What happens after you age out of young adult movies?
["Why Rachel McAdams Never Became a Movie Star," by Scott Mendelson, was published by Forbes last month, and you can read it at its original site here. I've reposted it here because I think it's an important piece that applies to a lot of current young actresses, and also because its Forbes page was so clogged up with ads that I found it almost impossible to read.]
The would-be big trailer drop last Friday morning was for Southpaw, the Antoine Fuqua-directed boxing drama. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal ( Brothers) as a down-on-his-luck boxer who must dig deep to get his career back on track and reclaim custody of his young daughter (Oona Laurence). Late July release date aside, the release feels like an Oscar bait biopic almost to the point of self-parody. If you saw the trailer, you probably noticed Rachel McAdams, now 36, as "the girl" in the picture. Actually, that's not entirely accurate, as she gets killed in the first third of the trailer, which in turn sends Gyllenhaal into a downward spiral.
There was a moment, ten years ago, when Rachel seemed primed to be the next big female movie star. But now she gets "fridged" in male-centric melodramas and gets to be "the girl cop" in season two of True Detective, which is quickly becoming something of a career rehab home for former movie stars and would-be movie stars who never quite made the sell. I have written so very much about the lack of female-led multiplex releases over the last decade or so, and I have long believed would-be "It Girl" Rachel to be among its primary victims. You can't be the next great movie star when Hollywood isn’t making movies for you to star in.
At ages 18, 18, and 17, young actresses Hailee Steinfeld, Chloe Moretz, and Elle Fanning will likely be competing with each other to become the next great movie star in a few years. How many roles will be open to them after they outgrow the kid parts that have brought them this far?
The situation isn't all that different from Jason Statham, who became a B-movie action god in an era when there were few A-level action movies to aspire to. Rachel McAdams had the bad luck to spring to stardom just as the female-centric studio release was becoming an endangered species. She came to fame in her mid-20's in 2004-5 with a flurry of high-profile vehicles. In 2004, she was a defining villain in Mean Girls and the co-lead in the generational romantic drama The Notebook. She had three major roles in 2005, including the heroic lead in Wes Craven's Red Eye, a supporting role in the Sarah Jessica Parker-led ensemble The Family Stone, and the "prize to be won" romantic interest in Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn comedy smash The Wedding Crashers. Guess which role would come to define the next decade of would-be stardom. She took a break from acting for a couple years and returned in two low-budget indie films. Married Life was a martial fidelity drama starring Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, and Rachel as the would-be temptress. The Lucky Ones was an underrated and little-seen drama co-starring Tim Robbins and Michael Pena about three Iraq war vets adjusting to life after service.
She returned to so-called mainstream movies in 2009, and that was when the pattern began to emerge. By 2008-9, we were seeing a real lack of not just female-centric films but of any movies that offered more than one role for a woman of Rachel's age. She is a young blogger journalist in the (terrific) Russell Crowe/Ben Affleck/Helen Mirren/Robin Wright thriller State of Play, who exists mostly to be schooled on the purity of old-school journalism, and she's "the girl" in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. She reprised that role in a glorified cameo for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, because the film didn't have room for two major female roles, and Noomi Rapace was playing "the girl" this time. She was the co-lead in The Time Traveler's Wife in 2009 (even though for all intents-and-purposes, it's Eric Bana's story) and she co-starred as a memory-impaired young spouse alongside Channing Tatum in The Vow. She did have a genuine lead vehicle in 2010, starring as an ambitious morning show producer trying to work with Harrison Ford's cantankerous news vet in Morning Glory.
Oscar-nominated starlet Saoirse Ronan, now 21, is the only actress in this photo from the 2014 premiere of The Grand Budapest Hotel, where she had a small part as the love interest to young male star Tony Revolori. The movie had almost no other female roles.
Aside from Brian DePalma's blink-and-miss it 2013 erotic indie drama Passion, that's it for lead roles or even arguably co-starring roles for Rachel McAdams. She played the girl-to-be-discarded in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris, one of Ben Affleck's handful of would-be love interests in To the Wonder, "the girl" in the father/son time-travel drama About Time, and was the only woman in the otherwise male-centric ensemble A Most Wanted Man ( Philip Seymour Hoffman's final starring role). Her output for 2015 involves being one woman in a sea of dudes (Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery, and Billy Crudup) in the "Boston Globe investigates Catholic Church sex scandals" drama Spotlight, being the married former lover of star Bradley Cooper as he "bonds" with Emma Stone in Aloha, and the aforementioned "gets accidentally shot so Jake Gyllenhaal can have a sad role" in Southpaw. Oh, and she's also in the cast of True Detective as the lone female cop in a cast that includes Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, and Taylor Kitsch.
The vast majority of Rachel's mainstream roles in her post-stardom career have been "the girl" in an otherwise all-male cast. Her relative lack of mainstream starring vehicles is mostly due to the fact that so few female star vehicles get made anymore. There are almost none of the female-centric, somewhat-melodramatic dramas or thrillers that used to give an actress like Ashley Judd her career. Mainstream films, be they romantic comedies, family dramas, and everything in-between, that once starred Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock are all but extinct. Hollywood of the '90's had Meg Ryan vehicles ( When a Man Loves a Woman), Sandra Bullock vehicles ( Hope Floats), and Julia Roberts vehicles ( Stepmom) with room to spare. They were romantic comedies like French Kiss, family melodramas like Something to Talk About, or even supernatural comedies like Practical Magic. But those films don’t get made anymore, to the point that now, a female-driven romantic comedy like Amy Schumer's Trainwreck is considered a "big deal." Once you age out of the young-adult literary adaptations or the newest live-action adaptation of a Disney animated feature, you're basically stuck playing "the girl." Just as importantly, male-centric films usually have room for just one or two major female roles in the cast.
