Entourage was one of HBO’s most popular original series. Airing between 2004 and 2011, the show followed up-and-coming movie star Vincent Chase and his group of friends navigating through Hollywood including his manager Eric “E” Murphy, his driver Turtle, his half-brother Johnny “Drama” Chase, and his superstar agent Ari Gold. Taking place in Hollywood and around the movie business, this meant the series featured plenty of celebrity cameos. The series featured cameos from the world of movies, television, music, and sports.

Over eight seasons and 96 episodes, the crew of Entourage encountered quite a few famous faces. Yet which cameos were the best? While some stars like Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Mandy Moore, and Anna Faris played fictionalized versions of themselves over an arc, these are the faces that showed up quickly in an episode or two. These were the cameos that stood out at the time and looking back are big deals still to this day.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

8 M. Night Shyamalan

     Touchstone Pictures

Director M. Night Shyamalan appeared as himself in season four as one of Ari’s clients, who Ari is so keen on pleasing due to his movie’s massive box office potential, that Ari is forced to stay up and read his newest script before the next morning. The cameo has a lot of fun playing off Shyamalan’s being known as a horror director with his more laid-back nature, where he is filming an American Express commercial in a cemetery.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

When the episode aired in 2007, Shyamalan had only had one box office disappointment with Lady in the Water the previous year. One wonders if Ari would have gone to such trouble trying to keep him as a client so badly following The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth, or if he would have stuck around for his new career turnaround with Split, Glass, Old, and the upcoming a Knock at the Cabin.

7 Gal Gadot

     Warner Bros.HBO

Gal Gadot’s role in Entourage is notable in that her role is not only playing a character, but is also appearing before she became a major star. Her episode, Amongst Friends, aired in 2009, just a few months after the release of Fast & Furious, and was years before her role as Wonder Woman in the DCU. Funnily enough, she plays the date of Vincent Chase, who was the star of an Aquaman movie in the world of Entourage, providing a sort of Wonder Woman and Aquaman pairing.

6 Stan Lee

     Marvel Studios

In season seven, Vincent Chase begins courting a new superhero project, Air-Walker, based on an actual Marvel Comics character created by Stan Lee. Stan Lee, often called the king of cameos, makes an appearance as himself in the series. He only appears in one scene, but just like with Stan Lee’s Marvel cameos, he makes the most of it.

While the concept of an Air-Walker movie still seems absurd, given how elements of Air-Walker’s backstory like the fact that he is from Xandar have been brought into the MCU through the Guardians of the Galaxy films this does not seem as ridiculous as it was in 2010.

5 Scarlett Johansson

     Fox Searchlight Pictures

Scarlett Johansson cameos as herself in the season one finale. To prove to Vince that he can be his manager, E does the impossible and actually gets Vince a date with the star. While there is something troubling about Johansson being used as a prop for E to get Vince to prove his worth as a manager, Johansson is game for the cameo; even though she literally phones it in (she is never on-screen with the main cast), it is still a nice surprise for the end of the season.

4 Peter Dinklage

     Warner Bros. Television

Years before he became one of the stars of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Peter Dinklage has a cameo as himself in the season two episode, The Sundance Kids. Dinklage was actually referenced earlier that same season for his work in The Station Agent. It certainly is fascinating to go back and see Dinklage appear on Entourage, knowing in just seven years he would go on to star in a series that would eclipse Entourage in popularity on the same network.

3 Matt Damon

     Universal Pictures

Matt Damon certainly loves cameos. He has cameoed in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eurotrip, Deadpool 2, Interstellar, and both Thor: Ragnarök and Thor: Love and Thunder. Damon appears as himself in Entourage, if not a more exaggerated and intense version of himself, who is getting on Vince’s case to donate to a charity for children who suffer from food insecurity. Damon plays the entire role straight which makes it even funnier, and his after-credit scene freakout is one of the series’ highlights.

2 James Cameron

     AMC

One of the series’ highest profile cameos was James Cameron, who appeared as himself in a recurring cameo across seasons two and three. While he appeared in more than one episode, he is rarely given more than a scene in each of his appearances. In the series, Cameron is the director of the fictionalized Aquaman movie.

Cameron’s episodes aired from 2005 to 2006, in between his 12-year hiatus between Titanic and Avatar. It’s funny to think that back in 2006, the series needed Cameron’s involvement to convince audiences that an Aquaman movie could gross $1 billion worldwide.

1 Martin Scorsese

Of all the celebrities on Entourage, Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly the biggest name and the most respectable star the series ever got. The legendary filmmaker appears in the season five finale, and over the phone offers Vince a role in the upcoming reimaging of The Great Gatsby set in modern-day New York. Given how the main characters in Entourage hail from New York, there is something appropriate that a filmmaker so closely associated with the city would cameo on the series, and he is arguably the classiest guest star on the show.