‘CSI’ Is 25! See the Celebrity Guest Stars You Forgot Appeared on the Show

Taylor Swift

How do you land a guest-starring role on your favorite TV show? If you’re Swift, you ask nicely. In 2009, the “Cruel Summer” singer was 19 when she portrayed troubled teen Haley Jones on season 9.

The “Turn, Turn, Turn” episode opened with a young, brunette woman (Swift) lying dead in the motel’s parking lot. As the episode progressed, her character reappeared, and we learned how she became a murder victim and witness to another slaying at the motel.

Swift shared that appearing on the series was a dream come true and that she was delighted to play opposite her “favorite character,” Nick Stokes (George Eads).

“For about three years I’ve been saying to everyone that my favorite show is CSI,” Swift told former Rolling Stone journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis — who profiled Swift for her very first cover at the time — in March 2009.

Later, in December 2023, Grigoriadis released the original Rolling Stone interview with the superstar as part of a four-part series on Swift’s rise to pop superstardom for Grigoriadis’ Infamous podcast.

“I’m black-haired, have a nose ring, earrings, spikes, combat boots …” Swift told Grigoriadis of her character. “And you end up figuring out that there’s this whole back story, and that my parents had a child that ended up dying, and I was the second replacement child. And my mom never really loved me … and there are so many different intricate storylines that come into play.”

Justin Bieber

Beliebers everywhere tuned in to see the singer make his acting debut on the season 11 premiere in 2010 as Jason McCann, a serial bomber with a vendetta against the cops. He reprised the role later on in the season for the episode “Targets of Obsession.”

“He was huge back then,” CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker told PEOPLE in September 2015. “We brought in a bunch of new viewers for us during that time. We don’t really get starstruck in the business, but it’s just really fun to kind of have somebody that huge on the globe to come do the show.”

While Bieber’s performance as the brainwashed teen earned him positive attention from fans and critics, it was his backstage antics that earned him a spot as one of CSI’s most memorable guest stars of all time — at least for the cast and crew.

“He locked our line producer in the closet. He put his hands on a crew cake and [squished the frosting],” Zuiker recalled. “He was riding a skateboard while holding on to the tram at the studios. He came to sign his contract without his parents there, with two friends from Canada.”

Zuiker added, “I know that he was a little lippy here and there. We definitely did not want him back. He had to apologize to the crew when coming back, which he did. He left in good graces, but boy, we didn’t like him for a bit.”

Michael B. Jordan

Long before Michael B. Jordan starred in the Black Panther and Creed franchises, one of his earliest roles was on CSI as Morris Calvin, a member of a rap group caught in the middle of a fatal feud, on the season 6 episode “Poppin’ Tags.”

Real-life musicians and recognizable actors also made appearances on the 2006 episode, including former married couple Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler, Kat Graham and Method Man, along with Akon as himself (though uncredited).

Jordan — who previously had recurring roles on The Wire and All My Children — went on to have guest spots on other procedurals such as Without a Trace, Cold Case, Bones and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He then became a series regular on seasons 4 and 5 of Friday Night Lights and seasons 2 and 3 of Parenthood.

Dakota Fanning

Not long after making her TV acting debut on ER at age 6, Fanning stole the show in 2000 on season 1 of CSI. She played Brenda Collins, a young girl traumatized by the quadruple murder of her parents and two brothers while she and her sister (though that’s a whole to-be-discovered can of worms), Tina Collins (Allison Lange), were home.

Despite her young age, Fanning showcased deep emotions in the episode and uttered a short but iconic line: “The buffalo.”

The “Blood Drops” episode has gone down as one of the most disturbing in the series’ history, and Zuiker called it “by far the writer’s number one CSI show of all time,” per the synopsis on Paramount+.

John Mayer

In 2006, John Mayer appeared on the season 7 premiere “Built to Kill, Part 1” doing what he does best: setting the mood on stage at a Vegas nightclub.

Mayer performed two songs off his 2006 album, Continuum, “Waiting on the World to Change” and “Slow Dance in a Burning Room.” On the episode and its counterpart, “Built to Kill, Part 2,” Danny Bonaduce starred as a former rock star whose murder was being investigated.

Ozzy Osbourne

Plenty of singers have appeared on CSI, including Swift, Bieber, The Who frontman Roger Daltrey and American Idol alum Jordin Sparks. However, there could only be one Prince of Darkness in Sin City. In 2013, the late rocker Ozzy Osbourne made a cameo as himself on the season 13 finale “Skin in the Game,” which centered on a serial killer inspired by Dante’s Inferno.

