The ‘Austin Powers’ actor shared that he felt “uncomfortable” when people started to notice him
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NEED TO KNOW
- Seth Green says he first started getting recognized between 1997 and 1999 after several major projects
- He found the attention uncomfortable, as he values his anonymity and prefers staying out of the spotlight
- Green says acting allows him to express himself fully, describing it as where he feels most like himself
Seth Green can pinpoint the exact moment in his career when he started getting recognized in public.
Joining Josh McBride for The McBride Rewind podcast, Green, 52, said he first started feeling the effects of fame in the late ‘90s.
“Somewhere between the end of ‘97 and ‘99, a series of things happened,” he said. “Austin Powers came out on DVD. I was made a series regular on Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] and Can’t Hardly Wait came out. So I shot Idle Hands and Can’t Hardly Wait while I was making Buffy, and I think I did Attic Expeditions too.”
Green kept accepting movie roles because he loved the craft, but admits he didn’t love the extra attention they brought.
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“But it was that period of time where, like, so many different demos suddenly were like, ‘Oh, you’re Seth Green.’ It became a really uncomfortable period of time,” the Family Guy actor shared.
He shared that it felt uncomfortable because he loves “anonymity.”
“I’m like a very silly person in public, and there’s something different about like ‘Who’s that crazy guy who’s singing on the fence’ to be like ‘Yo, Seth Green was out there singing on the fence,’” he joked. “It’s suddenly a very different premise and everyone assumes that you’re doing it for their benefit, and I don’t know, I got really good at being invisible.”
While people started to pay more attention to him, Green noted that he thankfully came up before social media, so he didn’t face the same scrutiny and invasion of privacy other young celebrities faced in the years to follow.
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Green, who started acting at just 7 years old, emphasized that he never got into the industry for fame and “still doesn’t really care about being famous.”
“There isn’t something in me where it’s like, ‘Look at me,’ or ‘[Look at] my name.’ It’s never really been about that,” he said. “I knew really young that I could do the trick, that I could do the magic trick, that I can, like, make you feel something.”
Green explained that it’s that feeling — of getting the audience to believe what you’re saying — that he loves.
“If I can do it on behalf of a character or a story, you feel something. That’s the thing that I can do, and it feels amazing when I’m doing it,” he ended. “I think other actors can relate to this. Somewhere between ‘action’ and ‘cut’ is where I feel the most like myself.”
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