There are levels of acting ability. If the child of a star has none, he or she will be placed behind a potted plant. Then there are the kids who really have it, and in my experience it is obvious to all. It is unfair, but that’s the way it is.
The hell it isn’t. Cynical people are the people like you who accept things the way they are rather than attempt to improve them. Non cynical people ALWAYS have an imaginary reality that they compare the rest or reality to. It’s called an ideal. It’s called a goal.
“Things are the way they are and I can’t even imagine how they can get better” is the pinnacle of cynicism. It’s what depressed people say. Gah!
Suggestion to people who think offense means you can’t enjoy something: you might want to work on that. The world is full of things that are wrong–if you decide you can’t enjoy anything because of it, then you have depression.
Tori Spelling’s not in much these days, and I loved her cameo in Scream 2.
Regarding Sofia Coppola: The only real travesty of hers was Godfather 3. She was cast because It Girl du Jour Winona Ryder flaked at the last minute, there was no time for a casting call and daddy went with someone who, at least, would not flake on him. And jeez, it’s not like she didn’t look like a mafia princess! Her subsequent career as a director has just gotten better and better with time.
Nepotism alone just gives you one shot. Just ask Julian Lennon, Frank Sinatra Jr., Ramon Estevez, Desi Arnaz Jr. …
Julian Lennon has had a perfectly respectable career
The biggest barrier to entry to a lavish Hollywood career isn’t that nobody will represent you; it’s that your working/middle-class parents didn’t want to spring for voice lessons, acting lessons, professional photos, pricey wardrobes, etc. Your folks didn’t want to drop that kind of scratch when you were a lot more likely to get a mailroom job somewhee, or flip burgers.
For the children of famous actors, this is not generally an issue.
What the hell are you talking about? You know how much it cost for my daughter to start her lavish New York acting career? Gas money from central Jersey to New York, and not even that, actually, since we went to go to the Statue of Liberty, me never thinking anything would come of it. She got her first job with a photo taken by a friend of ours, and got professional head shots only later. She never took voice lessons. She was in an acting class at the local school, but that hardly counts. As I said, kids are actively discourage from taking acting lessons because it makes them unnatural.
What wardrobe? Every kid I ever saw in a casting director’s waiting room was wearing what they wore to school. After we moved to the Bay Area she got an agent in LA, and did a few auditions for major shows, and wore normal clothes also.
Where are you getting these ideas anyway?
From a number of close friends who went to LA to do the Hollywood thing. Respectfully, I think their experiences are more typical than your daughter’s.
Yeah, but not since 1990.
Okay, that was pretty cheap. His big nepotism album, Valotte, was expensively promoted and produced and it did really well, with two big hits. His second album, The Secret Value of Daydreaming, sold less, but had the distinction of having his only number 1 song ever. And his subsequent trips to the well pretty much defined “diminishing returns.” I was a lot less impressed with his career than I was with Jakob Dylan’s, although on paper, they’re pretty comparable.
Both Julian Lennon and the junior Dylan suffered the flip side of Hollywood nepotism; they would always be compared to their fathers and would be attacked for not being them. If anything, Jeff Bridges, Jolie, Cage etc lucked out that although they got the advantage of being junior and or nephew, they were and are in or specialized in different parts of the profession orb industry so they had the chance of being seen for own worth, rather than “just like Dad, except when s/he is not”.
I came across a column by Mick Jagger’s younger brother Chris, who has made a few albums. He says that in places like India and Africa it is quite normal for “Ali Akbar’s brother” to manage the band or sing along with him. It is only here in the West that people yell “nepotism”.
Aside:
Am I the only one amused by the fact that a poster named Jim’s Son is defending nepotism?
OK, carry on.
Were they kids or adults? There is a big difference - remember we are talking nepotism here, not how to break into show business. Moving to LA without a job is expensive enough by itself. I’d say a big problem would be someone who doesn’t really have it not being willing to admit it and spending money on lessons to try to break in. Sure, theater classes and acting lessons might help adults (or might not) be they are not replacements for that certain something which distinguishes those who have it from those who do not.
We met lots of kids and parents at shoots, and their experience is similar. And my advice comes not from me but from a manager of kids in New York, who used to be a child actor himself.
You know what they used to determine who they wanted to sign? They did not ask the kids to dance, they did not ask the kids to sing, they did not ask the kids to do Shakespeare. They had each kid say “I love Cheerios.” That was it. And that was enough to make the initial cut.
On the other hand a famous name on the cover might sell a few more albums. In the early '60s a lot of kids from Hollywood became signers - a son of Jerry Lewis, Nancy Sinatra, Ricky Nelson. It might have got them in the door, but it didn’t get them number one records.
But I agree with your point on expectations. After all, look what happened to P.D.Q. Bach.
Actually getting your foot in the door is pretty easy. Having enough talent that they open the door is what is tough.
With all this talk, no one has mentioned the poster girl for nepotism, Drew Barrymore. I mean, her family goes back over 150 years in the profession of acting, in the top tiers, too. Is she any good? I’m not sure, but she understands the business and puts out an acceptable product. Maybe that’s what we should expect from people who have been in any business for generations, an acceptable product.
Wouldn’t the real poster girl for nepotism be Elizabeth II? She only got her job because of who her father was. And that points at the silliness of claiming anyone with a relative in the business benefited from nepotism. Sure some did. But others, like Drew Barrymore, just got into the family business.
People staying in the family business has been the norm throughout most of history, probably all of it. Nobody says anything when the kids stay in the family’s auto dealership or furniture store and they love businesses that say Jack and Sons or whatever. If a father and son both play major league baseball it’s hugely special.
Only in politics do people suddenly turn around and condemn what should be obvious, natural, and totally expected. I don’t understand extending the hate to Hollywood either. Of course some kids will want to go into the family business just as of course some kids will want to stay as far away from it as possible.
What’s the problem here?
Nancy had more than whatever clout Frank may have brought to bear: she had Lee Hazelwood, which was what made her. Gerry Lewis wasn’t much more than a creation of his father’s infamous micromanaging, and was only a one hit wonder anyway. Claudia Martin made a faint attempt to enter show business shadowing Nancy Sinatra, blew it, and Dean, characteristically and totally opposite of his ex Jerry, told her to walk away and he’d set her up in business.
As messed up as the art world is, you don’t see a lot of this there. There was Cranach the Elder and Younger, but that was when painting was more of a craft. The eye-grabbing Moderns don’t produce the required level of individual originality in two generations. Jean Renoir did make some spectacular movies, but that was an entirely different medium than his father.