POWER OUTAGE
A-list means a lot less now
For years we looked to Will Smith as the world’s last A-list movie star — the only actor who could still power a movie (Men in Black, Hitch, I Am Legend, et cetera) to the top of the box office charts based on his name alone.
Then his thriller, After Earth, bombed badly in 2013. This past weekend his caper flick Focus opened at No. 1, but with unexpectedly low ticket sales of $19 million against weak competition.
So has the A-list become an extinct species?
Hardly. We still have a gut feeling about who’s on a theoretical A-list and who’s not, right? Its members are still alive and kicking. It’s just that the criteria for making the Alist in 2015 — or staying on it — has changed.
The phrase has been tossed around so much it has lost some of its meaning. It started off as a bit of industry jargon, which studios and financiers used to consider whether they should cast someone in a project.
“A-list has a colloquial kind of consumer charm to it, but it really is a serious business when you’re in the business,” said James Ulmer, the Los Angeles author who many credit for conceptualizing letter-based star rankings. On The Ulmer Scale, he assigns scores to celebrities based on factors like raw talent and behind-the-scenes social graces, among others, and calculates everything to produce a definitive list.
With the industry in major disruption mode, it’s not so simple. Fewer movies are being made, because studios are less willing to take financial risks, so erstwhile movie stars are now wandering off to star in cable-TV dramas, do car commercials, cameo on YouTube series, broadcast their witticisms on social media, or just endear themselves to fans by playing beer pong on Jimmy Fallon’s show. Box office is hardly the only star-power metric anymore.
“The shelf lives of A-listers are just much shorter,” Ulmer said. “Basically, you find a lot more actors having that spark of an A-list spark. The ability to structure a career almost as completely and militantly as someone like Tom Cruise is very tough.”
So what does it take? We came up with 10 new metrics for measuring a star’s A-list worthiness.
Prestige A-listers: Do you have enough Oscars for a set of bookends? Do you dine with presidents and queens? Do they bring you out at the very end of awards shows to present the really big trophies on the rare occasions that you’re not nominated yourself? Some actors automatically impart a classiness to whatever project they’re in, and Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks will always be A-list even if their movies tank.
Gravitas A-listers: Certain celebs just look like movie stars — George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts. They have the image, the confidence, the seriousness, that ‘it’ factor that you can’t quite explain. When they arrive on the red carpet, everyone sits up and takes notice: Now here are the varsity players.
Marketable A-listers: Jennifer Lopez is the chief creative officer of NUVOtv cable channel; Ashton Kutcher is trying to launch the next Buzzfeed; Charlize Theron makes millions as the face of Dior; Catherine Zeta-Jones is set for life after all those T-Mobile ads. These celebrities aren’t just beautiful, but they have enough business savvy to align themselves with the right products, expanding their empires one endorsement deal at a time.
Likable A-listers: They just seem so fun, don’t they? When the always-quotable Jennifer Lawrence (also a Franchise A-lister) wraps herself in a blanket on Late Show with David Letterman (it’s cold in those studios) and Bradley Cooper plays air guitar with Fallon, you imagine they are your real-life pals. You just know you’d hit if off if you ever met in person ... Right? Wrong: They’re exerting that same magic spell on the entire population.
Intrigue A-listers: Friends ended more than a decade ago, but it doesn’t matter: Tabloids will always, always be obsessed with Jennifer Aniston’s relationship/ reproductive status. She may not be able to open movies, but she sure can sell magazines, whether she likes it or not. Same goes for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Despite some recent box-office disappointments, their glamorous love affair and globe-trotting brood remain a potent commodity. (It helps that they check the Gravitas box, too.)
Crossover A-listers: The stigma is gone. These days, when struggling movie stars migrate to TV — and they do this a lot now — they’re celebrated as risk-takers lending their skills to the small screen’s burgeoning Golden Age. See: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in HBO’s awards-bait True Detective, as well as Halle Berry in CBS’s alien drama Extant. Being a weekly presence on TV, it seems, only elevates one’s profile now.
Legacy A-listers: What was Harrison Ford’s last hit anyway? Does his supporting role in the terrible Ender’s Game count? Hey, if Helen Mirren can voice a character in Monsters University, why not? There are certain personalities who so deeply entrenched themselves into the A-list so long ago that they can never, ever be evicted.
Social Conscience A-listers: Sean Penn heads the Haitian Relief Organization, Oprah built a school in South Africa, Ben Affleck runs the Eastern Congo Initiative. Charity or advocacy work — and constantly talking about your charity or advocacy work — can make a star seem more serious, and put them in the glory-reflecting company of presidents, CEOs, Nobel Prize winners.
New-Media A-listers: Bear with us, now: No, no one’s clamouring to cast Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian in their next movie. But their influence on pop culture cannot be overstated, thanks to a savvy social media presence and/ or their expert deployment of reality TV. They’ve put themselves in a different fame stratosphere, but one that guarantees their calls will be answered and their pitches heard.