10 Celebrities Who Loved Their Mad Magazine Parodies

Satire has long been one of society’s sharpest tools. It's a brand of humor that, since ancient times, has cut the powerful down to size and let ordinary people laugh at the famous. Since 1952, MAD Magazine has iconically lampooned everything from movies and TV shows to ads and politics with irreverent humor. Behind it all is the “Usual Gang of Idiots.” It’s a staff of writers and artists, notably Mort Drucker, Dick DeBartolo, Desmond Devlin, Jack Davis, and Tom Richmond, whose caricatures and puns made being spoofed a rite of passage. For many stars and creators, a MAD parody has been a defining moment. Some bristled at first, while others treated it as a badge of honor and even helped spoof themselves further. 10 Steven Spielberg From demanding a rematch and threatening to bring a T-Rex and a great white shark as corner men when Celebrity Deathmatch had demons tear him apart to SNL skits mocking his own films, Steven Spielberg sure has a good reputation with both the media and the public. This is notable considering his stature as one of Hollywood’s most bankable filmmakers. His fame as an easygoing fellow with a good sense of humor extends to MAD’s parodies and fits the overall pattern. The filmmaker deems being mocked in MAD an honor worth hanging on the wall; his office has framed original art from MAD’s Jaws parody. It’s a spoof of the very film that made him famous. When MAD’s art director Sam Viviano later sought filmmakers’ thoughts for a Mort Drucker collection, Spielberg was unsurprisingly one of those who wrote back. 9 Bryan Cranston MAD Magazine’s parody of Malcom in the Middle was a milestone issue for several reasons. Appearing in March 2001’s MAD #403 and titled “Malcontent in the Middle,” the 5-page satire was the very first issue to resume printing in full color and was Tom Richmond’s debut as a TV/movie parody illustrator. Bryan Cranston, who starred as “Hal Wilkerson” in the original 2000 sitcom (and famously as Walter White in Breaking Bad), was elated about the spoof. He considered purchasing the original physical artwork, though it didn’t materialize, no thanks to the hefty price tag for the hand-drawn pages. Unlike Cranston, though, Frankie Muniz (Malcom himself) held a grudge. Cranston’s appreciation for the parodies in general runs deep. In the 2025 documentary, When We Went MAD!, he celebrated it by participating as one of its featured celebrity interviewees, alongside folks like Quentin Tarantino. Plus, he also cameos in Jimmy Fallon's massive 12-minute Breaking Bad spoof, "Joking Bad." 8 Mark Hamil Mark Hamill loves a bit of parody: this man famously mocked his own Star Wars audition in a video, and told fans to “bring ’em on” when Last Jedi poster parodies spread online. Thus, MAD’s parodies of Star Wars were like giving a kid the keys to a candy store. More than once, he has nodded in affirmation and shown love to MAD’s caricatures of him, his characters, and his films. He sent a “happy” emoji to the Return of the Jedi parody (MAD #242), and sent MAD a letter and a photo of himself reading the spoof. When MAD Magazine faced financial and corporate upheavals in 2019, Mark Hamill praised the Magazine, stating that it was “an honor and a career highlight” for him and his castmates whenever they were the subject of mockery by MAD Magazine. He reiterated his position upon illustrator Mort Drucker’s demise in 2020. 7 George Lucas For a man who once quit making Star Wars films on the grounds of people yelling mean things at him, legendary filmmaker George Lucas might seem the last person to enjoy being mocked. Indeed, this was almost the case after MAD’s Empire Strikes Back parody in 1981 (issue #220), when Lucas’s lawyers threatened legal action. However, unknown to the lawyers, Lucas had already written a glowing fan letter directly to the magazine, praising the creators as the "Leonardo da Vinci of comic satire.” True to fan culture, he offered to buy the original artwork. Even more hilarious was MAD publisher Bill Gaines’ next step to Lucas’ lawyers. He simply mailed them a copy of Lucas's own letter with a note reading, "Gee, George liked it. 6 Frank Darabont If George Lucas seemed an unlikely candidate to take mockery well, Frank Darabont seemed even less likely. The mind behind three acclaimed Stephen King adaptations, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist, was