seems a little bit light for movies. does that mean that the cast of the Big Bang Theory qualifies?
The ones who meet that and the three other conditions, sure. I’m sure there’s a Kaley Kuoco rom-com in the works.
She was the Yin to a whole lot of Yang, which made the movie more watchable. 
She’s in The Wedding Ringer and a Wolowitz rom-com (where he also has a writing and directing credit) was just released a few days ago. So yeah, if any TV people qualify, they do.
If you haven’t seen her in Silver Linings Playbook and Winter’s Bone (her breakout role), you really should. She’s fantastic.
She also gave a great performance in American Hustle, although it was a supporting role.
That’s a bit hard to quantify, unless you’re in the industry. Even then, it’s a bit subjective. Different people would give you different answers.
To try and keep with Little Nemo’s scientific approach, I think we can improve his list by also requiring that each person have had an “Executive Producer” for a full-length, American film or TV series. I think that will serve as a decent proxy for industry power.
So the list, using that filter, becomes:
Drew Barrymore
Justin Bartha
Orlando Bloom
Chris Evans
Anna Faris
Colin Farrell
James Franco
Tyrese Gibson
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Jonah Hill
Josh Hutcherson
Scarlett Johansson
Angelina Jolie
Shia LaBeouf
Justin Long
Kellan Lutz
Tobey Maguire
Robert Pattinson
Natalie Portman
Jackson Rathbone
Ryan Reynolds
Seth Rogen
This seems like a much more reasonable list to me. I suspect that Anne Hathaway and Benedict Cumberbatch will soon join it.
Notably, the list skews male a lot more heavily - I presume because the shelf-life of starlets is still shorter than starlings. Sad, but also indicative that this is a more realistic list.
I still we still some tweaking. The fourth guy from The Hangover (the one who always gets lost) and a fourth-tier Twilighter shouldn’t count as A-List. Especially in a list that excludes Anne Hathaway and Benedict Cumberbatch.
I watched it for Jay Baruchel, that man cracks me up.
I suppose that anyone who cares enough can buy a copy of the 2014 “Hollywood Hot List” by James Ulmer (who coined the term “A List”) and see what the official rankings are.
Actually don’t. The Amazon page says it was published in 2014 but the book preview says it includes films up to 1999 :rolleyes:
No, most people who saw Perks did so because they loved the self-indulgent piece of crap it was based on.
That link includes a “Look Inside” option, here’s what you can see for free:
A+ List
- Julia Roberts
- Tom Hanks
- Tom Cruise
- Mel Gibson (how old is this thing?)
The rest can be put together by viewing the Paperback “Look Inside” link. Julia Roberts is on page 14 and everyone else falls in line after that.
Didn’t see these names, but in fairness I only quickly skimmed:
Keira Knightley
[del]Amy Adams[/del]
Amanda Seyfried
Justin Timberlake
Looks like Amy Adams is five months into her 40th year, so she just misses the cut.
The two “A-iest” A-Listers under 40 on the women’s side are pretty clearly Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett Johansson.
I agree that I don’t know them, but as I understand it the term “A-List” comes from party invites. If you’re an up-and-comer in Hollywood, you want to throw a party and invite everyone on the A-List, because they can help your career advance. So while some of the people might fall a little short on the household-name-recognition front, the fact that they can swing the cash and know how to wheel and deal properly, could possibly push them up the ladder in Hollywood-town.
Someone else mentioned it, but Angelina Jolie is 39.
Their “Executive Producer” credits appear to be for movies made in somebody’s backyard. These are not money guys or guys that everybody wants to know. They scraped together a few pennies and got some cameras and told their friends to go nuts. Any ranking of the A-List is going to have a “know it when you see it” quality, and those two fail at that part of the test.
While the term A-List used to be for party invites, that’s not how people currently use the phrase and it’s definitely not how it’s described in that book.
OK, I didn’t know that Lawrence had branched out that much. Yeah, she’s definitely in, then.
Winter’s Bone was her first lead role, prior to X-men (so then, prior to Hunger Games). Silver Linings Playbook (she won an Oscar for that) came out the same year as the first Hunger Games movie. She was already branched out before Hunger Games took off.
Winter’s Bone is fantastic.
Her first lead role was in The Poker House, a semi-autobiographical story by Lori Petty. (aka Tank Girl.) That role almost certainly led to Winter’s Bone since there are similarities between the two parts.
Agreed that Winter’s Bone is fantastic. I also like Poker House, though I was a bit distracted at the end when she drives off because I kept thinking “…on her way to play Tank Girl!” heh.
Cool! I’ll have to see that.