A Comic Star is Born?

He didn’t plan it this way, but Danny McBride will end up in three of the summer’s biggest comedies, the LA Times reports. In The Foot Fist Way, Pineapple Express, and Tropic Thunder, viewers will see McBride get beaten, shot, blown up with a grenade, and tortured—all while laughing themselves silly. Pretty good for a guy who was working the night desk at a Holiday Inn before the Foot Fist shoot.

Although he went to film school, McBride had hoped to make it as a screenwriter or director. Then college buddy and director David Green saw his comic potential and cast him in his indie films. McBride's tough-to-miss screen presence made impressions with Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller’s Frat Pack, who offered him parts in their in-development comedies. (More Danny Mcbride stories.)