Sometimes, one-line cameos are the best kinds of movie cameos. They're certainly the most efficient when it comes to memorable punchlines: People remember dirt-covered Rob Schneider showing up in The Waterboy to yell "you can do it!" more clearly than 99% of most actors' actual speaking roles. There's just something automatically funny about a big established actor showing up just to play a tiny, stupid part in a movie, and it never gets old.
Here are some of the most memorable cameos where famous people showed up in a movie just to deliver one line.
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X-Men: First Class was the first full X-Men film since the highly controversial X:Men: The Last Stand in 2006.
It was the beginning of a prequel series leading directly up to the events of the original X-Men trilogy, so of course, it was wildly exciting when Hugh Jackman's Wolverine appeared in the film. He did, only to tell young Erik and young Charles to go "f***" themselves in his one and only scene.
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The mastermind behind the satire-comedy Airplane doubled down on the meta-Hollywood humor in the sequel to Hot Shots, Hot Shots: Part Deux. In possibly the best cameo on this list, Charlie Sheen's character passes a boat carrying Martin Sheen's character from Apocalypse Now.
As the two pass each other, they both point and shout out "I loved you in Wall Street!" at the same time. It doesn't get any more meta than that.
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The legendary musician Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News appears in Back to the Future as a high school teacher who auditions Marty's band, The Pinheads, for the school talent show.
After jamming to a heavier rendition of Huey Lewis' "The Power of Love" (which also happens to be the films' theme song), Lewis's character cuts them off and explains that they are just "too darn loud."
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Mel Brooks' Silent Movie is another meta-flick about a Hollywood director (Brooks) who tries to save his career by convincing his studio to produce a throwback silent film in the mid-1970s. The film is completely silent with intertitles instead of dialogue. The only word that is audibly spoken during the film actually comes from legendary professional mime Marcel Marceau, who picks up the phone and, when Brooks asks if he wants to be in his movie, shouts "Non!"
Brooks' companions then ask him what he said, to which he replies, "I don't know - I don't speak French."
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Legendary Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, known for films such as The Ten Commandments, The Omega Man, and Planet of the Apes, made a late-career appearance in Wayne's World 2 as a gas station attendant. When the original attendant sucks at delivering his one line, Wayne breaks the fourth wall and asks the crew if they can get a better actor for the part. They bring in Heston, whose "directions" turn into an emotional monologue about a lost love he once knew.
The directions are so moving, they bring Wayne (and everyone watching the film) to tears.
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Cheech Marin, one half of the infamous stoner comedy duo Cheech and Chong, appeared in Ghostbusters II as a dock supervisor who calls the police when he sees the ghostly Titanic docking in New York City.
As the ship arrives with a gaping hole from where the iceberg hit, the dock supervisor watches in shock before uttering the film's best line: "Well, better late than never."
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