The Simpsons: 12 Guest Stars Who Surprisingly Parodied Themselves

7. Alec Baldwin & Kim Basinger

Episode: When You Dish Upon A Star After a parasailing accident sees Homer crash through their summer home roof, Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin allow him to become their personal assistant on the condition that he keeps their Springfield hideaway a secret. (Spoiler: he doesn't.) But this doesn't stop the (then married) couple from taking a few light-hearted jabs at themselves. Although Baldwin's line "We'd want another chance if one of us made a bad film, right?" is met with an amusingly awkward silence, the biggest laugh comes from Basinger's apparent obsession with buffing her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, which leads to this superbly bitter exchange:

Baldwin: Honey, don't you think you've polished that enough? You're taking the finish off. Basinger: When you win one, you can take care of it how you want.

This episode also contained a celebrity so adept at self-effacing humour that he kept coming back for more. As if being portrayed as a bad driver, failed action hero and a borderline alcoholic wasn't enough, Ron Howard repeatedly rejects Homer's script idea (the one about a robot driving instructor whose best friend is a talking pie) only to steal it and successfully pitch it himself to 20th Century Fox. Sixteen years on and we're still waiting...