10 Actors Who Didn't Want To Be Credited For Horror Movie Roles

Here’s an example of the validity of that old maxim: it’s not what you know, but who you know. The 2016 sci fi horror opens with Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character Michelle making a hasty getaway from her home after an argument with her fiance, Ben. While we never see his face, he can be heard on an answering machine pleading for her to return.

It’s not much of a part; really anyone could have taken this role. But rather than just anyone, producer J. J. Abrams chose to dial up his old pal Bradley Cooper to inject an Easter egg of star power into proceedings.

What’s more, to hear director Dan Trachtenberg tell it, this was never part of the plan for the movie, but a happy accident as the result of poor planning. Late in the day, he realised that they didn’t have anyone down to play Ben. Abrams grabbed his address book, and found Cooper’s digits from their Alias days.

To be fair, Cooper has proven to be a gifted voice actor over the years, most notably as Rocket Raccoon, and while his face is never seen, you couldn’t argue that he phones this performance in, in the conventional sense anyway.