The episode kicked off with Black Sabbath debuting the world premiere of their new song, “…End of the Beginning,” followed by a brief scene of the singer chatting with a reporter named John Merchiston (James Callis), who’s about to follow D.B. Russell (Ted Danson) around for three days.

In a 2013 behind-the-scenes CBS interview with his bandmates Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi, Ozzy said, “I’m not an actor,” but noted that his time on set was “good fun.” Two well-known actors also appeared on the episode as guest stars: Eric Roberts and Tim Matheson.

Sharon Osbourne

Ozzy wasn’t the only Osbourne to appear on CSI — his wife, Sharon Osbourne, made her acting debut on the series in 2014.

The former co-host of The Talk portrayed Elise Massey, a high-powered manager of a billiards championship, on the season 15 episode “Dead Rails.”

“I play a naughty woman, a madam who might be involved in a murder, so I loved the part,” Sharon told Hello! in January 2015. “It was very intense to work on because I’m used to messing around when I work, and this time I was working with a group of serious actors and producers and the director, and they don’t want to hear somebody giggling and saying stupid things, so I learned very quickly to keep my mouth shut.”

Sharon added, “I don’t think they enjoyed my presence. I think they thought I was a weird one!”

Amanda Seyfried

Amanda Seyfried got her start on the soap operas As the World Turns and All My Children before her star-turning role on the big screen in 2004’s Mean Girls.

No stranger to procedurals, having appeared on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Seyfried was featured on season 6’s “Rashomama” in 2006 — one of the more experimental entries in the CSI canon, featuring poetic uses of color to illustrate how the detectives each feel about the concept of weddings.

The episode followed the murder of Diane Chase, a criminal defense attorney whose body was dragged behind a convertible as her son and his new wife drove off following their nuptials. Seyfried portrayed Lacey Finn, one of the bridesmaids suspected of killing Diane. Other familiar faces popped up on the episode, including Twin Peaks star Ray Wise and comedian Chris Hardwick.

John Krasinski

In January 2005, just two months before The Office premiered on NBC, John Krasinski had his turn on CSI on the season 5 episode “Who Shot Sherlock?”

A very different role than the charming trickster and nice guy Jim Halpert from The Office, Krasinski appeared as Lyle Davis, a cagey man suspected of murdering his roommate, Cory. The part wasn’t a lengthy one — the Jack Ryan star’s screen time clocked in under two minutes.

Liev Schreiber

Liev Schreiber was already a Tony Award-winner when he joined CSI for a four-episode arc on season 7 in 2007. The Ray Donovan star joined as Michael Keppler, a troubled Baltimore-based crime scene investigator who replaced crime lab supervisor Gil Grissom (William Petersen) during Grissom’s teaching sabbatical.

“At first, I was terrified. I hadn’t done any television, not because I was against television, but mostly I was afraid of the contracts,” Schreiber told The Early Show’s former co-anchor Julie Chen at the time. “I have kind of a two-month attention span, and I figured if I get locked into one of those, I would be dead.”

Schreiber added, “But it’s been one of the best shows on television for about five years now. And I figure when those people at that level are asking you to do something, you have [to] take it seriously.”

Keppler was meant to be a temporary character, and things certainly went that way — he died after being shot on the episode “Law of Gravity,” which also saw Grissom’s return. Zuiker described the episode in the synopsis on Paramount+ as a “hidden gem in the CSI library.”

Jason Segel

By the time Jason Segel was cast on CSI, he was already known for his work on the small screen on Freaks and Geeks. The actor appeared on three non-consecutive episodes of the procedural during season 5 as fingerprint tech Neil Jansen.

Neil made his first appearance on “Mea Culpa.” After Grissom took the stand in a restaurant owner’s murder trial, he consulted Neil for his expertise after a fingerprint mysteriously appeared on a matchbox that had been sealed in a plastic evidence bag.

Segel’s last stint on the show was on “Iced,” which originally aired on May 12, 2005, featuring Billy Gardell. He then moved on to his starring role on How I Met Your Mother, the CBS sitcom that would make Segel a household name.

Jeremy Renner

A far cry from suiting up as Hawkeye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Jeremy Renner got his turn on CSI  in 2001 on season 2’s “Altar Boys.” Renner played Roger Jennings, a pizza parlor worker with a deep rap sheet accused of forcing his brother, Ben Jennings (Corbin Allred), to bury two dead bodies for him.