Nicolas Cage took on the role of his lifetime, literally, in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. The Academy Award-winning actor plays a heightened, gonzo version of himself as well as appearing as his younger self as sort of an imaginary friend – with benefits.

Weight is a charming bromance/meta-comedy, where Cage’s outsize ego props up his sometimes fragile self-image, with the younger “Nick Cage” counseling his current-day counterpart on how to best effect a comeback while simultaneously reassuring himself “not that we ever went away.”

It’s a tour de force performance in a movie that works on every level, with great performances by Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, and Neil Patrick Harris. But this is Cage’s movie, where he fills nearly every frame with his legendarily huge persona, and the movie is augmented with clips from his most iconic films and plenty of callbacks to scenes from those movies.

But this is definitely not the first time an actor, even one of Cage’s stature, has played himself in a significant film role. Actors like Harris, John Malkovich, and William Shatner have played themselves – or at least, a Hollywood-style version of themselves – in a major role. Not counting cameos or appearances from non-actors (sorry, Michael Jordan and The Beatles), here is a list of actors who get an “as himself/herself” credit line in the credits.

Neil Patrick Harris, The Harold and Kumar movies
In Weight, Harris plays Cage’s agent, trying to look out for his client’s best interests while still helping him pay off some pretty significant debt. Harris plays his role mostly straight, but that wasn’t the case when he played himself. In Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, NPH played a drug-loving, prostitute obsessed, gun-toting mad man, with his character being so popular that a spinoff was for a time considered by the directors because they loved the “fictional” character so much. By playing an R-rated version of himself, Harris was no longer typecast as the earnest yet juvenile Dougie Howser actor and move into adult acting, allowing Harris to get his infamous role in How I Met Your Mother and further roles in the ensuing Harold and Kumar films.

John Malkovich, Being John Malkovich
In Being John Malkovich, viewers were invited, almost literally, into the mind of actor John Malkovich. In the surreal comedy, John Cusack plays an office worker who finds a portal behind a filing cabinet that leads directly into the mind of John Malkovich. John Malkovich plays himself, beset by the curious visitor to his mind, throughout the whole movie. Things get even more bizarre when the actor enters the portal himself. Malkovich really commits to the role, or roles, of playing himself and also puts in a more nuanced performance when he is being controlled by Cusack’s character and others.

William Shatner, Free Enterprise
Robert and Mark are two young filmmakers (Rafer Weigel and Eric McCormack) who are trying to sell a movie when they meet their screen idol, Star Trek‘s William Shatner. Shatner, appearing as himself, plays with his self-important image, alarming Robert and Mark by being the anti-Kirk: here Shatner is a middle-aged pompous, lonely drunk, forcing the two to live in the real world. The filmmakers and their idol eventually form something of a symbiotic relationship, each helping the other acheive their dreams. In Shatner’s case involve a rap musical based on Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser, with Shatner in the lead, giving Cage a run for his scenery-chewing money.

Bruce Campbell, My Name is Bruce
In My Name is Bruce, Bruce Campbell is pestered by a demon called Guan-di, who he mistakenly believes is just a guy in a rubber suit and part of an elaborate hoax to make Bruce live up to his B-movie hero status. When it turns out that Guan-di is real, Bruce has to decide whether to take the easy way out and run, or to stand up and fight and become a true, real-life hero. Campbell wrote and directed the movie that pokes fun at his image, and for his fans, it is truly fun to watch.

Jennifer Tilly, Seed of Chucky
Tilly provided the voice of killer doll Tiffany in Bride of Chucky, but in Seed, she takes the concept to the next level. In an interview she said, “I was playing myself, Jennifer Tilly, international film star, but we did an exaggeration, because we thought it was really funny of Jennifer Tilly,” she explained. “So we made me a desperate, fading star that was really narcissistic and self-involved. However, in the Chucky franchise, she’s not even alive. In Seed, Valentine takes over Tilly’s body and life, so it’s really Tiffany hijacking Tilly’s body to kill people all while being celebrated as an international film star.

Bill Murray, Zombieland
In Zombieland, Murray plays himself but pretends to be undead in order to survive the zombie apocalypse. The film’s main survivors head into Murray’s mansion, finding him alive but acting like a zombie so he can go out and about. Murray even dons his famous Ghostbusters outfit in one scene, before getting blown away when a practical joke goes wrong. That didn’t stop him from appearing in the sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap, though: in a flashback scene that takes place at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, we see a scene of true horror – Murray promoting his appearance in Garfield 3.

Will Smith, Jersey Girl
This one is kind of a cameo, but it’s a good one, given recent headlines, so it’s included. Ben Affleck plays Ollie, a widower who is trying to juggle his job as a PR flack with taking care of his baby, When the stress gets to be too much, Ollie devolves into a spectacular meltdown at a Hard Rock Café event to introduce his new client, Fresh Prince star Will Smith. With his designer jacket covered with baby powder he tells the assembled reporters that his client, Will Smith, is a “two-bit TV actor.” Later, Ollie has a chance encounter with Will Smith (playing himself), who Ollie had trashed at his public outburst years before. Smith has no idea who Ollie is but their conversation about work and children makes Ollie decide to sacrifice the former for the latter. The appearance seems to foreshadow Smith’s own PR woes, eighteen years prior.

Kevin Smith, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Speaking of Kevin Smith movies, the director plays himself (and his Silent Bob character) in the recent reboot of his Jay and Silent Bob franchise. Here, Jay and his “hetero lifemate” Silent Bob are sued for copyright infringement by Saban Films — the company that funded Jay and Silent Bob Reboot — and lose the rights to their own names in Kevin Smith’s big Hollywood reboot of the comic book series based on their superhero alter-egos, Bluntman and Chronic. This is the same plot of 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, of course. The two are placed on the no-fly list, and are once again forced to road trip from New Jersey to Los Angeles, where they plan to crash Chronic-Con and stop Kevin Smith (now playing himself) from shooting a pivotal scene from the forthcoming Bluntman and Chronic film.

Zoë Bell, Death Proof
Quentin Tarantino cast respected stuntwoman Zoë Bell in a leading role in Death Proof, about evil Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a professional body double who likes to take unsuspecting women for deadly drives in his free time. Mike, who doctored his car for maximum impact so that the bodies pile up while he walks away unharmed, may be in over his head, though, when he targets a tough group of female friends, including Bell, (who served as Uma Thurman’s double in Kill Bill), who plays herself and performed her own stunts, the most notable of which occurred when she clung to the hood of a speeding 1970 Dodge Challenger during a protracted chase scene.

Keanu Reeves, Always Be My Maybe
Last but not least, our beloved Keanu Reeves shows up in Always Be My Maybe on a date with Sasha (Ali Wong), driving a wedge between her and Marcus (Randall Park), two former lovers who reconnect and become friends again. Marcus is dating Jenny, but still has feelings for Sasha, but before he can tell her, Sasha announces she has met someone new, and they wind up on a disastrous double date with Marcus’ girlfriend and Keanu. The long evening ultimately dissolves into chaos as Sasha confesses her longtime childhood crush on Marcus, a brawl breaks out between Marcus and Keanu, and Jenny ends up staying with Keanu for the night. It didn’t make the Pop Culture Junkie podcast’s Keanu 101 series, but it’s still a fun little diversion for the John Wick star.