The coolest actors in cinema history, according to Stephen King: “I’d say there are at least four”
Being “cool” is elusive and impossible to define. It’s an aura projected into the world, a perception that people immediately feel, even if they can’t say why.
“Cool” is something that people can try incredibly hard to attain and miss by a mile or not pursue at all and become by virtue of not caring. You also can’t declare yourself to be cool. In fact, you can’t be told you’re cool, either – it’s just something that is or isn’t. With this maddeningly fluid thought in mind, it’s easy to see why it was a tough task for horror icon, Stephen King, to name the coolest actors in history – although he came up with four truly unique names that you mightn’t necessarily associate with the word.
As any good author worth his salt should, when King was asked in 2007 by Entertainment Weekly to provide them with his list of cool, he began by first delving into the word’s origins. Where does “cool” come from, and how did it come to its modern designation? Well, similarly to the word’s very definition, its true origins are a bit of a mystery. As King writes, “It’s one of our longest-running slang terms. Wikipedia says the concept may date back to Aristotle. Could be, but today’s usage seems to have originated with the rhythm and blues hipsters who learned their chops in the 1930s and ’40s.”
To King, the inherent resistance of “cool” to easy definition is one of its coolest attributes. He also argues that the only people who can’t understand why “cool” can’t be defined are people who are uncool, which sounds harsh. Then again, though, maybe we’re only saying that because we, in fact, don’t realise we’re not cool.
Fascinatingly, King insists that being good-looking doesn’t necessarily mean you are automatically cool. Far from it, in fact. Some hot people aren’t cool in the slightest, while some less classically good-looking folks are cool cats. King unhelpfully argues, “What matters is cool. You know, like Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven. Or Natalie Wood starting the hot-rod race in Rebel Without a Cause.”
This was the cue for King to wade into the slippery waters of cinematic cool. He began by giving some examples from movies at the time to illustrate what constitutes cool, picking out movies starring George Clooney, Jodie Foster, Russell Crowe, and John Goodman.
His verdict? Clooney in Michael Clayton wasn’t quite square, but he wasn’t cool either. Foster in The Brave One was super cool, as were Goodman in Death Sentence and Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma. However, Crowe’s cool status came with a caveat: it was heavily assisted by the cowboy hat he wore in the movie, even if he still made the hat cooler than it would have been on another person. As King saw it, “You or I could wear that hat and not be cool. It’s Russell Crowe under the hat that makes it cool.”
Finally, though, King came to the main event: naming the coolest actors in cinema history. He began boldly by stating, “I’d say there are at least four,” and revealed that his criteria entails still being cool even in a bad movie. Interestingly, it could be argued that King’s Mount Rushmore of Cool only contains one star most people would classically consider to be hip. For example, there’s no room on King’s list for the likes of James Dean, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Katharine Hepburn, or Cate Blanchett.
Instead, King claimed the following four actors as the coolest in history: his Shining star Jack Nicholson, Holly Hunter, Morgan Freeman, and John Cassavetes.
Now, Nicholson being part of a list of cool dudes? That checks out. Hunter, I can also vibe with. Freeman is a leftfield pick, though, as it’s hard to think of anyone else ever clocking him as cool. Cassavetes was King’s truly inspired addition, though, as that cinéma vérité icon did plot a course for his own brand of cool from the 1950s to the ’70s.
Amusingly, though, King did note that Cassavetes was only cool as an actor, claiming he “directed many films and none were cool.”
