Movie Careers

COP: You will be grizzled, liked by your peers but hated by your superiors. You've been called a screw-up, a has-been, but it never stops you from being the best darn cop in the universe. You've single-handedly put away more drug lords than the entire FBI combined. You don't do partners -- you're a loner. If you do do partners, they get kidnapped and die on you at a remarkable rate. If your partners don’t die on you, they exist solely for comedic value, like a goofy pet that follows you everywhere. Most likely, you've had a recent tragedy involving a spouse/kid/said partner that fuels your thirst for vengeance. The rules don't apply to you, they never apply to you. You have a license to kill and torture without following proper police procedure. You can peg a flea at 400 yards with your pistol, while jumping sideways into a tuck 'n roll. You operate more on instinct and gut feelings than any actual detective work. You will be the only one to have guessed the evil guy's master plan, but no one will believe you.

COP (LAPD SWAT team exception): You happen to belong to the complete underdog of the police world. As a highly-trained, specially skilled member of the LAPD SWAT team, you will be beaten up and killed at least once a week by rookie criminal elements. If a choice between relative success and certain death presents itself, you will run straight into the arms of the Grim Reaper every time.

WRITER (Comedy/Drama): You are one of the most creative people in the world. You live a charmed life, toting around a notebook on your various adventures. You've read more before breakfast than most people do in college. You never have writer's block, and every book you produce is destined to be a best-seller. If you're in college, you write and read a lot of bad poetry, but people love you anyway. The bottom line is: chicks go ga-ga for writers. Or guys, if you happen to be a girl.

WRITER (Stephen King Horror): You're in deep, deep trouble. Chances are you will shortly become the only champion of Good and Just Stuff as haunted hotels come to life, pets rise from the grave, and vampires stalk the night. If you do happen to make it out alive (not guaranteed), you will suffer dearly, but at least will have a good story to tell at dinner parties later on.

EX-COMMANDO: You were the Best of the Best, racking up honors and kills in Viet Nam/Persian Gulf/recent conflict. You've retired in seclusion, hiding out in a peaceful cabin in Montana somewhere. But when a serious situation arises, your ex-commander hunts you out to pull you back in for one final mission. You're an expert with any type of weapon, and can kill with a flick of the wrist. You feel compelled to quip out snappy one-liners after killing a bad guy in an ingenious fashion. When stabbed or shot, you wince as if stubbing a toe, then shake it off and don't make notice of it again. One of you is the equivalent of a 12,000-man brigade, since you operate in God Mode.

COLLEGE STUDENT: You've never attended a class in your life. You exist to party, party, party. You major in the opposite sex. You fill your free time with stunts and pranks involving the establishment and antagonistic jerks. Don't worry about anything; you'll graduate no matter what.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA: You're incredibly charismatic and charming, and have a commanding presence that makes the audience wish they voted for you in the last election even though, technically, you don't exist. You make all the smart decisions and they all turn out perfectly. You get to ride in big black cars and use your intimidating power to make others bend to your will. In the end, all it takes is one inspiring speech to make everything right in the world once more.

SCULPTOR: You're a woman. Creative and artistic, you have an outer beauty that's astonishing, but prefer to hide away in your garage making bizarre sculptures that symbolize love, life and the human spirit, yet look like utter crap. You exist to provide others with companionship, and hopefully to get a sugar daddy for you, since no one in their right mind will buy your monuments symbolizing whale snot.

SPACE EXPLORER: You're a highly trained astronaut and scientist, but all that is for naught since you'll quickly transform into a shoot-first, dissect-later meathead. Expect for your space vessel to break down and become a floating deathtrap within minutes, no matter how technologically advanced it might be. Soon, you'll be hunting dangerous aliens (there are no other kind), and probably be betrayed by a stupid/traitorous shipmate. The only difference between you and soldier-types is that you get slightly more inventive with ways to kill the baddies. Complain at least once about the food during your voyage.

SCIENTIST (Nutty Inventor): You're brilliant beyond your years -- Albert Einstein is a drooling four-year-old compared to you -- but naturally, your peers all hate you, and you cannot win their respect. You operate out of a sophisticated lab that most likely is located in your house, and use your family as test subjects for any new bit of inventiveness that comes along, even if it means shrinking them to an inch high or sending them back in time. Your look: wide eyes, white lab coat, wild hair, and calculator always in hand. INFALLABLE RULE: If you think of a crazy, "it just might work" plan on the spot, and it has something vaguely to do with science, you'll make it work in the next two minutes no matter what.

