The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  Fraser’s case demonstrates how some of the problems of the old system endure. His ability to play different types has turned him into “no visible type,” which means that no one in the business is saying “it’s a Brendan Fraser role” when they’re reading scripts. Fraser has managed his career well, and his filmography has startling variety. He has been cast in a bittersweet comedy (The Scout [1994], in which he’s an emotionally fragile baseball phenomenon), in a highly serious drama (The Quiet American [2002]), in a social satire (Blast from the Past [1999]), in a rollicking adventure-horror series (The Mummy [1999] and The Mummy Returns [2001]), and in the kind of “dumb ox beefcake” roles most people associate him with, Encino Man (1992) and George of the Jungle (1997), in which he is actually sweetly comic and adorably sexy. Even when he appears in a “serious” art-house film such as Gods and Monsters (1998), Fraser is essentially playing a “dim hunk,” even though it’s one allowing himself to be admired by a man he only belatedly realizes is gay. As Roger Ebert wrote about this character, he’s “slow to understand.” Fraser’s role is different in tone from his roles in other films, but not in its bottom line. Fraser has a solid presence as an all-purpose, Tyrone Power–handsome leading man, but he hasn’t been able to turn his looks upside down the way Pierce Brosnan has. Fraser’s career limps along, because—as would have been true with the old system—no one has the imagination to see his potential.

  Is Fraser’s fate different today from what it would have been in the 1930s or ’40s? Now that Hollywood doesn’t grind out four hundred movies a year and doesn’t need a second tier of genre stars, can he make a serious career for himself? The system today is doing the same thing to him that the old one would have. He works steadily, but he doesn’t reach the top—and he’s not allowed to grow. Is Brendan Fraser’s stardom as successful as Tyrone Power’s? No. Is he nevertheless better off than Power? Yes. The bottom line is that Brendan Fraser has more options than Power, but the system still holds him back as it did his predecessor. In the end, Brendan Fraser’s stardom will probably be a lot smaller than that of the man he looks like.

  Colin Farrell really looks like Tyrone Power. He has thick eyelashes, dark hair, Irish charm, a disarming smile, sex appeal, and real talent. After his career got under way, Farrell seemed on track to become what Power dreamed of becoming: a truly serious actor. Farrell made the moody war film Tigerland (2000), worked with Al Pacino in The Recruit (2003), and did the independent Intermission (2003) and the controversial A Home at the End of the World (2004). He could make the choices that Power never could, and took the roles that Power would have killed to have. Suddenly, however, Farrell took a strange turn, opting to play in the sort of silly costume movies that Power was forced to do. First, Farrell made the lumpen Alexander (2004), standing around with his hair dyed blond and bracelets jingling on his arm. Then he traded in his chiton for a ruffled shirt and got himself tied up by Indians in The New World (2005). His follow-up to these two financial failures was what could be called a contemporary costume film, Miami Vice (2006), which seeks to re-create the 1980s so he can wear Don Johnson’s pleated pants and shoes with no socks.

  Farrell’s private life has gone equally askew. Showing signs that he couldn’t take the exposure or pressure of modern fame, he embarked on an offscreen lifestyle as a jumped-up “star” when he had not yet fully earned the accolade. Without the discipline of the former system, and without the “machine” to protect him, Farrell suddenly became more of the new Errol Flynn than the new Tyrone Power. His is a case where it can be seen that the control of the former star system might have helped him. Where he’ll end up is anybody’s guess. He is in danger of being seen as more of a celebrity than an actor, the Paris Hilton of the male neo-stars. Farrell may turn out to be another example of someone who was called a star too soon, without having earned it. To date, he represents the waste of the chances that were denied to men like Tyrone Power, and he has not delivered on what he appears to be: the big box office champion of his era.

