He’s best known as Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, but before either of those roles Bob Odenkirk did have a healthy career already established. He’s been absolutely killing it since debuting on Breaking Bad but before that he was a writer for SNL, an actor, and a standup comedian. Odenkirk has done a thing or two in his career that some people don’t know much about and it’s kind of okay since he was a rather low-key player before he finally started in with Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. Once he started acting opposite of those two his career just took off in an entirely new direction that has seen him gaining fame and notoriety like never before.
He did still have something before Breaking Bad though, and here are a few examples.
5. Mitch Clayton-Relative Strangers
The film looks pretty funny but it’s one of the more relatively unknown comedies that tends to kick around Hollywood for a while before finally getting noticed by a large enough crowd to really be considered as anything special. Odenkirk played a role that at least got him noticed in the film but still didn’t quite catapult him to mega stardom.
4. Steven’s brother-The Cable Guy
This was one of his bit parts since we know that Jim Carrey has a way of taking over a film even if he’s not the main star. Odenkirk was the brother of Steven, the character played by Matthew Broderick. He didn’t get all that much play since to be honest he was there just to take up space at that time, but if you look he’s actually in a few major shots.
3. Fanboy-Wayne’s World 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbvQdOXaoHY
Here’s another of his there and gone performances. It wasn’t too surprising though since a lot of stars and celebrities came out to appear on Wayne’s World 2 for brief cameos. This was the M.O. of the first movie as well, but for Odenkirk this was also another tally mark to put on a resume that was beginning to expand just a bit. It’s a far cry from Saul but it’s still a chance to show what he can do.
2. Bob Odenkirk Standup 1997
His standup isn’t that bad really but it doesn’t seem like it was really his calling. Odenkirk is a funny guy and knows how to get a laugh from the crowd but he’s not like the classic comics who can get a crowd roaring off of a look or a sly turn of a phrase. You can give him credit for trying and for at least making some people laugh, as this means that he’s worth taking a look at.
1. Saturday Night Live
For a while Odenkirk was a writer on SNL. He was one of the writers that worked on the sketches from 1987 to 1991 and he credits his time there as highly instrumental in finding what he really wanted to do, which was perform. By the time he left he’d had his mind firmly set on performing since he wasn’t too sure any longer about the writing aspect of it. As you can tell that worked out just fine.
Bob Odenkirk is definitely one of the bigger success stories of the current era.
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