Dopers born in America, who’ve lived in America all your life, I’m not looking for your opinion at this time. If you live in America now but are recently transplanted from elsewhere, yes.
I’d like to get a sense of who is the biggest movie star worldwide (to the small sample of Dopers anyway).
I’m not asking for Favorite actor, or who you think is the best. I’m asking for biggest. An actor that if you stopped people on the street and showed them pictures or read a list of names, the majority of people would recognize the face or name, even if they’re not big moviegoers.
Is it an established Hollywood actor such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr., Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, etc.?
Or is it an actor who is a phenomenally huge star in his own country as well as being well-known outside his country, like Shahrukh Kahn, who probably has more fans than all of the other stars put together.
I suppose it could be all of the above, or others I haven’t mentioned. But who’s biggest? If you could just choose one?
I think the ‘biggest’ Dutch actress nowadays is Carice van Houten; I think she is in Game of Thrones and had some minor Hollywood roles (Valkyrie comes to mind).
I love her! I’ve never seen Game of Thrones but I’m glad to hear she’s in it. Does she have a good role? I only saw Valkyrie because she was in it. I know her originally from Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (Zwartboek). I saw her last year at the 2012 European Union Film Festival in a movie called Black Butterflies. It’s set in 60’s South Africa, and Carice is great as the important (but unstable) anti-Apartheid poet Ingrid Jonker. It’s in English which surprised me. Dear lord she’s so beautiful!
Christopher Lee and Anthony Hopkins the biggest stars in the U.K.? Um, first, Anthony Hopkins has lived in the U.S. since sometime in the 1990’s (and on and off lived in the U.S. before that) and has held joint American citizenship since 2000. Are they still working? Yes, and doing well given that Lee is 90 and Hopkins is 75. But the biggest stars?
I too have a hard time thinking Lee and Hopkins are the biggest in the UK, but if I turn this into a poll I’ll certainly add them.
I just remembered also seeing Carice in a delightful childrens movie called Miss Minoes, where she plays a cat turned into a human and goes sleuthing. I saw it in the theater within the past couple of years even though it was released in 2001 in The Netherlands.
I’m not sure you could come up with a single biggest actor from the UK. That would be like saying who’s the biggest actor in California. There are just too many of them. Maybe by the city or county you’re from?
I’m not from India but I’ve spent a lot of time there, and probably the biggest Indian (Bollywood) star is Shahrukh Khan.
In fact, it’s been estimated that “King Khan” is in fact the biggest movie star in the entire world, based simply on the OP’s criterion of how-many-humans-have-a-clue-who-he-is.
Given the market reach of Bollywood movies in world demographic sectors that aren’t well known in Europe and America but are nonetheless huge numbers-wise, I find that estimate pretty plausible.
Other contenders for “biggest Bollywood name” would include Amitabh Bachchan (appearing briefly as Meyer Wolfsheim in the new Great Gatsby—I’m excited to see it even if he is only onscreen for ten seconds!) and his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the former Miss World. (Also Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, but my guess is that the “Big B” Amitabh is more widely recognized than any of them.)
ETA: Did I miss the OP’s mention of Shahrukh or was I ninja’d by an edit while I was writing? Anyway, what the OP said.
I’m curious about how well known Michael Nyqvist is. I first saw him in the Swedish Dragon Tattoo trilogy, looked him up on Netflix and watched the one other movie they had – he was the lead in As It Is In Heaven, a terrific movie that was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar (though this movie was actually made before the Dragon Tattoo trilogy). And more recently he was swept up into Hollywood to play the lead villain in the most recent Mission Impossible.
Christopher Plumber
Dan Akroyd
John Candy
James Doohan
Raymond Burr
Jim Carrey
Michael J Fox
Lorne Greene
Phil Hartman
Margot Kidder
Eugene Levy
Mike Myers
Leslie Nielsen
Catherine O’Hara
Mary Pickford
Martin Short
Donald Sutherland
William Shatner
Jackie Chan would be more appropriate for China due to his exposure in Western cinema as well. I’m an American ex-pat in China and Mr. Chan is highly visible here in cinema, advertising, and general celebrity news.
I shouldn’t speak for New Zealand anymore as I haven’t lived there in 15 years, but I would say the biggest Kiwi actor is Sam Neill, followed closely by Karl Urban.
There have been a few other Kiwi actors who have tried to make it big, and they’re reasonably successful within the country, but haven’t really hit the big leagues. People like Marton Csokas, Lucy Lawless, and poor sad pathetic Martin Henderson. Kevin Smith may have made it big at some point, though he might have had to change his name in some way, but then he went and died.
Charlize Theron, Arnold Vosloo and Sharlto Copley, I guess, are the current biggest South African stars. But other than Theron, they’d all pale besides actual American actors. The only big local box office draw that’s fairly unknown outside SA would be Leon Schuster. And he’s fucking huge here, more’s the pity.
Anyway, what the OP said.