Over on his new website Grantland.com, Espn's Bill Simmons has written a really interesting column called "The Movie Star." He sets out to examine two main points -- that Will Smith is the biggest movie star in the world and that Ryan Reynolds is not a movie star at all -- and ultimately falls into a much larger and thornier topic: what makes a movie star?
For Simmons, stardom equals box office. In his mind there are only 24 true movie stars working in Hollywood right now (he doesn't appear to rank them, but this is the order in which they're listed): Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Russell Crowe, Jeff Bridges, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Mark Wahlberg, Ben Affleck, Jake Gyllenhaal, Justin Timberlake,...
For Simmons, stardom equals box office. In his mind there are only 24 true movie stars working in Hollywood right now (he doesn't appear to rank them, but this is the order in which they're listed): Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Russell Crowe, Jeff Bridges, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Mark Wahlberg, Ben Affleck, Jake Gyllenhaal, Justin Timberlake,...
- 7/1/2011
- by Matt Singer
- ifc.com
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