18 Years Ago, Hannah Waddingham’s First Movie Starring Megan Fox Got Near-Perfect Score from Roger Ebert

Long before Hannah Waddingham became Rebecca Welton on Ted Lasso, her first trip to the big screen came in a celebrity satire starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, and Megan Fox, and one of America’s most famous critics liked it far more than the critical consensus did. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People opened on October 3, 2008, with Waddingham appearing in a small role as Elizabeth Maddox. 

Roger Ebert awarded Robert B. Weide’s comedy an impressive 3.5 stars out of four, even as the film eventually settled at a decidedly chilly 36% Tomatometer. The disparity makes the film an intriguing footnote in Waddingham’s career. Critics at large saw a muddled celebrity comedy, while Ebert found enough wit in Pegg’s spectacularly self-destructive journalist to come within half a star of a perfect score.

Hannah Waddingham’s Film Debut Was Easy to Miss

Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios

Hannah Waddingham had already appeared on British television, including a 2002 episode of Coupling, before making her feature-film debut six years later in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. Her part as Elizabeth Maddox was minor, which explains why the movie rarely enters conversations about the actress who would later win an Emmy for Ted Lasso. She also walked into a surprisingly stacked ensemble. Simon Pegg plays Sidney Young, a British journalist hired by the fictional New York magazine Sharps. Stephen Woolley told Rotten Tomatoes that Sidney was deliberately abrasive, so casting depended on finding someone audiences would still enjoy watching:

Dunst plays the colleague Alison Olsen, Jeff Bridges is the editor Clayton Harding, while Fox plays the aspiring celebrity Sophie Maes, the glamorous starlet who immediately catches Sidney’s attention. Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar while promoting the film, Dunst said of Alison Olsen:

Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Max Minghella, and Miriam Margolyes round out the principal cast. The story was adapted from journalist Toby Young’s memoir, which chronicled his disastrous years working at Vanity Fair. The film fictionalizes that experience heavily, swapping Young for Sidney and Vanity Fair for Sharps while keeping the central joke intact: an abrasive outsider enters Manhattan’s celebrity machine and manages to offend nearly everyone who might help him succeed.

Roger Ebert Saw Something Most Critics Didn’t

Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios

Roger Ebert’s 3.5/4 rating looks especially striking beside the film’s current Rotten Tomatoes numbers: 36% from critics and 42% from audiences. RT’s consensus argues that Pegg performs well, but the adaptation leans too heavily on slapstick and loses the sharper satire of Young’s memoir. Ebert had a much warmer reaction. He called it “possibly the best movie” that could be made from Young’s exploits without earning an NC-17 rating, and argued that Pegg was ideally suited to play the fictionalized journalist. 

That enthusiasm did not translate into commercial success. Box Office Mojo lists a $28 million budget against roughly $19.2 million worldwide, including only $2.8 million domestically (via Box Office Mojo). Still, the movie has aged into a curious collision of careers. Fox was approaching the height of her late-2000s fame, Pegg was expanding beyond his British cult-comedy success, and Waddingham was making a barely noticed first step into cinema years before television turned her into an international star.

Ebert may have been far more generous than most critics, but 18 years later, his review gives Waddingham’s forgotten film debut a much better story than its box office ever did. Would you give How to Lose Friends & Alienate People another chance based on Ebert’s 3.5-star verdict, or does that 36% Tomatometer tell you everything you need to know? Drop your take below and follow FandomWire for more forgotten chapters from major stars’ careers.