  Antonio Banderas is the ethnic truth of what Tyrone Power was often asked to portray—an authentic Spanish hero. Although Power was cast as a matador in Blood and Sand and an Indian doctor in The Rains Came, he wasn’t remotely ethnic. He was cast in such roles because his looks were perceived to be exotic. His looks were exotic—his essence was not. For both the audience and the business, he was reassuringly, safely pseudo ethnic. Proof that times have changed is that Banderas can be himself—a Spanish actor—as well as a box office Tyrone Power type. (Banderas was even cast in Power’s old role of Zorro in 1998’s The Mask of Zorro.) Banderas’s heavy Spanish accent doesn’t limit him, requiring him to become a Latin Charles Boyer, nor does it relegate him to roles as villains and sidekicks.*

  Banderas looks a great deal like Power. He has a similar nose, the same lush eyelashes, heavy brows, and dark, brooding eyes, but he’s a less aristocratic presence, which makes him more useful in today’s movies. Like Power, Banderas is serious about his acting and has made clear that he wants to branch out into both directing and producing. Banderas made his name in theatre and films in Spain before coming to America, and he did not arrive on the scene as an inexperienced young glamour boy. His background included the “art films” of Pedro Almodóvar, and he always knew what he wanted from his movie career, which was not just stardom, but also the freedom of choice. At the peak of his popularity, he left Hollywood to appear on Broadway in a revival of Nine, a choice the studio would not have allowed Power during his top years of stardom. Banderas has also taken on risky film roles, such as Che in Evita (1996), and he shows every sign of being able to age gracefully, steer his own fate, and manage the business of his career. He emerges as the essence of what Tyrone Power was supposed to be in movies, and of what Tyrone Power wanted to be both on- and offscreen—a wonderful actor with a strong screen presence.

  Early in his career, Johnny Depp, who has all the glamour of the old system’s male stars, looked as if he might turn out to be a watered-down Tyrone Power. But he began to select roles for himself that were less those of the conventional handsome leading man. Depp started becoming seriously cuckoo on-screen, willing to go to the mat with strange characterizations. (“I’ve always been drawn to those fringe types…the whole ‘we who are not as others’ thing.”) He became the anti-Power, willing to show gold teeth, leave his hair unwashed, and hide himself in any ridiculous disguise. He proved he could sing and dance and camp it up in an Elvis imitation (Cry-Baby [1990]), do outrageous comedy, be an adventurer like Errol Flynn, a ladies’ man, or anything else. In the summer of 2003, he put on a big hat with a feather in it, stuffed his feet into some tall boots, and single-handedly drove Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) out of the ordinary and onto the top of the box office heap. Depp went more than over the top. He went around the moon and back again. Around the same time, his hilariously mythic portrayal of a corrupt CIA agent in Once upon a Time in Mexico (2003) confirmed the sense that he was not going to settle for being a modern-day Tyrone Power. In Mexico, Depp arrives on-screen wearing sunglasses to hide that fact that his eyes have been poked out. Looking at the blood streaks that are dried on his cheeks, and listening to him yell at his cabdriver (who is asking him to look at the revolution in the streets)—“I can’t see, fuck-mook! I have no eyes!”—audiences roar with delight. Depp is a glorious parody of Greek tragedy, with just the right touch of the horror film thrown in. Depp is willing to make an on-screen mess of himself, clearly driving himself away from a Power-like career and toward the latter-day Marlon Brando. (“I was freaked out about being turned into a product. That really used to bug me.”) Like Brando, Depp has begun to treat his beauty with disrespect. He forces the audience to deal with him on his own terms—as an actor, not as a beautiful movie star.* “I never wanted to build a movie star career,” he said. “I don’t even understand that kind of thinking. If anything, mine has been a career of failures…It wasn’t that I was rejecting Hollywood. I was rejecting the idea of becom
ing a product.” Proving his point, Depp has opted to interpret roles in contradictory, non-star-driven ways. He’s usually flamboyant, but sometimes he’s not: for instance, in his portrayal of J. M. Barrie in 2004’s Finding Neverland. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, today lives under a cloud of suspicion that, as Depp put it in an interview, “he was a little bit sideways with the kids.” Depp chose not to play him that way (“That’s an easy way to go, isn’t it?”) and instead tried to create a Barrie who was like one of his own characters: a fragile being, held in thrall to his own childhood innocence.

  In the 1950s, when the handsome young Marlon Brando turned toward oddball performances with Southern accents, long dresses, and dyed hair, his audiences began to desert him, not being prepared to see their glamour boy wig out. Today, audiences don’t respect stardom or want it preserved at all costs. They love it when an actor makes fun of his own persona. Time will tell as to whether Depp, unlike Brando, can get away with it and keep his eccentricity under control. Will he also weigh three hundred pounds in fifteen years? Or will he master the madness and emerge as the great American actor everyone thought Brando would become? Depp has not only proved he can play anything or anybody—he’s shown us he’s willing to do so.

