One of Dermot Mulroney’s most memorable roles came when he played sports reporter Michael O’Neal in My Best Friend’s Wedding. Yet, an unexpected aspect of the film made it hard for him to find work afterward.
“I was sitting there ready for the gift with purchase that was supposed to come along with being in a popular movie, and instead, I probably didn’t work for a year,” Mulroney tells the New York Times. “I chalked it up to me being so tiny on the poster, the little guy on the cake. I thought, gosh, you guys, if you’d made me a little bigger, maybe I could have gotten a job.”
TriStar Pictures/courtesy Everett
Mulroney, who starred in the Oscar-nominated 1997 rom-com alongside Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett, appeared in the movie poster as a tiny decoration atop a wedding cake.
While being a tiny cake decoration may have contributed toward putting his career on a short pause but it didn’t last for long. Mulroney has found success with plenty of roles since, including Marvel’s recent Secret Invasion series. He also returned to rom-coms in 2023, playing Sydney Sweeney’s father in Anyone but You.
Mulroney had some “fatherly” advice for the movie’s male lead, Glen Powell, after the cast gathered to watch My Best Friend’s Wedding.
“I didn’t want him to do what I did, which was minimize how important something is that might feel a little light or a little fluff when you’re doing it,” Mulroney told the Times. “‘What these movies mean to people,’ I told Glen, ‘will last for decades.’ It will last until after you’re gone in a way that maybe the other cool stuff he’s doing won’t. It has a different kind of absorption.”
Everett Collection
Anyone but You hopefully won’t be the last time Mulroney appears in a rom-com. In December, Mulroney told Today he’d be up for a My Best Friend’s Wedding sequel. Roberts has said the same thing.
Earlier that month, Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen asked Roberts if there were any of her movies she’d like to get a sequel and she said, “I think, maybe, My Best Friend’s Wedding. There’s so many people in it, and to see what they’re doing and how Kimmy and Michael’s marriage is going…”
Maybe they can give Mulroney a more prominent spot on the poster this time.
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