For about a decade, it seemed like we were living in an age without young, male movie stars.
While up-and-coming actresses like Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larson and Emma Stone were dominating the 2010s, the industry seemed remarkably unprepared to choose successors to middle-aged stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Christian Bale — leading to some Weird, onscreen age gap. In 2013, quite a few publication Christian Gray announced a “leading man crisis” in response to the search for an actor to play the role. Fifty Shades of Grey series, which infamously went to Irish actor Jamie Dornan.
In this current boy-obsessed era of Hollywood, the idea that there was a shortage of young, male actors seems inconceivable. Since Timothée Chalamet’s 2017 breakout critical darling call by your name And LadybirdThe industry has experienced a deluge of male talent in their 20s and 30s, who have led the most iconic films, dominant Reward conversationAnd dating hot woman celebrity. This list of in-demand actors includes Austin Butler, Glenn Powell, Josh O’Connor, Jeremy Allen White, Callum Turner, Mike Faist, Jacob Ellordy, Harris Dickinson and Irish heartthrobs Paul Meskal and Barry Keohane. They’re also a favorite on social media, where cinephiles and otherwise horny users come up with new ways to categorize their “internet boyfriends” every week. (The last categorization is curiously “hot rat.”)
Looking at this new wave of prospects, one thing is undeniable: the vast majority of them are white. While the individual actors can be exciting, the lack of diversity seems to suggest an inspired, narrow future for Hollywood.
On top of that, it is not clear whether these guys are actual movie stars. After all, a movie star doesn’t just lead a movie; A movie star can only sell a movie to the audience in their name.
It’s hard to deny the appeal of many of these young actors. In a short span of time, Butler has proven his dynamism in films Elvis And Dune Part IIPowell is said to have brought back the rom-com with it Anyone but you And hit manAnd Mescal and O’Connor feel like callbacks to James Dean, representing a more sensitive, internal kind of masculinity — a lot. The Rage of Jerry Seinfeld. But is the search for the next Tom Cruise really exciting when most of our options are white?
What happened to the next great, non-white movie star?
The 90s and early aughts are often referred to by film critics and cinephiles as the last movie-star era. Before Hollywood’s IP takeover, A-listers like George Clooney, Denzel Washington, and Tom Hanks could draw moviegoers based solely on their beauty, talent, charisma, and in some cases, their personal lives. It doesn’t matter if the projects they’ve starred in have particularly compelling plots or if they’ve given A+ performances. In many cases, it was enough that the audience was able to spend several hours watching their favorite faces on a huge screen.
In our current post-Marvel landscape, it’s harder than ever to distinguish working actors from real movie stars. (Prior to consecutive box-office successes Wonka And Dune Part IIThis one is done A popular topic of debate Related to Chalamet.) A popular explanation for this phenomenon is that IPs have replaced “star vehicles”. Iconic superheroes, toys and resurrected characters from previous franchises are becoming the main attraction for audiences instead of playing famous people.
“There’s an argument that the system doesn’t make Chris Evans a star,” says Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi, who also covers the film. “It makes Chris Evans as Captain America and people want to see Captain America.”
Looking at Evans’ post-Captain America Filmography, it feels right. Beyond 2019 Knife out — of which he was one piece of a larger ensemble — most of his non-Marvel ventures have flown under the radar. Hadadi also notes thor It stars Chris Hemsworth and the latest Spider-Man, Tom Holland, as two actors whose career paths outside of the MCU “didn’t hit quite the same.”
On the upside, Marvel helped a few actors rise to stardom during its heyday in the 2010s — specifically, black actors. In 2018, black leopard Elevated the late Chadwick Boseman from a man in biopics to a household name. Boseman’s co-star Winston Duke will lead another major studio film, Jordan Peele our. and Michael B. Jordan’s performance as Killmonger arguably established him as a bona fide movie star. religion.
Excitement all around black leopard It seemed like an indication of where Hollywood was headed in the mid-to-late 2010s. Following the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in 2015, industry bodies pledged to strive towards racial equality. This call for inclusion led the Academy of Motion Pictures to diversify its voting body. In 2023, the company also announced Representation and inclusion standards, which drew some public criticism for its minimal requirements. Although it focused on women in the industry as a response to the #MeToo movement, the Time’s Up campaign in 2018 also played a role in making diversity and inclusion a bigger talking point. By 2017, the Obama-era sentiment “representation matters” had become a popular rallying point and subject of accepted discourse online.
