Cinema's self-awareness seems to grow year on year. Films about film production, narrative deconstructions, cameos from directors and actors as themselves, parodies of popular genres - these all dominate the trend toward the filmmaking style dubbed meta-cinema. These themes have all been present in underground art cinema for many years, but Hollywood has increasingly dragged them into the mainstream consciousness. Today's filmic era is defined by self-reflexivity, breaking the fourth wall and knowing winks to audiences that are in on the joke. The best examples of this are in fictional biopics. Yes, biopics have been around for years, but these updated versions of the style bring with them one key difference: the person whose life is being presented is starring as themselves. When an actor is acting as themselves in a film about their life as an actor, it's clear that the industry has reached the natural endgame of meta-cinema. Here are 11 ingenious examples of actors, musicians and even magicians starring as exaggerated versions of themselves (or characters heavily on modelled on themselves) in films built around their life experiences. Some of these are utterly surreal, some are a bit rubbish, but all of them are as self-conscious as Hollywood cinema gets.
