Michael Cera Nearly Quit Acting After “Overwhelming” ‘Superbad’ and ‘Juno’ Fame: “I Didn’t Know How to Handle Walking Down the Street”

Fame can be all-consuming, and at some points, super bad. For Michael Cera, the discomfort he felt caused him to reconsider his acting career.

The actor told The Guardian what it was like to reach celebrity stardom after starring in both Superbad and Juno in 2007, a feeling he described as “sort of overwhelming.”

“I didn’t know how to handle walking down the street,” he shared. “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.”

A “classic example” Cera gave of such “bad energies” was “drunk people.”

“You know, if people are drunk, and they recognize you, and they’re very enthusiastic, but it can be kind of toxic too,” he explained of meeting inebriated fans. “When you’re a kid, people also feel they can kind of grab you – they’re not that respectful of you or your physical space.”

Cera was only 19 when the two films were released, and felt he “didn’t know how to respectfully establish [his] own boundaries.”

While he contemplated stepping back from the spotlight, he was unable to because of his commitment to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which was released in theaters in 2010.

“There was a point where I wanted to stop taking jobs that would make me more famous,” he said, explaining that he turned down a hosting gig on Saturday Night Live because he “was kind of having a bit of a crisis” and “was really not enjoying the level of heat.”

Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that he “wanted to be a working actor who can enjoy [his] day-to-day life.”

Cera has taken on some notable projects since then, including reprising his titular role in the upcoming animated version of Scott Pilgrim. He also was in Netflix’s Black Mirror, where he had a cameo in the season’s opening episode “Joan is Awful” alongside Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek. Next up, Cera can be spotted as Allan, a “somewhat marginalised figure” in the upcoming Barbie movie.

“I was desperate to be a part of [Barbie],” Cera gushed, confessing that he “never got tired of looking around” at the sets while filming and “finding new little details.”

“It was one of the most stunning things I’ve ever seen,” he added.

Catch Cera as Allan in Barbie, which debuts this Friday (July 21).