What Makes a Movie Star?

And Why We Need New Ones

In 2023, National Research Group held a survey asking people which actors would get them to see a movie at the cinema. All of the actors named were over 40 years old and the vast majority of them are movie stars who broke through in the 80s and 90s.

The movie star is dying and that’s a problem, because it limits the kinds of movies which get made, stifles the careers of a lot of up and coming actors and makes the box office more vulnerable to flops. To solve these issues we need more movie stars, but the querstion is, how are they made?

In the past few years it’s not as if audiences have gone off actors as celebrities. Far from it. There are countless young and talented actors who are gaining widespread critical acclaim, leading box office hits and accruing massive social media followings. So why aren’t they movie stars?

Actors vs Stars

We all know the effect a movie star is supposed to have. Movie stars are actors whose name alone can put butts in seats at the cinema. They are actors who command huge fanbases and huge box office numbers. The question I want to ask is, why? What makes one actor a movie star and one actor a celebrity people like?

These days the big five Hollywood studios are all concerned with Intellectual Property. Recogniseable franchises with built in audiences which can be bought or traded between studios through deals and aquasitions. A lot of artsy fartsy types find this kind of corporate wheeling and dealing distasteful, but it’s not a huge leap from the age of Classical Hollywood.

Under the studios system of the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, the big five (who were a different big five back then) maintained their own roster of movie stars under strict contracts. Actors worked as salaried employees who were locked in with a single studio, but on rare occasions they were “loaned” out to other studios for a fee.

Not a million miles away from the modern IP driven Hollywood, except back then, movie stars were the IP. The restrictions and abuses inherent in the old studio system is the main reason it no longer exists, but it tells us a lot about how the notion of a movie star came to be.

A movie star was built around their appeal or in other words, their persona. Audiences went to see “the new Humphrey Bogart film.” They did this because Bogart came with his own persona or in other words his own brand. If you saw his name on a poster you generally knew what to expect, the same way you know what to expect when you see the name Star Wars on a poster these days.

The Movie Star Persona

Take Matt Damon for example. His breakthrough role was the eponymous Will Hunting: a working class Boston ruffian who happens to be a math prodigy. If you think about it, many of Damon’s most famous roles fit Will Hunting’s mould. Let’s look past the superficial and break down two key elements which make up Will Hunting as character.

He’s a juvenille delinquent with a history of violence and petty crime, but he’s also hiding a deep seated emotional trauma. His hostility is a defence mechanism created to shield his pain. He’s also a genius, the kind of gifted individual who only comes along once in a generation. He has a winning ticket to a wonderous life if only he can confront and overcome his anguish.

With this in mind we can type Will Hunting as “The Sensative Superman” - someone who is vulnerable and human, but possessing of an extraordinary ability of some kind.

Jason Bourne is the next obvious example here. He’s a super-spy with a vast array of impressive skills, but he’s also an amnesiac who is scared of his past and yearns for a normal life. He could probably beat James Bond to a pulp in a one on one fight, but ultimately he just wants a quiet life surrounded by his loved ones.

Mark Watney in The Martian (2015) is also another manifestation of the Sensitive Superman. He’s so smart and resourceful he can engineer his way out of the most desparate situations. Yet the loneliness of being trapped on Mars still gets to him and he tries to stay sane by jamming out to disco music.

If we’re generous we can apply this persona to other Damon roles like Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) - expert impersonator with an inferiority complex - and Max Da Costa in Elysium (2013) - a blue collar factory worker bolted into a super strength exo-skeleton - and so on.

This list of characters is extremely diverse in terms of looks, personality and drives, but they all fit into Matt Damon’s dominant movie star persona. The same applies to other big stars.

The aforementioned Humphrey Bogart was known as a witty charmer by way of ruthless gangster. Cary Grant was the impeccably dressed ladies man with a campy sense of humour. Audrey Hepburn was basically a real life Disney Princess.

Tom Hanks is the Out of the Ordinary Everyman: a decent regular guy who gets swept up in extraordinary events: Josh Baskin in Big (1988); Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump (1994); Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan (1998); Chuck Noland in Cast Away (2000); Captain Phillips in Captain Phillips (2013); James Donovan in Bridge of Spies (2015); Captain Ernest Krause in Greyhound (2020)- man this guy plays a lot of captains.

Brad Pitt is the Weirdo Cool Guy: handsome and charming, but also a little odd in some way: Joe Black in Meet Joe Black (1998); Tyer Durden in Fight Club (1999); John Smith in Mr and Mrs Smith (2005); Aldo Raine in Inglorious Basterds (2009); Ladybug in Bullet Train (2022)-

-I could go on…

The Franchise Casting Trap

These days there are plenty of actors who break through in a massive blockbuster, acrue a dedicated fanbase and lead many subsequent movies of equal size - think Chrises Pratt and Hemsworth - and yet they are not movie stars.

A crucial component to building a movie star persona is that the character an actor plays must be original. I’m willing to bet when you read through the list of characters played by Hanks and Pitt, you’d forgotten most of their names. That’s because a Tom Hanks movie is a Tom Hank movie, not a Chuck Noland movie, but a Spiderman movie is a Spiderman movie. Audiences certainly like Tom Holland as the web slinger, but when he vacates the role, that same audience will happily pay to watch another actor play the part.

