11 TV Actors Who Appeared in ‘Starship Troopers,’ Now 25
The legacy of Starship Troopers is fascinating: When else has a film endured accusations of Naziism to become a cult classic on multiple critics’ lists of the best sci-fi films of all time?
Written by Edward Neumeier and based on the Robert A. Heinlein novel of the same name, the 1998 film tells a tale of 23rd-century humans fighting alien arachnids in an interstellar war.
In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, director Paul Verhoeven said he took Heinlein’s “militaristic, if not fascistic” source material and tried to convey that “these heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda.”
Not everyone got the point. Washington Post reviewer Rita Kempler wrote that it was “impossible to decide whether [Verhoeven is] sending up the Third Reich or in love with it.” And in an op-ed published in the same newspaper four days later, Stephen Hunter called the movie “Nazi to the core.”
Eventually, however, viewers picked up on Verhoeven’s vision. “Starship Troopers is satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism,” The Atlantic’s Calum Marsh observed in 2013. “The fact that it was and continues to be taken at face value speaks to the very vapidity the movie skewers.”
And in 2020, The New Yorker’s David Roth wrote that “with the possible exception of Mary Harron’s American Psycho, it’s hard to think of a film adaptation that’s more invested in refuting and satirizing its source.”
Now, after a quarter-century of commendations and condemnations, Starship Trooper is turning 25 on November 7. In honor of that anniversary, scroll down to see 10 television stars who appeared in the action-packed movie.
Clancy Brown
Brown, an actor known for his many villainous TV roles, including one on Dexter: New Blood, played drill instructor Sergeant Zim in Starship Troopers.
Seth Gilliam
Before he played Ellis Carver on The Wire and Gabriel Stokes on The Walking Dead, Gilliam appeared in Starship Troopers as Roughnecks infantryman Sugar Watkins.
Neil Patrick Harris
This star of Doogie Howser, M.D., How I Met Your Mother, and Uncoupled played psychic Carl Jenkins in the movie.
Rue McClanahan
McClanahan, who won an Emmy for her scene-stealing role as Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls, cameoed as a biology teacher in Starship Troopers.
Patrick Muldoon
Muldoon, who has played Austin Reed in more than 500 episodes of Days of Our Lives, took on the role of Zander Barcalow, Rico’s (Casper Van Dien) romantic rival, in Starship Troopers.
Dean Norris
Norris of Breaking Bad, Claws, and United States of Al played a commanding officer in the sci-fi flick.
Timothy Omundson
Omundson, best known for playing Carlton Lassiter in Psych and its TV movie continuations, had a small role as a psychic in Starship Troopers.
Denise Richards
This star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Bold and the Beautiful played Carmen Ibanez, a starship pilot who becomes Rico’s girlfriend.
Anthony Ruivivar
Not long before he started playing Carlos Nieto on Third Watch, Ruivivar played mobile infantryman Shujimi in Starship Troopers.
Amy Smart
Smart, now playing Barbara Whitmore on Stargirl, had a small part in Starship Troopers as the pilot cadet Stack Lumbreiser.
Brenda Strong
And Strong, who narrated Desperate Housewives as the show’s late Mary Alice Young, played naval officer Captain Deladier in the film.
