Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022), with Michelle Yeoh, Samuel L. Jackson, Mel Brooks, and Djimon Hounsou.

Michael Cera is part of the ensemble for Greta Gerwig’s anticipated feature version of the famed Mattel Toy character, Barbie (2023), with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, followed by the Broadway-set comedy, Jonty (date to be announced), co-written by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, and writer-director-Michael Angarano’s road movie, Sacramento (date to be announced), with Maya Erskine and Angarano.