Brett Goldstein Has One of Hollywood’s Wackiest Résumés Ever

Podcast host

Since 2018, Goldstein has hosted Films to Be Buried With, a podcast in which his guests rave about the films that shaped their lives. “I think what the podcast did by accident — that I didn’t necessarily know it would — is it ends up being quite a good way to talk to people about their lives, because by talking about films. you’re really talking about them,” Goldstein said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023. “As in, ‘What film scares you the most?’ is really, ‘What scares you?’”

The Hoff’s faux-trainer

Between 2015 and 2016, Goldstein starred in the British comedy Hoff the Record, playing a personal trainer for a fictionalized David Hasselhoff. And costarring with the Baywatch alum was a “dream come true” for Goldstein, as he told British Comedy Guide in 2016. “I used to love Knight Rider — my favorite toy was a Knight Rider super stunt set, and it’s very surreal that I now get to work with David Hasselhoff.”

James Garfield re-enactor

In a 2017 episode of Drunk History: UK, Goldstein portrayed President James A. Garfield. “Not to brag, but I didn’t even know there was a President Garfield, let alone that he got shot in the bumhole,” the actor told British Comedy Guide. “You get the audio the day before, so I spend that day listening on repeat to drunk people as I go about my day, lip-syncing in [the supermarket] Asda. It’s the closest I’ll get to being Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl.”

Muppet impersonator

Goldstein is an avid fan of the Muppets, and in 2017, he performed a six-minute version of The Muppet Christmas Carol on stage to benefit the charity Parkinson’s U.K., with props and costume changes galore. “Sure, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and The Godfather are good films, but I think we can all agree objectively that the greatest film of all time is The Muppet Christmas Carol,” he said in a 2022 roundtable with the Muppet cast.

Oscar the Grouch competitor

Speaking of Muppets, Goldstein filmed his appearance on Sesame Street in 2022 and had a scowl-off with Oscar the Grouch. “I finally found my way to Sesame Street (all you have to do is ask, through the medium of song) and it was more wonderful than I could have imagined,” he wrote on Instagram at the time. “Everyone was so funny and brilliant and friendly and kind.”

Hercules portrayer

A bonus scene at the end of 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder features a brief shot of a bulked-up Goldstein as Hercules. The actor told The Playlist that he was shocked when he found out he got the Marvel Cinematic Universe role. “I went, ‘What?’ Just like, ‘Are you serious? Are you f***ing with me? Is this a wind-up?’” he recalled. “So yeah, it was as surprising to me as I think it has been to other people.”

Fake reality star

Goldstein spent his lockdown months filming Lone Island, a 12-part reality show about a man, played by himself, who goes on a dating show but discovers that, because of Covid-19 precautions, he’s the only human participant. So the character ends up falling in love with a ball, a plant, and a mop. “I got so into it, and I wrote, like, a proper season arc,” Goldstein said on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “At the beginning, you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I like Plant.’ And in the end, you’re like, ‘Plant had their reasons.’”

Real person

After a subset of Ted Lasso fans became convinced that Goldstein was a CGI creation, the actor debunked the conspiracy theory in a 2021 video statement delivered via Memoji. “There’s a f***ing load of mad s*** happening on the internet today, as usual,” he said in the clip. “I just wanna clear up something once and for all: I am a completely real, normal, human man who just happens to live in a VFX house and does normal, human, basic things like rendering and buffering and transferring data.”

Brett Goldstein: The Second Best Night of Your Life, Saturday, April 26, Max