Superbad star Michael Cera revealed he almost quit acting before Scott Pilgrim came along.
During an interview with The Guardian, Cera said his intense rise to fame off the back of Superbad and Juno left him feeling uneasy.
“That was sort of overwhelming,” he said. “I didn’t know how to handle walking down the street. Fame makes you very uncomfortable in your own skin and makes you paranoid and weird. There were lots of great things about it, and I met a lot of amazing people, but there’s a lot of bad energies, too, ones that I was not equipped to handle.”
“Drunk people would be a classic example,” he explained. “You know, if people are drunk, and they recognize you, and they’re very enthusiastic, but it can be kind of toxic too.”
Cera was only 19 when Superbad and Juno premiered in 2007. “When you’re a kid, people also feel they can kind of grab you – they’re not that respectful of you or your physical space,” he said. “I didn’t know how to respectfully establish my own boundaries.”
He revealed that the weekend Superbad was released in theaters, he went to a bar with some friends. “It was a mistake,” he said. “It was like a burning feeling the whole time, just like everybody was so aware of me.”
Cera returns to the big screen in Barbie where he plays Allan, the classic Barbie doll that was created as a best friend for Ken. It’s the most commercial project Cera has been in since This Is The End in 2013. After all, he explained he would rather take a back seat and work on less prominent roles.
“There was a point where I wanted to stop taking jobs that would make me more famous,” he said. In fact, Cera even turned down the opportunity to host Saturday Night Live. “I was kind of having a bit of a crisis… I was really not enjoying the level of heat.”
“I really didn’t know if I was going to keep being an actor,” he added.
Thankfully, Cera had already signed on for Edgar Wright’s upcoming comic book movie, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and it was this film that got him through. “I was already committed to it, and went and did it, and obviously feel so grateful that that happened,” he said.
Want to read more about Michael Cera? Check out his upcoming new sci-fi comedy series as well as what we know so far about the upcoming Scott Pilgrim anime series.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
