Michael Cera

Michael in glasses with Sixth Grade Alien cast members

As an eight-year-old, the first job he landed was actually an unpaid one. He was featured in a commercial for Tim Horton’s (Yes, the same Canadian Tim Horton who owns the giant restaurant chain that is famous for the coffee and doughnuts) summer camps. That commercial led to him booking another commercial, this time for Pillsbury, and he earned his first speaking role. However by the following year, he was tired of commercials, and the jobs were becoming harder and harder for him to book. He auditioned for more than 200 without getting any of them, and asked his mom if he could move on to something other than advertising. In a 2006 interview with Canada‘s National Post, he cited his disinterest in commercials as rooted in the style of acting, saying, “it’s discouraging, commercial producers want you to be really hammy.” Even at nine, hammy just wasn’t Michael’s style.

Cast of Arrested Development

Getting off the commercial track turned out to be the right decision because he began landing roles in made for television movies and a few features here and there. By the time he was 11, he had a regular role on the popular family show I Was A Sixth Grade Alien, and it proved to be a great launching pad for him. Of course, just because Michael was a bona fide TV star didn’t mean he would be using that status for popularity in the classroom. He told W Magazine that he was extremely apprehensive about the attention the show would bring, revealing, “when I got to junior high, I remember feeling really self conscious about people knowing me from TV. It definitely didn’t instill any confidence.”

Michael with Alia Shawkat at the 2005 Golden Globes

The next few years would find Michael juggling school with a steady stream of jobs. His mom shuttled him around to auditions and filming, even helping read lines with him for audition tapes sent across the border to Los Angeles, while he packed in guest starring spots on television shows, a few more movie roles, and voice over work on Rolie Polie Olie, The Berenstein Bears, and Brace Face. He even auditioned for a role in The Sixth Sense, but lost out on seeing dead people to Haley Joel Osment. Not necessarily the roles you would expect from the boy who would go on to become one of the leading Geeks in Hollywood, but everybody gets their acting experience somewhere.

Michael with Super Bad costar Jonah Hill

In 2001, at the ripe old age of 13, a script floated Michael’s way that he saw as perfection. It was for a television series about a dysfunctional family with the surname Bluth. He called the character of George Michael Bluth “appealing” and loved reading the lines with his mom for his audition tape more than anything else he had done to that point. Not much time went by before he was flown out to Los Angeles to screen test with Alia Shawkat, who would wind up playing his cousin. In fact, the two teens were the first actors cast in the pilot for the series. He and his mom promptly found themselves an apartment in the sity and split their time between his work and the rest of the family back in Ontario,Canada. And thus, Arrested Development had found itself a star on the rise, because it was the show‘s launch in 2003 that served to really change Michael‘s life. He was no longer a kid struggling to find acting jobs.

Michael in a photoshoot for Juno with Ellen Page

Michael went from attending public school in Canada to taking classes via correspondence on a studio set. In 2006, he was even able to write, produce, and direct a series of comedy shorts with his friend Clark Duke that were released online. People in the film community began to take him seriously. Critics sat up and took notice of him, and it wasn‘t long before directors did too. When Arrested Development was canceled that same year, Michael took on a few more guest spots before landing double breaks into the big screen in 2007. Superbad and Juno debuted the same year, and Michael was officially a big screen sidekick.

Michael as Paulie Bleeker in Juno

Michael did receive a little criticism for those two roles; several film critics maintained that Michael Cera was simply playing himself, and that maybe he was even doing that in Arrested Development as well. There was a question as to whether he would remain in the role of socially awkward bit player for the rest of his career. While Michael might not have been intentionally planning to hit back at those critics, his turn as the male lead in the 2008 film Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (based on a best selling novel) did serve to do just that. The character of Nick may have retained Cera’s trademark awkwardness, but he was also the lead in a teen romance, a quirky, offbeat romance that audiences loved. The film also ushered in an era of “Geek Chic,“ something audiences hadn‘t really scene since The O. C. went off the air and took Seth Cohen with it.

