'Tropic Thunder': Meet Ben Stiller's Army of Hollywood's Hottest Stars

Name: Ben Stiller
Character: Tugg Speedman
Claim to Fame: Scorcher Series
Quoted: "I think actors like to make fun of themselves and the business because it’s so ridiculous. There’s so many people who take themselves so seriously, myself included...It’s hard to navigate through this world—the bullshit of it all."

Interview with Ben Stiller

Name: Robert Downey Jr.
Character: Kirk Lazarus
Claim to Fame: Oscar Winner
Quoted: "I had to let go [of the character]. I didn't de-black, we stopped shooting. Then [my wife] Susan said, 'You know, we're done now and I know you've been calling me at night and talking to me as this [character] and it was really sexy, but...'I was like, 'I know, it'd be weird so I gotta stop.'"

Interview with Robert Downey Jr.

Name: Jack Black
Character: Jeff 'Fats' Potnoy
Claim to Fame: The Fatties
Quoted: "The bar was raised pretty high after Borat...and this movie totally touches on those things too; racism in the movie industry, homophobia in the movie industry and drug addiction and all these lines you are not supposed to cross in movies."

Interview with Jack Black

Name: Brandon Jackson
Character: Alpa Chino
Claim to Fame: Rapper
Quoted: "Robert Downey Jr. played a black man better than I played a black man. That should tell you that Robert is an amazing actor," he tells Fancast.com. "His career has been up, it's been down, it's been left, it's been right. To see him be a superhero [in Iron Man]... he's a superhero himself."

Name: Jay Baruchel
Character: Kevin Sandusky
Claim to Fame: Newbie
Quoted: "Mud is not mud. Hawaii has the market cornered on insane mud. I’ve never seen mud that goes up to my fucking knees. Like the equivalent of snow banks worth of mud. That stuff was crazy."
 
Interview with Jay Baruchel

Name: Steve Coogan
Character: Damien Cockburn
Claim to Fame: Director
Quoted: "I don’t think there is anything off limits in comedy, at all, actually. It is the way you do it. Sometimes people [say something is in] bad taste. I think you can make an error in judgment and do something in bad taste, but you can’t make any rules about it, you just have to be instinctive."

Name: Nick Nolte
Character: John "Four Leaf" Tayback
Claim to Fame: Author/Vietnam Vet
Quoted: "Unfortunately addictions are worldwide and quite common whether it is food, drugs, whatever and we happen to make fun of it [in the movie] because the human condition has an element of addiction in it...I suppose if we were totally calm and understood our souls, spirit and everything else we wouldn’t have these cravings."

Name: Danny McBride
Character: Cody
Claim to Fame: Special Effects
Quoted: "I’m intimidated by guns," McBride tells New York magazine of playing a special effects coordinator. "I think they’re scary. And I usually hide when the fireworks go off on the Fourth of July."

Check out our Tropic Thunder photos, videos and more

Watch Cast Interviews

Watch Movie Clips

Click Through Our Movie Stills 

Tropic Thunder opens in theaters Aug. 13, 2008