Michael Cera says he felt “paranoid” and nearly closed the curtain on his acting career after his popularity skyrocketed following his breakout roles in Superbad and Juno.
In an interview with The Guardian, the Barbie star said his massive taste of stardom was “overwhelming” after he starred in the two hit films, which both premiered in 2007.
“I didn’t know how to handle walking down the street,” he said of dealing with his rising fame at the age of 19.
Though Michael had already been relished for his role as George Michael Bluth on the sitcom Arrested Development, starring in the teen comedy films indisputably took his fame to a new level.
“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,” Michael said.
Explaining what he meant by “bad energies,” he pointed to “drunk people” he’s encountered as an example.
“You know, if people are drunk, and they recognise you, and they’re very enthusiastic, but it can be kind of toxic too,” Michael shared.
“When you’re a kid, people also feel like they can kind of grab you ― they’re not that respectful of you or your physical space. I didn’t know how to respectfully establish my own boundaries.”
Michael recalled the time he went to a bar with friends the same weekend Superbad premiered in cinemas and how all the attention he received soured the outing.
“It was like a burning feeling the whole time, just like everybody was so aware of me,” the Sausage Party star recounted. “It was a mistake.”
Michael said his skyrocketing celebrity led to a “crisis” in which he began turning down jobs that “would make me more famous,” including a coveted invitation to host Saturday Night Live around that time.
“There was a point where I wanted to stop taking jobs that would make me more famous. I was kind of having a bit of a crisis… I was really not enjoying the level of heat,” Michael, who is now 35, explained, adding that he wasn’t sure if he was “going to keep being an actor”.
We can thank his role in the 2010 fantasy romance film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which he says he had already committed to at the time, for keeping him in the acting business.
The popular film, based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, is now slated to be adapted into a Netflix anime series. A release date for series has not yet been announced.
In the end, Michael’s “crisis” helped him figure out what kind of actor he wanted to be.
“I think I wanted to be a working actor who can enjoy my day-to-day life, and the world that I’ve created for myself. I think that was the overall thing I was trying to figure out.”
Barbie, which also stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, opens in cinemas on Friday.