The Nick and Norah Poster

Not only was Michael the lead role in a popular film, but he had also lent his musical talents to Juno, and would later do so on a few other films. He also continued to post songs with his band members to their MySpace page. Don’t be on the lookout for an album from the group known as The Long Goodbye anytime soon though. Michael maintains that they never go out and play live or anything “like a real band.” They just enjoy posting songs sporadically to the page. (Of course, seeing as how his work in Hollywood has really taken off, nothing has been done with the band in over a year now) He also acted as the host of a stage version of Saturday Night Live during the Hollywood writer‘s strike, participating in improv comedy routines for a live audience when the show was not airing new episodes.

Michael playing guitar in Nick and Norah

Keeping the momentum going, over the next year, Michael found roles in Extreme Movie and Year One, more comedic roles for him to time perfectly. With these, there was more of an emphasis on him playing a role rather than using his own quirks to sell his characters, allowing him to establish himself as an actor. Of course, then he could have made a costly mistake by following both of these up with a documentary style film in which he played himself opposite the film’s writer Charlene Yi. Paper Hearts was so convincing as a fake documentary about what love truly is that many people believed the two stars were actually dating, though the relationship was created specifically for the cameras.

Michael with Jack Black in Year One

The current project Michael’s out promoting is Youth in Revolt a film which allows him to play two roles: one a socially awkward teen, the other his smarmy alter ego. It’s another film about an outsider, but while out doing press junkets for the film, Michael has agreed that the characters he has become known for playing are relatable in a way others are not: “There’s kind of a universal component to feeling out of place, I think, when you’re growing up, and you don’t really click with the people around you.” Of course, his role as the main character’s alter ego might serve to remind people that Michael hasn’t made a career solely out of playing himself, he can act too.

Paper Hearts Sundance Portrait

Of course, he isn’t averse to working behind the scenes either, having already done as much as he could on that series of web shorts in 2006. He also composed original music for both Paper Hearts and Youth in Revolt. Now that Michael’s dabbled in almost every facet of show business he possibly can, would he like to follow in the steps of Judd Apatow and write a script for his very own feature film starring a handful of his closest friends? While Michael undoubtedly likes working with a certain set of familiar faces behind the scenes, he doesn’t seem too keen on the idea of writing his own film. He is apprehensive and self conscious about the idea, just like he is about the Hollywood world in general, admitting in a 2009 interview, “when you’re making a movie it’s so personal. You’re on this set with fifty people and it just feels like you’re a group. And then it becomes something else where, I don’t know, a very different thing when it comes out. I feel like if I wrote a movie it would be too open for people to feel like they can judge it.”

Youth in Revolt poster

So, if he doesn’t want to see his own films make it to the big screen, just how does he keep picking projects that his fans love? According to Michael himself, “It has to feel good to me. It’s just that you know as things come, you see who’s involved and go with your gut and see if the script’s good and see if you trust the director. If it’s someone that you click with, want to spend time with and want to collaborate with then go with that.” And it is that kind of “good feeling” that led him to another film pick that is getting a whole lot of buzz, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, in which he will play the title character. The film is a departure from Michale’s usual films, and features a who’s who of young Hollywood. Michael will play opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Live Free or Die Hard) and will share screen time with Chris Evans (Push), Anna Kendrick (New Moon), as well as a slew of other young stars. The film follows Scott Pilgrim on his journey to defeat the ex-boyfriends of a girl he first sees in his dreams. It’s based on a graphic novel and is currently classified as “action-adventure, fantasy, comedy,” so it will definitely be something to see. In a twist, Michael’s character is also an adult in the story, letting him finally leave his high school days behind.

Michael for a photo shoot

Of course, the movie role that has been following him since the show’s cancellation in 2006 is that of George Michael Bluth in an Arrested Development feature film. He was even rumored to be the only member of the original cast holding out from a firm commitment to the film for a while, but his name has become attached to the project over the course of the last year. With all of the cast members and writers busy with other projects though, the IMDB listing of the film for a 2011 release may be wishful thinking, and Michael’s assertion that the film is “more hypothetical than people think” might be more accurate.

Whether Michael chooses to purse the role of the awkward young man in his twenties since conquering the same role in his teens, or if he decides to do more work behind the scenes is all up for speculation. Chances are though, if the name Michael Cera is attached to the project, people will continue to flock to the cinemas to see it.