SCIENTIST (Evil): You want to take over/destroy the world, and science is the only thing you're good at. Your motto is: if there's a simple way to kill someone, I don't want to hear about it. Instead of a gun, you'd rather build an elaborate contraption to ensnare your opponent and take him apart one molecule at a time. You have a strange sidekick who looks and talks very strangely, yet accomplishes almost nothing other than adoring your immense genius. By the laws of movie justice, you will die in a device of your own making. Tough luck.

TEACHER: By movie law, you are single, yet attractive and highly desirable. You are also the only teacher in the country who can understand kids and speak their secret language. Despite being very effective and inspirational, you're invariably forced to teach at an inner city crack house where 15 students are killed every day, you are beat up in the classroom regularly, and you have enough funds to barely afford paper. Used paper. Fighting overwhelming odds, you give promising students the opportunity to achieve genius. Your forte is giving motivational speeches, because you simply love to hear yourself talk. By the end of the film you will have fallen under attack by the administration, but your students will stage some ridiculously grandiose show of support that will enable you to keep your job.

SPORTS PLAYER: You've been playing for a minor league/prison/JV sports team, and have finally been given the chance to prove yourself in the big leagues. Of course, you're a total screw up and no one believes in you except for the really cute waitress/cheerleader who inexplicably falls for you. The only way you survive as a player is your undiscovered genius (which will be discovered in a pivotal moment) and the fact that every one of your teammates is more neurotic than you. Again, your motivational speeches are the key element to your team's success; it has nothing to do with actual game play. At least once you will be kicked off the team or quit, but come back to it seeming more heroic than ever. Rules? What rules? You don't acknowledge the rules, forget playing by them. The victory of the most important game will rest squarely on your shoulders, and you will invariably try something new and crazy and groundbreaking, but it'll work anyway.

HORROR MOVIE HEROINE: If you star in a horror movie before 1995, you scream a lot and fall into all the clichés of horror films. If you star in a horror movie after 1995, you're self-aware of the horror film clichés, but fall into them anyway. Long story short, you're an idiot, but people feel sorry for you, so you typically survive. All of your friends, however, are dog meat.

HIGH SCHOOLER: For a 16-year old, you speak with the vocabulary of a Harvard graduate and make constant references to Shakespeare. And you're either popular and misunderstood, or rich and misunderstood, or a geek and misunderstood, or a jock and misunderstood. The central axis of your life is dating and romance, which is not far off from actual teenage life. The person you fall for will be the exact social opposite, and your love will cause a rift greater than Romeo and Juliet's did. You worship the Almighty Prom, which will solve all of your problems (granted that you take the right date and have an opportunity to show off your dancing skills and get to humiliate your worst opponent and are crowned prom king/queen).

COMPANY CEO: You are as dumb as your paperweight, you surround yourself with "yes men", and you stand a high chance to be impressed/usurped by the mail room clerk. You're probably in the middle of some lucrative deal that will benefit your company while hurting countless others in ways that not even C'thulu, Squid of the Underdark could dream of. Prepare to see this deal fall through if just one moralistic person who works for you kidnaps you to show you your wrongdoing, or else wise drags their 4-year old girl up to the boardroom to beg you to stop with tears in her eyes.

LAWYER: You're wet behind the ears, extremely attractive and a Southern gentleman. Despite being fresh out of law school, you will be given your first major court case, in which you will have to defend an obviously innocent client against many seasoned, tobacco industry-supported attorneys. You have little time to obey the nuances of most legal proceedings, relying upon surprise witnesses, last minute revelations and moving speeches above any actual research into "facts" and "laws." You will win.

ROCK STAR: Expect to run the entire gambit of every VH1’s "Where Are They Now?" specials: your humble beginnings, your rise to fame, your eventual selling out to The Man, your turning on your friends, your fall into drugs and alcohol and loneliness, and your eventual redemption.

BANK ROBBER: Even though you break the law and take what is not rightfully yours, somehow you justify this with a winning smile and a brash rationalization. You’re just about the nicest person in the world, more than all nuns and missionaries combined. When you rob a bank, you’re polite, you only use blanks in your gun, and you even take time out of your schedule to woo an attractive teller. The law that chases you, however, will be cruel and not as understanding of your innocent crimes.