Every Character M. Night Shyamalan Played In His Own Movies

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for the movies of M. Night Shyamalan, including Old.

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan may be at home behind the camera, but he also has a habit of appearing on screen in cameos and supporting character roles. In Shyamalan’s latest movie, Old, he plays a hotel van driver who takes some unlucky resort guests to a secluded beach that causes them to age rapidly, and returns again at the end of the movie when his true nature is revealed.

Shyamalan played the protagonist in his first ever feature film, Praying With Anger, and has regularly appeared in roles of varying sizes ever since. From the smallest cameos where his face is never shown on screen, to a character who is destined to be the savior of humanity, there’s no telling when Shyamalan might pop up or how significant his character might be.

Though Shyamalan hasn’t appeared in every movie he’s directed (he was absent from both The Visit and After Earth), his cameos and supporting roles are frequent enough to have become an expected element in every new Shyamalan film. Here’s every character that Shyamalan has played in his own movies.

Praying With Anger – Dev Raman

Made in 1992 when Shyamalan was a film student at NYU, Praying With Anger is the semi-autobiographical story of a young Indian American man called Dev Raman, who spends a year living in India as part of a college exchange program. Dev hopes to use the trip as an opportunity to find out more about his late father, but his American upbringing clashes with the Indian heritage that he’s trying to connect with. Praying With Anger was financed with help from Shyamalan’s family and friends, which became an early preview of his more recent approach of self-financing his movies.

The Sixth Sense – Dr. Hill

Praying With Anger was followed by Shyamalan’s first commercial feature, a family film called Wide Awake, which starred Rosie O’Donnell as a Catholic nun and major Philadelphia Phillies fan. However, Wide Awake‘s release was buried after Shyamalan and O’Donnell tried to push back against producer Harvey Weinstein’s extensive post-production cuts.

Following this trial by fire, Shyamalan came back strong with his third feature film. The Sixth Sense, which first established him as the king of the plot twist and immortalized the line “I see dead people” in pop culture history, was a massive critical and commercial success that grossed over $672 million at the worldwide box office. It also marked Shyamalan’s first cameo role in one of his movies. He plays a pediatrician called Dr. Hill, who treats Cole Sear and raises concerns with his mother about the cuts and bruises on his body. Shyamalan’s scene was originally longer, and he intended it to be a tribute to his parents, both of whom are doctors. However, Shyamalan hated his own acting so much that he ended up cutting most of his appearance.

Unbreakable/Split/Glass – Jai

M. Night Shyamalan played the same minor cameo role over three different movies in his Unbreakable trilogy. He first appears as an unnamed character in Unbreakable, whom David Dunn realizes is a drug dealer thanks to his powers of extra-sensory perception. He returns in Split, now having left his drug-dealing days behind him and established a career as a security guard, and his name is revealed to be Jai. In his brief scene, he helps Dr. Fletcher, the psychiatrist treating Kevin Wendell Crumb, to look over some security footage. Shyamalan’s character appears again in the final chapter of the trilogy, Glass, which confirms that Jai is indeed the same man that David Dunn met all those years ago. While buying better security equipment from David Dunn’s store, motivated by the murder of Dr. Fletcher, Jai recognizes David from their encounter all those years ago.

Signs – Ray Reddy

In Shyamalan’s 2002 film Signs, Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a priest who has had a crisis of faith following the death of his wife in a road traffic accident. Shyamalan has a small role as Ray Reddy, the man who was behind the wheel of the car that killed Graham’s wife, and who has suffered greatly from guilt ever since the accident. After crop circles appear in his fields and aliens are spotted roaming around, Graham goes to visit Ray for the first time since the accident. Ray tells him that he is going to the lake because “they” don’t like water, and advises Graham that he has locked one of the aliens in his pantry before driving away.

The Village – Park Ranger

Shyamalan’s divisive 2004 film The Village ends with the major twist that the 19th century village that the movie has been set in is actually inside a fenced preserve, with the 21st century world just outside it. When the film’s blind protagonist, Ivy, ventures outside of the fence in search of medicine, she runs into one of the park rangers that patrol the preserve. He agrees to get the medicine she has asked for from one of the guard shacks, and in the following scene Shyamalan plays the park ranger’s boss, who offers him some advice about the job.

Lady in the Water – Vick Ran

In 2006’s Lady in the Water, Shyamalan plays his most central role since starring in Praying With Anger. The movie centers around Story, a dryad-like being who emerges in the pool of an apartment complex. She explains that she is there to find the Writer, a man whose mind must be awakened by her so that he can write a book that will ultimately lead to humanity’s salvation. The writer in question is Vick Ran, the character played by Shyamalan, who is struggling to complete a book called The Cookbook until he meets Story and is finally able to think clearly. Vick learns that his words are so powerful that they will inspire a great orator, who will eventually become president of the United States. Vick also learns that his words are so powerful that he will be assassinated for writing them, which will only serve to further amplify their influence.

The Happening – Joey

One of Shyamalan’s hardest-to-spot cameos is in his 2008 movie The Happening, where he never appears on screen at all. The director plays Joey, a man with whom Zooey Deschanel’s character, Alma, once ate tiramisu. Joey repeatedly tries to call Alma on her cell phone, and Shyamalan provides the voice for the character. It’s unclear whether or not Joey survived the outbreak of airborne toxins that cause people to violently commit suicide in the movie.

The Last Airbender – Prison Camp Firebender

In the big-budget disaster that was The Last Airbender, Shyamalan apparently has a cameo as one of the Fire Nation prison guards in the scene where Zuko (disguised as the Blue Spirit) breaks Aang out of prison. Without a close-up on his face it’s unclear which of the soldiers Shyamalan plays, though he may be the firebender who appears silhouetted in a doorway and flings fire at Zuko and Aang at the very start of the fight.

Old – Hotel Van Driver

Despite his character remaining unnamed, Shyamalan has a fairly substantial role in Old as the driver who transports unsuspecting resort guests to the cursed beach, and then monitors them from a cliff that overlooks the beach. He appears in a scene towards the start of the movie, in which he gives directions to the families and hands them oddly over-sized hampers full of food, and returns at the end when he reports to the resort manager that all of the test subjects are dead (or so he thinks).

About The Author

Hannah Shaw-Williams
(3313 Articles Published)

Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

More From Hannah Shaw-Williams