What are absolutely HUGE movies that failed to produce a star? Or, alternatively, who are actors who starred huge movies that failed to become A- or even B-list stars?
For the former, this seems to be, in the last 20-30 years, primarily a result of special effects overtaking actors as the real “star” of big-budget movies. For example, Jurassic Park was the biggest movie of its time, and 25 years later is still#25 on the all-time box office list, and yet it did pretty much nothing for the careers of primary actors Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill. Granted, they all had established careers already, but starring in this HUMONGOUS movie didn’t turn any of them into Julia Roberts or George Clooney, unless you consider starring in Event Horizon to be an triumph of… anything.
In the latter, talent, temperament, aspirations, and career choices likely play a significant role in an actors’ ability to turn a hit role into stardom. Mark Hamill is probably a good example of this. He was the star of three of the biggest movies ever and at no point, even at the peak of it all, was he considered an A-list star. Granted, he doesn’t really seem to have made all that much effort to become a star, while some of his colleagues on those projects, namely Harrison Ford, put in the effort, turned on the charm, and went on to become a superstar.
I thought Alicia Silverstone would have a much bigger career after Clueless, but that hasn’t been the case. She did Blast from the Past with Brendan Fraser, some other movies and a few TV shows, but nothing huge. And in fact Brittany Murphy, who had a smaller role in Clueless, seemed to have had a bigger career.
Alicia Silverstone is a good one. I’d chalk her up to career choices (Batman & Robin was a brilliant decision :smack:), and I suspect she just isn’t that good an actress.
Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time (and 2nd when adjusted for inflation), but it really did nothing for the careers of the two leads, Sam Worthington or Zoe Saldana.
How about My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Over $240 million in domestic box office and an enormous cast, none of whom I can really remember seeing in anything that didn’t also have “Big Fat Greek” in the title.
Hamill may be a bad example, as he had a big accident after Star Wars, which might have prevented him working in other films and so getting type-cast. He has also forged a career as a voice actor.
And wasn’t Jeff Goldblum already a star from The Fly?
I seem to recall a bunch of recreational outrage stories from the early 2000s that she was blacklisted for being “overweight” and refusing to starve herself for roles.
Sam Worthington and Avatar. You’d think being the lead in the biggest box office success of all time would afford him the opportunity to really catch fire. Instead, he’s worked steadily - for an actor that’s no small thing - but hasn’t become a true A-lister. His co-star, however, Zoe Saldana, has managed to parley a role in which her actual face is never seen, into a growing and thriving career in genre pictures. As Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies (and now Avengers) and Uhura in the Star Trek reboots she’s taken it pretty far. In addition, she’s added a bunch of other movies to her resume. Good for her.
He was known. I wouldn’t consider him a star. The Fly was in 1986 and was one of his few roles as leading man; his career, while prolific, is primarily comprised of supporting roles.
Well, with the death of the studio system, actors did not have the resources to make themselves stars, so it became much more hit and miss.
And the blockbuster mentality today means that the spectacle is what sells movies, not the actors. Stars are created because they have vivid screen personalities, and that’s hard to establish when you’re going up against a CGI monster.
It’s particularly difficult for women, since Hollywood tries to put them into three boxes: romantic interest, wife/mother, or fiesty old lady.
As for an example, Avatar was a massive hit, but didn’t seem to do anything to make Sam Worthington a household name.
I hate to parry a question with a question, but here goes.
Are there *any *stars in the new Hollywood?
A star wasn’t defined merely as an actor who was famous, but an actor who could open a movie, i.e. would bring in the audience for a reliable profit regardless of how good the movie was.
That hasn’t been true for a long time. The IT girl of the moment, Jennifer Lawrence, just bombed with Red Sparrow. Older male “stars” like Tom Cruise, Will Smith, and Tom Hanks don’t reliably open movies in recent years.
Robert Downey Jr. is close, but he appears almost exclusively in blockbusters. He made his Sherlock Holmes movies into hits and I’ll give him credit for pushing Due Date over $100 million. But he had a 30-year career before Iron Man.
Who else is there? If there’s no one, then you can’t blame any particular actor for the failure.
I don’t think that a star has ever been able to bring in the audience regardless of how good or bad a movie was. Name any star of the past, and I’m sure you could find one or two flops in their repertoire.
What a star can do is make a movie a success that would have been a flop without them, or make a success into an even bigger success, but that’s still true.
Near as I can tell, from TOP GUN on, every movie Tom Cruise has starred in has more than doubled its budget at the box office (and, with a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE hitting theaters soon, that’s a streak in no danger of ending any time soon). And, near as I can tell, nobody else has done that over that many years: plenty of movies come out that fail to double their budgets, and plenty of ‘em fail to break even; but this guy still manages it, every time, decades later.
They’ve been fantastic. The last ‘disappointing box office’ movie Leo stared in was Body of Lies and even that almost doubled it’s budget. The Great Gatsby didn’t double its budget, but it made $350mil+ (it’s budget was really high).
Look at Gone With The Wind. Gable was already an established star. But what happened to the rest of the cast? Leigh’s only other memorable role was A Streetcar Named Desire twelve years later. De Havilland’s career pretty much moved along at the same level. Howard, of course, joined the British war effort and died four years later.
The only member of the GWTW cast who would go on to become more famous for another role was George Reeves, who would play Superman in the fifties TV series.
I think it’s the FILM that’s huge and the stars, while important to its success, don’t necessarily make it huge. Lord of the Rings: the actors from that are still working on something or other, but they will never be in such a HUGE movie again. (Didn’t Frodo have some tv series where he was talking to a toy bear?? And what is Aragorn doing lately? Orlando Bloom is still hanging in there in PotC, but no one ran to see it just because he had a role in it.) Twilight: the two in that one are still working on something or other, but they will never be in such a phenomenon again. The actors are all ‘stars’ but people went to see the huge movies they were in because they wanted to see a huge movie, not necessarily the ‘stars’.
