“They happened to call me”: when Johnny Knoxville made a movie that won three Oscars
Needless to say, Johnny Knoxville isn’t an actor synonymous with awards season glory or even particularly good movies, but he was nonetheless involved in a picture that won three Academy Awards.
Unless Jackass Forever gets a ‘Best Picture’ nomination for tying up the franchise in a Return of the King-style celebration of its ongoing legacy, that’s not going to change, either. While the Jackass films are fine for what they are, which is dependent on whether or not you’re on board with them, the rest of his credits don’t make for acclaimed reading.
Has Knoxville ever been in a great movie? Elvis & Nixon was alright, and The Luckiest Man in America wasn’t too bad, but not really. Action Point, The Dukes of Hazzard, Walking Tall, The Last Stand, and Skiptrace aren’t the sort of fare the Academy would fawn over, so it makes perfect sense that his unsung contribution to a three-time Oscar-winner didn’t involve his face appearing onscreen at all.
Technically, you can see him, but it’s not entirely clear as to when and where. As hard as it sounds to believe, given what he’s been doing to himself for the last quarter of a century, Knoxville didn’t grow up with dreams of suffering countless injuries and concussions while pulling off dangerous stunts with his friends.
He moved to California in the late 1980s with dreams of becoming a serious actor, but all he could get were uncredited bit parts and extra work. However, he landed the highest-profile gig of his fledgling career by far when he was hired to serve as Keanu Reeves’ stand-in on Francis Ford Coppola’s blockbuster adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
“Stand-in and photo double, the whole movie,” he confirmed. “I was just doing extra work at the time, and they just happened to call me. They didn’t use a lot of camera tricks.” Because of that, whenever there was a second-unit scene that Coppola wasn’t overseeing and Reeves wasn’t involved with, Knoxville was the guy.
“They had me up off the ground, like 20 feet, with a window in front of me,” he recalled. “And I’m parallel to the ground. And that’s one of the days that Coppola came to the second unit. His son, Roman, was directing the second unit.” He wasn’t quite rubbing shoulders with the stars, but he did get to see Reeves and Gary Oldman in their element, even if the former’s performance was as awful as the latter’s was delightful.
He may not have been credited, but there are still shots in Dracula where Reeves’ face isn’t visible that feature Knoxville, which is a wonderfully obscure bit of trivia, considering how he rose to prominence as the face of Jackass and became famous for getting seven different shades of shit knocked out of him on TV.
The movie would go on to win Oscars for ‘Best Costume Design’, ‘Best Makeup’, and ‘Best Sound Editing’, and since he was wearing a costume and makeup on the set, regardless of his visage being obscured, the fact remains that, with an asterisk, Johnny Knoxville has been in a picture that won multiple Academy Awards.
