Hollywood’s side gig in Japan
While moving files off an old computer I ran across these scans of celebrities endorsing Japanese products. Most of them are from the 90’s and point to more innocent, less sarcastic times. These ads were commissioned when Japan was paying top dollar for Western celebrity endorsements and many of their fans in the West had no idea about these. It was 1997 and the web was just starting out. I bought an old flatbed scanner and put these up on a site that I called The Big Sell Out which got linked from suck.com (remember them?) and Salon which led to some ink in some newspapers and later a few magazines.
- Dan Akroyd
- Justin Bieber
- James Brown
- Mr. Bean
- Charles Bronson
- Pierce Brosnan
- Mariah Carey
- George Clooney
- Sean Connery
- Kevin Costner
- Cindy Crawford
- Miles Davis
- Sammy Davis Jr.
- Leonardo DiCaprio
- Celine Dion
- Brett Favre
- Harrison Ford
- Jodie Foster
- Michael J. Fox
- Richard Gere
- Mel Gibson
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Dennis Hopper
- Jamiroquai
- Tommy Lee Jones
- Cyndi Lauper
- Carl Lewis
- Madness
- Madonna
- Mark McGuire
- Kate Moss
- Hideo Nomo
- Naomi Osaka
- Mike Piazza
- Scottie Pippen
- Brad Pitt
- Keanu Reeves
- Jean Reno
- Dennis Rodman
- Meg Ryan
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Steven Seagal
- Charlie Sheen
- Sammy Sosa
- Britney Spears
- Sylvester Stallone
- Ringo Starr
- Taylor Swift
- Quentin Tarantino
- The Three Tenors
- Claude van Damme
- Bruce Willis
- Stevie Wonder
- Elijah Wood
- Tiger Woods
- ZZ Top
Can’t get enough? Try Panderers in Japan which is still going strong after all these years.
A collection of classic celebrity endorsements from the 50’s and 60’s can be found on Pintrest here, here, and here.