Melissa McCarthy isn’t a great beauty, but keeps getting top billing from talent.
Humphrey Bogart was surely at least as handsome as, say, Jack Nicholson or Tom Hanks.
Bogart didn’t become a star until his 40s, at which point the roles he was playing were, mostly, tough middle aged guys. He was never a traditional eye candy leading romantic guy, if you will. Like Melissa McCarthy, he played the roles his appearance suited:
High Sierra - Tough ex-con
The Maltese Falcon - Sam Spade, the iconic hard-boiled private dick
Casablanca - Tired, bitter old bastard
The Big Sleep - Another hard-boiled detective
Treasure of the Sierra Madre - Bitter old bastard
The African Queen - Drunk old Canadian bastard
That’s not a lot different from the careers of any number of pretty successful guys.
Ability is far and away the most important. Kathy Bates, Linda Hunt and Frances McDormand, to name only three, are not beautiful but are accomplished actresses. It’s not enough just to be a pretty face, and in some roles it’s actually a distraction.
Off the top of my head:
Francis McDormand
Toni Collette
Kristen Schaal
Chelsea Peretti
Gwendoline Christie
Chloe Grace Moretz
I’m no expert, but I think more important than simply being “pretty”, an actress needs to be “camera friendly” and half “screen presence”. Which is more about having features that project character and personality on screen.
Sure, there are plenty of roles for “just a pretty face”. But I think if you want to be in parts other than “Sorority Girl at Party” in Van Wilder 4 you actually need to act.
Like, I actually believed Margo Robbie was a really hot chick in Wolf of Wall Street.
Margot, not Margo. Interestingly enough, I found Robbie distractingly bad in that movie, an example of why casting a pretty face without the talent is a bad idea.
As it turns out, the problem was, specifically, her incredibly terrible accent; in other films she’s pretty competent. You just can’t ask her to do a Brooklyn accent.
It depends on the part. For a leading role, you go with ability. For a horror flick where the girls who take off their tops get killed, then you go with the beauty.