  Brosnan, Fraser, Farrell, Banderas, and Depp—these actors all mix an old-fashioned movie star charisma with a new-star acting freedom. They illustrate where things are today. They are stars in the movies, but they aren’t movie stars like Tyrone Power. They are examples of what we might call “the neo-star”—the actor who floats between typecasting and character acting, building a reputation as well as an audience loyalty as they alternate from one to the other. The neo-star is the end result of a compromise between the audience and the actor. As the old star system became obsolete, actors in movies began to be slightly embarrassed by the term “movie star” because it implied beauty, sex appeal, and no talent. They wanted to be Olivier, not Gable. The public, however, was not easily robbed of its fantasies. They refused to abandon type, stubbornly settling for modern movie actors to be defined by a specific “type” of role, which is not the same thing as the typecasting of the past. The difference is subtle but specific: Today’s actors become famous for their ability to play a certain role. (Yesterday’s stars became famous because fans believed they were that role and just “playing themselves.”) Thus, De Niro plays the “De Niro role,” and Al Pacino the “Pacino role” and Dustin Hoffman the “Hoffman role” and Jack Nicholson the “Nicholson role.”* De Niro has nailed down the tough, mean Julius Caesar of the streets; Pacino, the wrecked, instinctive genius; Hoffman, the Everyguy; and Nicholson, well, he does the “Jack role.” Nicholson today has become the uncrowned king of Hollywood—uncrowned because he would never have anything to do with a coronation ceremony. It wouldn’t be cool. He’s our antiestablishment guy, and going to keep it that way both on and off the screen. He avoids talk shows and the usual entertainment circuits, although being thoroughly professional, he’ll grant print interviews to promote new films if necessary. Nicholson has true movie star aura: He’s untouchably remote and cool, yet he sits on the floor at every Lakers basketball game, just one of the crowd rooting for his team. He eschews stardom, taking real gambles with movies like The Passenger (1975) and Hoffa (1992). A three-time Oscar winner, he has guided his own career and made intelligent choices, including cultural turning points (Easy Rider [1969], Carnal Knowledge [1971]), genuine classics (Chinatown [1974], The Shining [1980]), off-the-wall casting (the Joker in Batman [1989]), supporting roles (A Few Good Men [1992]), comedies (Something’s Gotta Give [2003] and As Good as It Gets [1997]), risk-taking small movies (The King of Marvin Gardens [1972] and About Schmidt [2002]). “Cinema is what it’s all about for me,” says Nicholson, and he doesn’t have to prove it. His filmography does. With Jack Nicholson, the era of the neo-star truly arrived: A movie star could be a movie star except when he or she was busy being an actor.

  Male neo-stars—who outnumber their female counterparts—are men like Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson (the older set) and Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves, and George Clooney (the younger group).* Each represents how today’s actors have to accomplish two things: create their own familiar role type and break with it to prove their acting chops. Once actors began to claim their right to both, audiences began to want both from them. An ability to be both actor and star in a way that the public will allow—and pay to see—is the mark of the neo-star. The careers of Ford, Gibson, Reeves, Pitt, Crowe, and Clooney illustrate how it works today.

  HARRISON FORD IS NOW one of the oldest of the neo-star set. He came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a series of blockbuster hits that made him instantly legendary: Star Wars (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Blade Runner (1982). Significantly, he had already made himself famously independent of the acting profession when, after years of trying to make it, he taught himself carpentry as a backup profession. (Talk about choices!) Ford actually built himself enough financial security to pick and choose his roles when he was still an unknown. Furthermore, his independence gave him a confidence and self-possession other actors in his age category didn’t all have. This was reflected on-screen as a genuinely masculine presence. During the 1980s, he seemed to own the “I am a man” franchise in Hollywood. If a movie called for a WASP with gravitas who could still look youthful while running through the jungle snapping a bullwhip over his fedora, there was one big-name choice: Harrison Ford. His is a strange aura: Although often impish and playful, he’s never boyish. He came seemingly burdened with a middle-aged weariness, a built-in sense that, if something could go wrong, it would. And he would have to cope. Ford has often been compared to Gary Cooper, because both are the clichéd “strong, silent type,” projecting an innate, very grounded sense of decency coupled with a grim determination to get the job done. Underneath their quiet surfaces lies the very American sense that you’ll wish you’d never been born if you push them too far.

