Would cinema be better off without star-powered casting?
When the cast was announced for the upcoming Beatles biopics, the internet had a lot to say. While some people were excited to see familiar faces like Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan playing the beloved musicians, others were less enthused. To many, it felt as though the casting directors had picked four of the most popular men of the moment (Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson and Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn make up the rest of the band), hoping to get as many viewers to the cinema as possible. Add to this the near-constant expectation of actors being required to have high follower counts on their social media channels, and you have an unwelcome situation where marketability seems to matter far more than talent.
That’s what cinema is, sadly, about, at the end of the day. Casting choices seem to be increasingly less about an actor being the perfect fit for the role, and more so about whether they can draw in a sizable audience and thus make the film a large profit. This isn’t new, per se, but it feels as though particularly bad cases of star-power-fuelled casting are becoming increasingly more common as Hollywood continues to head further away from the intrinsic art of the medium and closer towards pure capitalistic business.
Hollywood is one of the most lucrative industries in the world, something that came to be realised in the Golden Age of the medium when studios set up contracts with stars to appear in a certain number of movies. Studio-bound productions marked the emergence of cinema as a highly profitable industry first, bound to strict rules (like the Hays Code) instead of one that prioritises truly creative expression, and as a result, we’ve continuously seen certain actors rise to insane celebrity status – something that directly affects how they are perceived when they play specific roles.
Take the upcoming Wuthering Heights movie for example. While it would be unfair to judge a movie that hasn’t been released yet, the fact that the 34-year-old Margot Robbie will be playing Catherine Earnshaw, a 19-year-old from Yorkshire, feels completely wrong. When images of the actor dressed in costume for the role emerged online, fans of the novel were even more outraged – Robbie looks every bit the 21st-century star, with nothing about her looking as though she fits into the 19th-century setting.
It’s clear that Robbie’s casting has more to do with her position in Hollywood as a powerful figure rather than someone who fits the part of Cathy, and you can’t help but wish that director Emerald Fennell had given the role to a younger budding actor – which there are many of, waiting to be discovered.
Look at Adolescence, which cast the teenage first-time actor Owen Cooper as the troubled high-school student accused of murdering his classmate. Cooper was discovered at a local acting school and had never appeared in a professional production before, yet he proved to be a powerhouse of a star. He has since landed the role of young Heathcliff in Fennell’s Wuthering Heights – so why couldn’t she take this approach when casting the rest of the characters?
You only have to look at the period in British cinema where many working-class actors were earning leading roles in movies that have endured as great works of art. Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Rita Tushingham, and Albert Finney all emerged to great success in the 1960s, proving that working-class actors without a shiny Hollywood edge were quite possibly the future of cinema. It feels like this sentiment is now long gone.
It seems there always has to be some star appeal in mainstream films these days, or audiences simply won’t flock to the cinema. At times, it feels ridiculous; why is Charli XCX starring in a new Takashi Miike film? Why is she going to be in the new Greta Gerwig Narnia film as the White Witch? And do we really need Timothée Chalamet to lead another huge movie right now? Viewers are certainly getting fatigued with seeing certain stars repeatedly bagging leading roles, regardless of whether they fit the part, and it feels indicative of a landscape where those from less privileged backgrounds are routinely cast aside.
Chalamet has increasingly appeared in movies that you simply wouldn’t expect the star to lend himself to, going from the cannibalistic Bones and All to the musical Wonka to Dune: Part Two to playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. We’re not doubting that Chalamet wasn’t great in the role as the iconic folk singer, but for many, it was admittedly hard to separate the identity of the A-list actor with the already well-known Dylan. Can a modern icon successfully play a classic icon? If a complete unknown had played Dylan, perhaps it would’ve been easier to soak up the singer’s story.
Look at Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, too. Chalamet played Laurie alongside a stacked cast of some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, and Emma Watson. While Chalamet’s casting was admittedly quite good, the March sisters simply didn’t feel like a real family; rather, they seemed like a mish-mash of popular figures who would guarantee Academy Award buzz rather than faithfulness to the characters. Pugh was thus tasked with playing the 12-year-old version of her character as well as a grown-up, while Watson seemed completely out of place.
Fewer working-class actors seem to be landing prominent roles, and fewer big directors seem willing to take the risk and cast an unknown star, one without any previous professional experience or nepotistic connections, in their films. If the Beatles biopics featured four unknown actors, not only would it likely make the films feel more believable, but it would also open up opportunities for those who haven’t been awarded the same chances to make it in the industry.
Only time will tell whether these upcoming films have made the right decisions in casting huge stars, but it’s safe to say that there would be no harm in filmmakers stepping back and assessing whether an actor is truly right for a role. Cinema would be much better off without casting choices based on star power when there is a world of incredible talent out there waiting to be discovered.
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