cinematic commentary for the day

In the special features of the Fame DVD, there is a featurette about the Fame School now, with interviews of circa-2000 students and teachers. One of the people interviewed is, however, clearly the drama teacher from the movie, aged twenty years.

He was identified with both his real name and the character's name, which is certainly normal for an actor in a film, but then he kept saying things like "This movie has been great for our school," which was confusing, until I was finally able to put two and two together and realize that they had hired the real drama teacher at Fame School to play the drama teacher at Fame School (whereas they had not, say, hired the dance teacher to play the dance teacher) because ... he's an actor.

Brilliance. Hiring actors to play themselves in a film where actors also must be hired to play the non-actors ... there ought to be a term for this.