This has created an odd situation where actors can star in the biggest box office hits of the decade, but anything outside of those franchises flops i.e poor Chris Hemsworth. People love seeing Hemsworth as Thor, but they can take him or leave him as Captain Mitch Nelson (I’ll let you Google what film that character is from).

The superheroes, Jedi Knights and MI6 agents of the movie world are characters who eclipse any actor. They have existed long before the actor is cast and will exist long after the actor has retired.

The brand has all the power, not the star.

The Social Media Trap

Social media is also partially to blame for the decline of the movie star. You would think that if an actor has millions of followers on Instagram or TikTok, those followers would naturally follow the star to the movie theatre. But remember that movie stars are made by their personas and many actors inadvertently build their personas on social media rather than across movies.

If an actor amasses legions of followers by being quirky and funny on Instagram, those followers won’t necessarily be interested in seeing that actor play a serious, tortured character in a movie. Take it from someone who runs a YouTube channel for a living; online audiences tend to stick with a niche.

A lot of modern actors dubbed movie stars by the media are actually very talented character actors with a large social media following.

The Movie Star Pipeline

With all that being said, let’s break down how to make a movie star:-

• Craft a persona around an actor; a type of character which suits their sensibilities as an artist and plays to their inherent traits as a person

• Introduce that persona in an original movie in either a leading or a supporting role

• If audiences respond strongly to that persona, give the actor more roles of the same type

If audiences continue to respond favourably and the actor leads a string of hits, then congradulations you have now made a new movie star.

Sounds simple right? Now let’s look at a few examples where it went wrong.

Jennifer Lawrence was on top of the world in the 2010s, leading two massive franchises - The Hunger Games and X-Men - and won acclaim with a string of indie hits like Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and Joy (2015). Despite all evidence to the contrary, however, she is not a movie star.

Lawrence established a strong persona, but in her interviews, not her movies. Her down to Earth adorkable relateability was a breath of fresh air for many viewers. She was known for her sense of humour, seeming lack of verbal filter and complete absence of pretension. Yet almost none of the roles she played fit this persona.

Her post franchise roles have revealed her as an extremely talented character actor in films like Red Sparrow (2018), Mother! (2017) and Don’t Look Up (2021) - all of which didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

It’s telling that when she teamed up with Chris Pratt (another franchise lead) in Passengers (2016), the two biggest actors on the planet that decade could barely push the original sci-fi/romance passed $300 million at the box office. Compare this to Tom Cruise - a real movie star - when he lead The Mummy the following year.

Despite a far worse reception, Cruise’s name on the poster - and his Crazy Action Man persona carried over from Mission Impossible - handily helped that film break $400 million before poor word of mouth crippled it.

Speaking of Mission Impossible, Henry Cavill seemed like a born movie star. The dude is supernaturally good looking and in interviews he has the suave reserved manner of a Hollywood legend like a Cary Grant or William Holden. Yet he is not a movie star.

Cavill’s breakout role as Superman in Man of Steel (2013) is a big reason why. In that role his good looks, rather than being attributed to the actor, simply made him a good fit to play a superhero. Mission Impossible Fallout (2018) and The Witcher (2019) came the closest to establishing a proper screen persona: a gruff man of action with a gravely voice and biceps so powerful they need reloading.

But after he left The Witcher and his promised return as Superman never came to pass, his other claims to fame - The Man From UNCLE (2015) and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) - didn’t catch on. In UNCLE Cavill was again playing an established character and as good as he was in the role, most viewers came away thinking, “Damn, Henry Cavill would make a great James Bond,” which is yet another pre-existing character.

Cavill’s fans love his mix of superhuman physique and unabashed nerdiness, but none of his film roles have carved out a proper screen persona for him. His next project - an adaptation of Warhammer 40K - probably won’t help matters.

And finally we have Austin Butler, someone who should be this generation’s James Deen, but instead will probably end up as Robert Pattinson 2.0 (which is not a bad thing, but it also won’t make him a movie star). Butler broke through playing Elvis and transformed himself completely to play Feyd Rautha in Dune Part Two (2024).

The one role where he could show off his classical Hollywood cowboy swagger was in The Bikeriders (2023), which no one saw. It might be worth noting that Bikeriders was lead by a trio of characters actors disguised as movie stars: Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer and Butler.

Why We Need Movie Stars

So the movie star has declined. So what? Why does it matter? It matters because movie stars are more than celebrities. They provide a crucial function in the film industry and serve as important cultural icons.

Looking back at Matt Damon’s and Tom Hanks’ screen personas, it’s worth noting how diverse their roles are. Damon’s Sensitive Superman can apply to grounded dramas, spy driven action/thrillers and science fiction epics alike. Hanks’ Out of the Ordinary Everyman has existed through warm family comedies, gritty wartime dramas and charming love stories.

Unlike a superhero, a movie star’s screen persona has a built in flexibility which allows the actor to take on a variety of roles and genres while still serving as a reliable brand for audiences to trust. Movie stars allow studios to take more risks on original projects. While there are only a handful of genuinely bullet proof film franchises, a healthy roster of stars can continusouly create new franchises and standalone hits.

But more crucially, movie stars put a human face on art. In a world of AI slop and committe approved remakes, reboots and sequels, movie stars can green light exciting original projects while reminding the audience that actual people are creating their art, not algorithms.

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