Fame is like a magnifying glass. As soon as you’re seen through it, you’re larger than life. It’s a fact that once someone is a star, they can’t walk down the street without everyone trying to take their picture. So it’s always funny to look back on moments when those same actors were on the screen and we didn’t even notice them. Commercials are the best. Like Ben Affleck trying to sell a Burger King burger or Brad Pitt downing a can of Pringles. But there are a lot of famous celebrities who got their start in a music video.
J-Lo…Jenny from the Block…whatever she’s going by these days, Jennifer Lopez wasn’t always the top name on the credits. She played one of Janet Jackson‘s friends in the 1993 That’s The Way Love Goes video.
Before Matthew McConaughey was breaking hearts on the big screen, he was lovin’ and leavin’ em in Trisha Yearwood‘s 1992 Walkaway Joe video.
Ru Paul can be seen getting a groove on in the B52’s Love Shack video.
Patrick Swayze can be seen dancing in Toto‘s Rosanna video in 1982. Fun fact about that one…the girl who plays Rosanna is Cynthia Rhodes, who Swayze would dance with again in Dirty Dancing, when she played Penny.
Elijah Wood is the pencil-breaking little business man in Paula Abdul‘s Forever Your Girl video in 1989.
We all know by now that Courteney Cox made her music video debut in Bruce Springsteen‘s Dancing In The Dark. But did you know her Friends costar was also in a video? Well, a few of them, actually. But Matt LeBlanc‘s first music appearance was in Bon Jovi‘s Miracle in 1990. Riding around on a motorcyle, Joey…I mean Matt…looks exactly like he did in Friends.
In 1993, Alicia Silverstone made her music video debut in three of Aerosmith’s videos for their Get A Grip album. Liv Tyler also starred in one of those, but it wasn’t her first. She was also in George Michael‘s Cowboys and Angels in 1991. The video series wasn’t Silverstone’s first time on screen either. She played Jessica Thompson on The Wonder Years in 1992.
