‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ star Seth Green reflects on tradeoff that came with fame
Seth Green says he can pinpoint the exact moment fame started to feel uncomfortable for him.
The 52-year-old actor weighed in on fame during The McBride Rewind podcast, saying things shifted rapidly in the late 1990s, when several projects came out around the same time.
“Somewhere between the end of ‘97 and ‘99, a series of things happened,” he said. “Austin Powers came out on DVD. I was made a series regular on Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] and Can’t Hardly Wait came out. So I shot Idle Hands and Can’t Hardly Wait while I was making Buffy, and I think I did Attic Expeditions too.”
Green explained that he kept taking on roles because he genuinely loved acting, but the sudden recognition that came with it was harder to adjust to.
“But it was that period of time where, like, so many different demos suddenly were like, ‘Oh, you’re Seth Green.’ It became a really uncomfortable period of time,” the Family Guy actor shared.
He said that period made him uneasy, largely because he values his privacy and enjoys being able to blend into a crowd.
He joked that being a “silly person” in public felt different once people started recognising him by name, since strangers suddenly assumed his behaviour was for their entertainment rather than just being himself. He said he eventually got good at staying under the radar despite the attention.
“I’m like a very silly person in public, and there’s something different about like ‘Who’s that crazy guy who’s singing on the fence’ to be like ‘Yo, Seth Green was out there singing on the fence,’” he joked. “It’s suddenly a very different premise and everyone assumes that you’re doing it for their benefit, and I don’t know, I got really good at being invisible.”
Green noted that he was fortunate to become famous before the rise of social media, which spared him from the kind of intense scrutiny many younger celebrities face today.
Having started acting at just 7 years old, Green said fame was never his motivation for pursuing the industry, and he still doesn’t feel a strong need for recognition. Instead, he said what draws him to acting is the ability to make an audience feel something real through a character or story. He described that feeling as the part of the job he loves most, saying he feels most like himself somewhere between “action” and “cut.”