fired from The Walking Dead and later sued AMC, alleging he was wrongfully forced out and denied his share of the profits. Yet like Mark Hamill, Darabont treats a MAD parody as a badge of honor. When The Green Mile was spoofed as “The Yellow Mile” in MAD #393, he was thrilled, and he made a point of buying Mort Drucker’s original artwork. His devotion runs deeper. When MAD reached out to filmmakers about Drucker, around 2011, Darabont replied under the subject line “Mort Drucker? Hell, yes!.” He then proceeded to write two pages about what Drucker meant to him. 5 Quentin Tarantino Quentin Tarantino absolutely adores MAD, and the three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker has made it no secret. He has publicly praised MAD artists Tom Richmond and Mort Drucker, naming Drucker’s Rosemary’s Baby spoof, with Lucy from Peanuts looking on, as his favorite panel ever. He also relishes MAD’s 1995 Pulp Fiction parody (MAD #335). In 2018, he hired Richmond to design a fake MAD cover for his upcoming film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, depicting Alfred E. Neuman picking his nose on a wanted poster. Not one to stop there, he successfully proposed that MAD spoof the film’s fictional show “Bounty Law” under a title he coined himself: “Lousy Law.” 4 Richard Dean Anderson Another MAD story belongs to Richard Dean Anderson, the actor best known as the gadget-wielding hero of MacGyver and later Col. Jack O’Neill in Stargate SG-1. After MAD spoofed his show as “MacGimmick” in April 1991, Anderson wrote the magazine a letter of appreciation. The issue, #302, came courtesy of Dick DeBartolo and Angelo Torres. According to Anderson, the show had often drifted into absurdity, and the parody was spot on. MAD had been his favorite magazine since childhood, and he took parody in good humor generally. A cartoon version of him turns up on The Simpsons, where Patty and Selma are obsessed with him. In 2009, he also reprised MacGyver in Pepsi ads styled after Saturday Night Live’s “MacGruber” sketches. 3 Phil Hartman Phil Hartman was better known for dishing out parody than being the subject himself. He performed as dozens of different characters in his eight seasons on Saturday Night Live, including as Bill Clinton. He was also a MAD fan. A graphic designer who created album covers for bands such as Poco, he had a professional’s eye for the visual comedy that the magazine was known for. The magazine’s letters pages showed him reacting to the magazine in December 1991 (issue #307) and again in April 1993 (issue #318). Having spent his career mastering the art of the parody sketch (from SNL’s "Anal-Retentive Chef" to The Simpsons' Troy McClure), he lived by the philosophy that satire was the highest form of flattery. To him, a public figure had not truly integrated into the fabric of American pop culture until they were skewered by MAD. 2 Chuck Lorre Television Mogul Chuck Lorre’s tradition when targeted by MAD’s “Usual Gang of Idiots” is simple: contact Tom Richmond directly and purchase a hand-drawn production artwork. This tradition was in play when his productions, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, were spoofed by the magazine. There was more. For both parodies, Lorre arranged to have his entire main cast sign oversized prints of the artwork to trade back to the artists, and even submitted to MAD the classic staged, "appalled" photo reaction to the spoof. The photo featured a mystery man hidden inside an Alfred E. Neuman costume, suspected, to this day, to be Lorre himself. 1 Larry Hagman Larry Hagman, famously known for playing the ruthless oil tycoon J.R. Ewing on Dallas and Major Anthony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, is certainly among TV’s most beloved villains. Off screen, however, he was an eccentric who would sign a fan’s shirt if they gave a good joke or a song. For Hagman, a good spoof was a compliment. Thus, it’s no surprise to learn that his devotion to MAD’s magazine stretches as far back as the 1950s! MAD put him on the cover of issue #223 in June 1981 as J.R. Ewing, and he was thrilled. Three issues later, he wrote that he immediately went out and bought 100 copies. The “Who shot J.R.?” became one of TV’s most spoofed catchphrases. Hagman even tried and failed to convince TV executives to let them write an official, live-action spoof movie of Dallas styled after the 1980 disaster-comedy Airplane!