“I AM BIG. IT’S THE PICTURES THAT GOT SMALL,” Norma Desmond famously griped in “Sunset Blvd.” Now the reverse appears to be the rule: The pictures have gotten oversized while the stars are shrinking.
Although big names always have dominated the summer movie lineup, in past years those names might have been Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson. This year they’re “The Matrix,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Hulk” and “The Terminator.”
So everyone’s excited about “The Matrix Reloaded,” but few are on pins and needles anticipating Keanu Reeves’ next move. Will anyone miss Vin Diesel in “The Fast and the Furious” sequel or notice that the bland Paul Walker — and not a souped-up car — is listed as the star? What does it say about the unique talents of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels when New Line thinks they can be replaced with unknown look-alikes for another “Dumb and Dumber” movie? (Probably that New Line doesn’t know what it’s doing, though that’s just a hunch.)
Where have all the true stars gone?
Even most of the established stars appearing in movies this summer are seeking career jump-starts. Carrey is trying to rebound from the flop “The Majestic” with the throwback comedy “Bruce Almighty.” Eddie Murphy is trying to rebound from the flops “I Spy” and “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” with the kiddie comedy “Daddy Day Care.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to rebound from the flop “Collateral Damage” with a third “Terminator” movie. Harrison Ford is trying to rebound from the flop “K-19: The Widowmaker” by partnering with up-and-comer Josh Hartnett in the cop action-comedy “Hollywood Homicide.”
Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu have had spotty track records since the last “Charlie’s Angels” — and comeback-hungry Demi Moore has joined them for the sequel. Will Smith is trying to rebound from the disappointing “Ali” by making a “Bad Boys” sequel with a slumping Martin Lawrence. Sylvester Stallone is trying to rebound from the last decade by playing a villain in “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.”
At the same time, younger actors are attempting to cement their star status, with Reese Witherspoon starring in a “Legally Blonde” sequel rather than a film that might stretch her considerable talents. Likewise, Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie is repeating herself in another “Lara Croft Tomb Raider” movie.
In contrast, Tobey Maguire, after donning the Spider-Man suit to record box-office numbers last summer, will ride the racehorse “Seabiscuit” in one of this summer’s few high-profile, non-franchise films. Then again, if Sony considered Maguire so integral to the success of “Spider-Man,” it wouldn’t have briefly entertained the notion of replacing him with Jake Gyllenhaal for its upcoming sequel. Meanwhile, Australian Eric Bana is poised for a breakthrough in “The Hulk,” but that movie’s real star is a computer-generated, not-so-jolly green giant.
Several of today’s reigning stars will have movies out toward the end of the year, including Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman (she’s in three), Denzel Washington, Cruise and Roberts. Still, the summer is the studios’ crowd-pleasing season, and the predominance of franchises over marquee performers adds to the growing perception that Hollywood isn’t generating stars like it used to. The theories are as numerous as this summer’s sequels.
Actors as movie stars
First, let’s establish what we’re talking about. Not all great actors are movie stars, and vice versa. Performers such as Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe became stars by applying their appealing personas to movie after movie. Others, such as Katharine Hepburn and, later, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, achieved stardom through versatility.
“I think there are always actor parts, and then there are movie-star parts, and an actor’s always an actor until he does a movie-star part,” said producer Lynda Obst (“How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days”). “Jude Law is an actor, but we’re all waiting for him to become a movie star, and we know he will be. Daniel Day-Lewis — actor, but there’s a movie star residing there.”
One could argue that Crowe combines Gable’s he-man magnetism with Hoffman’s range, that Kidman mixes old-school glamor with canny role choices as well as anyone in decades, that Hugh Grant, Washington and George Clooney at times approach Cary Grant’s charm. But, accusations of nostalgia aside, many others would argue that when the current and earlier eras go head-to-head in the aura department, the present day rarely wins.
Film critic/historian Leonard Maltin cited last year’s “Charade” remake, “The Truth About Charlie,” in which Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton took Cary Grant’s and Audrey Hepburn’s roles. “I like Mark Wahlberg, and I like Thandie Newton, but when I hear the names Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton, my heart doesn’t skip a beat,” Maltin said.”And I don’t know if they affect anybody that way. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn . . . that film is built in large part on their charisma, individually and collectively. You can call it star power, you can call it magnetism, whatever you want. They had it.”
Lloyd Leipzig, a 50-year film biz veteran and former publicity senior vice president at Orion and United Artists, complained that today’s stars are too cocooned from the outside world.
Real people
“John Wayne was real. You knew what he was and what he stood for,” Leipzig said. “Now it seems to me that the Ben Afflecks and Johnny Depps are surrounded by a cordon of publicists, lawyers, agents, what have you. I find it hard to believe they’re human beings. I wonder if Jennifer Lopez is a real human being. I think that the public would embrace them more if they were more real.”
Affleck and Lopez, who co-star in this summer’s love story “Gigli” (as well as Kevin Smith’s fall release “Jersey Girl”), have become the poster children for celebrities propelled largely by hype. They’re both very famous, but movie stars used to be associated with great performances or great movies, and neither Affleck nor Lopez can claim much distinction in these areas: His best work has come in small-scale films such as “Chasing Amy,” “Bounce” and “Changing Lanes” — he’s at his worst in money machines such as “Armageddon” and “Daredevil” — while Lopez’s performance peak was Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” rather than the more calculated commercial projects that followed.
