Background actors — commonly known as extras — are the unsung heroes of any movie or TV show, as they fill the frame and give context to a scene without saying a word.
They’re essentially both seen and not supposed to be seen, so they don’t distract from the main characters.
However, one extra is getting her chance to shine thanks to a TikTok user named Charles Rosen, who noticed her “performance” in the recently-released Disney+ film Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness.
The well-dressed older woman is sitting in a church pew directly behind Benedict Cumberbatch in the movie’s opening wedding scene, while he’s speaking with Michael Stuhlbarg‘s Dr. Nic West.
However, as the TikTok user noticed, she’s doing a heck of a lot while pretending not to be doing much.
Apparently desperate to avoid the reflex of looking into the camera in front of her — a movie no-no, unless you’re Deadpool — she glances everywhere else, her eyes and head literally rolling circles around the lens.
“This is how you be an extra!” Rosen captioned the vid, which also featured him laughing at the scene.
His clip has been liked more than 190,000 times.
However, the as-yet-unnamed extra isn’t the first one to miss the “blend-in” memo.
There are a host of famous, similar gaffes in other movies, including a camera-ogling diner in Goodfellas; the guy in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace who’s supposed to be sweeping except his broom wasn’t touching the ground; that infamous Teen Wolf extra who stood up and cheered with her pants completely undone, and one of the children of Christopher Lloyd‘s Doc Brown, who kept touching his own crotch as the camera rolled at the end of Back to the Future Part III.
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