The stars Walton Goggins always wanted to emulate: “Where are those actors?”
When Walton Goggins sauntered onto our screens as the brooding and mysterious Rick Hatchett in HBO’s third season of The White Lotus, his receding hairline, Hawaiian shirts and troubled past were hot fodder for internet debates, most notably surmised in Julia Hobb’s Vogue article, ‘Why I’m Hot for Walton Goggins’ Hairline’, opening the flood gates for women everywhere to proclaim that the receding hairline was “back”.
For Walton Goggins himself, however, the age of Old Hollywood masochism still reigns supreme. Despite his awareness of not quite fitting this mould, Goggins has expressed his admiration for these classical actors, proclaiming that today’s actors are no longer “sexy” and that there is no space left for this old standard.
Goggins’ examples included actors like William Holden, one of the original Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 60s, who starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina and Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilders’ Sunset Boulevard, as well as Warren Oates (The Wild Bunch), Bruce Dern (The Cowboys) and Scott Glenn – who starred alongside Goggins in The White Lotus this year, 40 years after his acting heyday.
Goggins also mentioned Jack Nicholson, who shared a similar receding hairline with the White Lotus actor. These old stars were all of a certain ilk, with defined but unique characteristics, featuring in classic Hollywood films, and a symbolic representation of the rugged American spirit. It’s these stars that Goggins feels an affinity with, and why he doesn’t feel like there is a place in Hollywood for him today. As Goggins told GQ in an interview, “I’m not Brad Pitt… But I am Walton Goggins, and very few people fit in my lane.”
Perhaps the field has changed for male actors, and the archetypal Hollywood actor today is more chiselled, polished, and sanitised than Goggins’ romanticised, messy, alcohol-induced, rugged actors of the 1960s. Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio have been replaced by Austin Butler, Harris Dickinson and Jacob Elordi, whose increasingly high-profile careers are much more heavily scrutinised in the public eye, but whose talents as actors have remained irrevocably intertwined with their good looks.
But the internet’s keen interest in Goggins’ unique looks shows that there is an appetite for unique actors, and is part of a broader movement away from traditionally ‘handsome’ Hollywood men. The most notable example of this is the ‘rat boy’ summer discourse that dominated the internet last summer, with actors like Jeremy Allen White in The Bear and Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers leading the internet to decidedly proclaim 2024 was the era of the rat boy. So, perhaps receding hairlines the new rodent boy?
Walton Goggins has admitted he is more at home in the world of TV, where his unique image has earned him significant roles and lucrative contracts, even before Mike White propelled him into the limelight with The White Lotus. The star of comedy Vice Principals and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, both of which Goggins works alongside comedians and friend Danny McBride, as well as neo-Western crime drama Justified, Goggins is finding his niche in TV.