“I think someone may become a media phenomenon, and we can confuse that with a movie phenomenon,” Obst said, referring to the pair.Then again, Entertainment Weekly editor-at-large Mark Harris noted, “If Ben Affleck were making great movies right now, I don’t think the romance would be a problem.”
Yet the couple’s romance has been so public that audiences may deem the movie a rerun. Affleck and Lopez are far from the only stars whose celebrity may overwhelm their work. Stars’ images weren’t any truer back when the studios were feeding stories to Photoplay and other movie magazines, but the explosion of media outlets has spurred performers to saturate TV talk shows, magazine covers, Internet sites and other areas.
“I guess the difference is that in the `old days’ these stars were built up to be larger than life,” said Maltin, who co-hosts the syndicated movie review show “Hot Ticket.” “And we all bought into that. They weren’t appearing on `Oprah’ or Jay [Leno] and Dave [Letterman]. They did publicity then, too, but it was much more controlled and much less pervasive than it is today. That’s kind of why I admire Jack Nicholson. As much as I’d love to do an interview with him, I admire him for staying out of that limelight because it creates a mystique.”
Remaining mysterious
“I think mystery is kind of great,” said actress Rachel Weisz (“The Mummy,” “The Shape of Things”). “I don’t know anything about Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner — not really — and I like that. I love watching their movies because they’re my personal movie stars. I don’t know what they eat and who their trainer is.”
In contrast, Robert De Niro has gone from being a media recluse to an interview circuit regular. “The minute that happened, he became an ordinary guy, which is what he is: an ordinary guy with extraordinary talent,” Maltin said.
But there are signs that the media may be burning out on movie stars as well. “I think we’re less likely to simply put a movie star on the cover because he or she is a big movie star,” said Harris of Entertainment Weekly. “My hunch is that’s something we have in common with a lot of other magazines that cover entertainment.
“I think we’ve all learned from just how badly the market got oversaturated with movie-star covers in the mid ’90s that overexposure is not good for anyone — not good for the stars, not good for the magazines. In a way that’s why when a Colin Farrell and a Reese Witherspoon come along, you suddenly see them on the cover of every single magazine in America. I think there’s desperation for new blood.”
The movies themselves may have changed as much as the media. For instance, De Niro’s descent into regular-guyhood coincided with his participation in more blatantly user-friendly movies such as “Analyze That,” “Meet the Parents” and, less fortunately, “Showtime.”
De Niro’s generation was elevated through tough-minded yet popular dramas of the late ’60s and early ’70s, but since then the divide has grown between the commercially viable and artistically adventurous. Thus Witherspoon became a star with “Legally Blonde” and “Sweet Home Alabama,” not “Election” or “Freeway.” Maguire became a star with “Spider-Man,” not “The Cider House Rules” or “The Ice Storm.” Leonardo DiCaprio became a star through “Titanic,” not “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” (though “Romeo + Juliet,” which was artistic and commercial, helped).
“It’s just a particularly difficult time for the actor,” said Bob Rafelson, who directed Nicholson’s breakthrough leading-man performance in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970). “An actor has to become established doing one of those [high-concept] pictures.”
Not everyone considers the state of today’s stars to be problematic. “When people start talking about `movie stars aren’t what they used to be,’ I think what they’re really saying is `We’re sick of seeing the same people in the same kinds of roles over and over,'” Harris said. “I think people are still really jazzed by someone who comes along who shows them something they feel like they haven’t quite seen before or in a long time. I don’t hear anyone complaining about Hugh Jackman.”
Maltin noted that ascendant actors should look to Nicholson and Gene Hackman, who didn’t hit it big until their 30s. “These are actors who became stars over the course of time because their talent was just so huge, and I think that can happen in time for some of the young actors,” Maltin said.
Obst said she’s encouraged by the number of young female performers who have shown box-office muscle, such as Julia Stiles, Witherspoon and the Kates (Hudson, Bosworth and Beckinsale). “There are actually more and more female stars and few male stars than before,” she said. “There are more women who can open movies now than at any time I’ve been in the business. You haven’t seen that same replenishment in the stock of men.”
To Obst, the biggest difference between now and the olden days is that stars are “more individuated. They’re more in control of their own image. They’re more in control of their idea of glamor. They don’t work in service of the studio; they work in service of their own careers.”
But Debbie Reynolds doesn’t see the 1960s downfall of the studio system, under which performers and filmmakers were contractually bound to studios, as a good thing. “They used to say, `Bogart, you’re going to finish this picture on Thursday, and you’re going to start this other picture on Friday,'” the veteran actress said. “He’d say, `I’m too tired.’ `Well, you’re going to do it anyway because it’s a great picture about a gangster.’ Everything was lined up.
“They wanted us to stay big stars. We were given those great roles. We didn’t have to go buy them. We didn’t have to option books. We didn’t have to develop them. We didn’t have to be producers. Today, Goldie Hawn has to be a producer, Sandra Bullock has to be a producer. Tom Cruise has to be a producer. Tom Hanks has to be a producer.”
In her mind, the star power is there, but delivering it has become harder.
“I think Tom Cruise is very gifted,” Reynolds said. “Brad Pitt is very gifted, a wonderful young actor. Leo DiCaprio is very good. Matt Damon — they’re all talented. Every generation has talent. God is not going to slight a generation. The talent will be there. It’s just who develops it. We don’t have the star system. We don’t have the Golden Era anymore. We didn’t pass on the flame.”