On a surface level, there was Hollywood Starting to look a lot different, with some of the buzzest movies starring men of color. It seemed like we no longer had to rely on older veterans like Washington, Jamie Foxx and Will Smith to lead blockbusters. In 2016, the Oscar-winning film moonlight Trevante Rhodes, Andre Holland, Jarrell Jerome and already-familiar face Mahershala Ali highlight the talent. And in 2017, Ex Skins Actor Daniel Kaluuya wins his first film role in Jordan Peele Go away. same year, Crazy Rich Asian Henry Goulding made a rare Asian romantic lead in a studio film and starred comedian Kumail Nanjiani. big sick.
Overall, though, Hollywood hasn’t been as inclusive as it seems in the last decade of activism. Last year, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative revealed that Hollywood was mostly stagnant in terms of inclusion from 2017 to 2022.
“Hollywood has a way of mocking attempts at real racial inclusion,” says the University of Georgia associate professor. Marian Erigha. “The call for racial diversity is addressed through a series of symbolic performances. Meanwhile, the mechanisms leading to racial discrimination remain entrenched.”
Hollywood also tends to shy away when it comes to putting non-white men in blockbusters, even as audiences repeatedly prove they want to see them. Instead, black and other non-white actors were constantly labeled as “unbankable” in foreign markets by studio executives. in his book Hollywood Jim Crow, Erigha wrote that “is assumed to have an inherent disadvantage” which is “biased assumptions that place disproportionate weight on foreign-market revenues.” More recently, however, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence once again proved this theory false. their movie Bad Boys: Ride or Die acquired $105 million at the global box officeA remarkable victory in one year Summer movie flops.
This new, mostly white crop is still in its wait-and-see era
The question of who gets a chance in Hollywood is primarily in the hands of the studios. However, it’s hard to deny the power of the internet in bringing out the demand for male talent and turning them into major characters in pop culture.
Stan’s conversations on platforms like X and TikTok have made discussing male actors a hobby, whether it’s selecting a “white boy of the month” or labeling sensitive men.baby girl,” or following which books Jacob Elordi is reading. However, it’s hard not to marvel at the obvious exclusionary quality of the “white boy of the month” meme, even if it’s good fun. For the most part, white actors — with the exception of Charles Melton, Pedro Pascal and Oscar Isaac, two in their late 40s — are largely absent from these viral moments and overt acts of fangirling.
It’s also important to separate the laundry list of “Internet boyfriends” from actors who are ready — or even deserve — to be movie stars. Sometimes, they overlap, as in the case of Chalamet or Butler. You could say the same thing about Glenn Powell, for example, who worked quietly in Hollywood for years, women not fawning over him. Now, he is being described as Heir to Tom Cruise and a A modern day Cary Grant. For some, the art’s passionate push feels a little earned to him.
“I can’t say what Glenn Powell did,” said film critic Murtada Elfadl “But the internet is obsessed with him. i have met Top Gun 2And I don’t remember him at all. But he has a lot of machinery behind him, and someone decided that he should meet at this moment.”
That same machine does not seem to work liberally for colored men. The last example of a black actor who had nearly that power was Jonathan Majors, who made a huge splash. Religion III And Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumia Last year. He was slated for several other major projects until his career took an abrupt derailment due to an assault conviction. The apparent end of Majors’ Marvel career is no mystery (or loss), though it came quickly, especially compared to DC’s efforts to rehabilitate Ezra Miller, who has been accused of starting fights and even grooming children.
Across Hollywood, though, there are plenty of non-white actors who are consistently employed but seem to be appearing less and less in major projects. It says a lot that the industry seemingly has no obvious backup ready to fill Major’s void in the MCU, outside of Anthony Mackie’s upcoming turn. Captain America.
“It’s just these white men because nobody pushes anybody else,” Elfadl said. “I don’t know what Calvin Harrison Jr. is doing. I don’t know what Aaron Pierre is doing. I think these are people who should be taken seriously.” Pierre and Harrison Jr. played Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., respectively, in the latest National Geographic Genius The miniseries, however, did not create much fanfare.
That’s not to say there isn’t still excitement around someone like now-Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya — though his output is noticeably less frequent than that of certain in-demand white actors. Elfadol argues that Kaluuya seems “more like a Daniel Day-Lewis” than a Brad Pitt, taking on predominantly “serious” roles. Still, one wonders at the quantity (and quality) of the parts he’s being offered. The same question surrounds Kaluuya’s partner Skins Alumnus Dev Patel, who thinks he’s only given one shot every few years to act in something. More recently, he has turned to directing and acting in his own films, monkey man.
Still, after last year’s WGA and SAG strikes, studio executives haven’t given moviegoers much hope that the industry will at least look at Diverse as it was just a few years ago, because Wall Street-driven billionaires are less creative and more stubborn in their decision-making than ever before. In a smarter, more equitable industry, its continued success bad boys Seeing the franchise and Will Smith as a screen icon is not a surprise, but a matter of expectation. Who knows when the blueprint will finally be?
