Alan Rickman is just one of a number of notable stars who seem to have very badly wanted to be part of the big-budget adaptation of the absurdist classic.

The book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, the first novel in a long series, is rightly considered a masterpiece of science fiction and absurdist humor. And though the 2005 film adaptation did have a very large budget, that alone can't explain the number of high-profile stars who appeared in the film briefly or, more accurately, not at all.

Alan Rickman is a major film star, both in his native Britain and over here. North American audiences know him as Prof. Snape in the "Harry Potter" films or as the villainous Hans Gruber in "Die Hard" (1988).

But in "The Hitchhiker's Guide," he put in a very small part as the voice of the android Marvin. His voice was digitally altered to sound more robotic, but not so much that you can't hear all the pathos Rickman puts into it (Marvin is, in fact, a paranoid android).

Among the other big stars putting in small performances were TV great Stephen Fry (most recently seen as Prime Minister Davies in the miniseries "24: Live Another Day") as the narrator, Helen Mirren as the voice of the computer Deep Thought, and "Sherlock" star and executive producer Mark Gatiss as "additional Vogon voices" (Vogons are aliens, if you didn't guess that already).

American film star Jason Schwartzman ("Rushmore," 1998) put in a seconds-long, uncredited performance as Gag Halfrunt (a character who is more important in the later books, which have not yet made into films).

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