  In his early years he cheerfully played irresponsible—Han Solo and Indiana Jones—and saved such characters from one-dimensionality by the force of his on-screen presence. He made viewers believe they had more to them than surface fun. He gave them latent qualities of love and loyalty. On the one hand, he presented a Douglas Fairbanks swagger, joyfully dashing through escapist adventures, tossing a sharp line of dialogue over his shoulder. On the other, he took on some serious acting chores—too serious, it might be said, as in The Mosquito Coast (1986) or Regarding Henry (1991). He’s developed a variety of shadings on his basic American guy: a stalwart hero who endures under siege (Patriot Games [1992]), a romantic lover (Random Hearts [1999]), a modern working man (Working Girl [1988], Presumed Innocent [1990]), an attempt at villainry (What Lies Beneath [2000]), and even his out-and-out comedy self, as in Six Days Seven Nights (1998), in which he plays a raffish old reprobate in the tropics, a role right out of the Cary Grant book for Older Actors (Grant in Father Goose [1964]).

  As he has aged, Ford has become more like William Holden than Gary Cooper. He’s more urban, more complex, and is playing confused husbands, burdened leaders, and beleaguered institutional employees. His dignity now has more distance than contained grace. Critics have started to attack him for his age, the sure sign that something is going wrong. The release of his 2006 failure, Firewall, brought these headlines: “An Aging Action Hero,” “Harrison Bored,” “The Action Hero of the AARP Set.” Reviews were cruel, calling him “a bona fide A-lister who regularly used to headline studio tentpoles.” Everyone focused on his age, and he himself said, “Some mysterious number appears to be attached to my name, and all of a sudden I’m not supposed to be able to do [action scenes]. It doesn’t make much sense.” Sense or not, Ford hasn’t had a genuine box office hit since 2000. According to Variety, he had prior to that date been responsible for $3.25 billion in box office sales, but his last big hit was listed as 1997’s Air Force One. His two flops, K-19: The Widowmaker in 2002 and Hollywood Homicide in 2003, togethe
r earned a total of only $66 million. In the first, he played a Russian submarine commander, and in the second a down-on-his-luck low-level homicide cop who sold real estate on the side to make a living. His attempts to vary his image, unlike those of Pierce Brosnan, have not been successful.

  It remains to be seen whether or not Ford can survive the transition period he’s in. The New York Times summed him up in 2006 by saying, “He became a star by giving and taking punches, for being a rakishly handsome performer who transcended the limits of his acting with charm and intense physicality.” In other words, he became a star by doing what male movie stars had always done. Ford’s career can never be written off. Proof lies on the Web site fametracker.com, which delights in debunking celebrities. This uncompromising forum has pegged Harrison Ford as today’s ultimate star, the standard from which all others in Hollywood can only deviate.*

  If Harrison Ford was a rogue with a heart of gold during the 1980s, the Australian Mel Gibson during that same time frame played a total freaking psycho. His filmography contains the proof: Mad Max (1979), Gallipoli (1981), The Road Warrior (1981), and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). With his original claim-to-fame role, Mad Max, he began playing what would become a literal cliché for him—the loner who’s been made nihilistic, reckless, and possibly even psychotic by the loss of his family or loved ones. This theme crops up in various forms not only in Mad Max but in Lethal Weapon (1987), Braveheart (1995), Payback (1999), Ransom (1996), The Patriot (2000), and even Signs (2002). He plays loners damaged in other ways in Conspiracy Theory (1997) and The Man Without a Face (1993). Gibson illustrates one of the true perks of today’s neo-star system, which allows an actor more freedom. In 2006, he was arrested for driving drunk, and unleashed a highly publicized anti-Semitic rant, confirming for fans their sense of his wild-eyed screen persona. Originally, audiences were told charming anecdotes about his reputation as a crazy practical joker. These little tales turned out to be harbingers about what makes him tick offscreen and confirmation of what audiences like about him: He seems truly dangerous. (He would have been shut down in the old days.) Prior to his very public disgrace (for which he issued an apology), Gibson’s career was perhaps the best overall proof of what a neo-star can do. In one very, very bold year—1990—he played both Hamlet (yes, that Hamlet) and a high-flying CIA smuggler in the action-comedy Air America. (This would be akin to Olivier’s doing Hamlet in 1944 and playing Danny Kaye’s role in the musical military comedy Up in Arms at the same time. I wouldn’t have minded seeing that, actually.)