Emma Watson, now 25, grew up in a young-adult literary series (Harry Potter, of course) and is now doing a live-action version of a Disney movie (Beauty and the Beast, scheduled for release in 2017). Will she get stuck playing "the girl" next?
Not to pick on Spotlight, but six talented male actors all get meaty roles in that upcoming production, but there was only room for one actress. Movies like The Fighter have room for both Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale but room for only one Amy Adams. The Judge has got Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D'Onofrio, and but no roles for women save "the love interest" (Vera Farmiga, The Conjuring) and "the love interest's hot daughter" (Leighton Meester). The Imitation Game has fourteen male roles listed on its IMDB page but only one actress ( Keira Knightley) in anything resembling a major role. Rachel McAdams may-well have had a varied and busy mainstream Hollywood career if she had come of age in a time when films like Working Girl or Postcards from the Edge weren't considered a statistical impossibility.
I have no idea if Rachel McAdams cares about the choices she has been offered and the choices she has accepted, and her best work may yet still be in front of her. I am just using her career as a springboard for a broader discussion with no desire to cast her unwillingly as a victim of systematic inequity. But I cannot help but wonder how she feels about getting her start ten years ago as the girlfriend to second-banana Bradley Cooper, only to still be playing his "potential love interest" ten years later, while he is one of the biggest movie stars around and she has no real mainstream vehicles to choose from. You can't help but think of Kristen Scott Thomas, who played the age-appropriate love interest to Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient in 1996, but in 2013, played the mother of Ralph Fiennes's love interest in The Invisible Woman. The tragedy of Rachel McAdams, once the most promising actress of her generation, now doomed to playing girlfriends and token females, is indicative of how our gender equity in mainstream Hollywood has gotten worse, not better.
The would-be big trailer drop last Friday morning was for Southpaw, the Antoine Fuqua-directed boxing drama. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal ( Brothers) as a down-on-his-luck boxer who must dig deep to get his career back on track and reclaim custody of his young daughter (Oona Laurence). Late July release date aside, the release feels like an Oscar bait biopic almost to the point of self-parody. If you saw the trailer, you probably noticed Rachel McAdams, now 36, as "the girl" in the picture. Actually, that's not entirely accurate, as she gets killed in the first third of the trailer, which in turn sends Gyllenhaal into a downward spiral.
There was a moment, ten years ago, when Rachel seemed primed to be the next big female movie star. But now she gets "fridged" in male-centric melodramas and gets to be "the girl cop" in season two of True Detective, which is quickly becoming something of a career rehab home for former movie stars and would-be movie stars who never quite made the sell. I have written so very much about the lack of female-led multiplex releases over the last decade or so, and I have long believed would-be "It Girl" Rachel to be among its primary victims. You can't be the next great movie star when Hollywood isn’t making movies for you to star in.
At ages 18, 18, and 17, young actresses Hailee Steinfeld, Chloe Moretz, and Elle Fanning will likely be competing with each other to become the next great movie star in a few years. How many roles will be open to them after they outgrow the kid parts that have brought them this far?
The situation isn't all that different from Jason Statham, who became a B-movie action god in an era when there were few A-level action movies to aspire to. Rachel McAdams had the bad luck to spring to stardom just as the female-centric studio release was becoming an endangered species. She came to fame in her mid-20's in 2004-5 with a flurry of high-profile vehicles. In 2004, she was a defining villain in Mean Girls and the co-lead in the generational romantic drama The Notebook. She had three major roles in 2005, including the heroic lead in Wes Craven's Red Eye, a supporting role in the Sarah Jessica Parker-led ensemble The Family Stone, and the "prize to be won" romantic interest in Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn comedy smash The Wedding Crashers. Guess which role would come to define the next decade of would-be stardom. She took a break from acting for a couple years and returned in two low-budget indie films. Married Life was a martial fidelity drama starring Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, and Rachel as the would-be temptress. The Lucky Ones was an underrated and little-seen drama co-starring Tim Robbins and Michael Pena about three Iraq war vets adjusting to life after service.
She returned to so-called mainstream movies in 2009, and that was when the pattern began to emerge. By 2008-9, we were seeing a real lack of not just female-centric films but of any movies that offered more than one role for a woman of Rachel's age. She is a young blogger journalist in the (terrific) Russell Crowe/Ben Affleck/Helen Mirren/Robin Wright thriller State of Play, who exists mostly to be schooled on the purity of old-school journalism, and she's "the girl" in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. She reprised that role in a glorified cameo for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, because the film didn't have room for two major female roles, and Noomi Rapace was playing "the girl" this time. She was the co-lead in The Time Traveler's Wife in 2009 (even though for all intents-and-purposes, it's Eric Bana's story) and she co-starred as a memory-impaired young spouse alongside Channing Tatum in The Vow. She did have a genuine lead vehicle in 2010, starring as an ambitious morning show producer trying to work with Harrison Ford's cantankerous news vet in Morning Glory.
Oscar-nominated starlet Saoirse Ronan, now 21, is the only actress in this photo from the 2014 premiere of The Grand Budapest Hotel, where she had a small part as the love interest to young male star Tony Revolori. The movie had almost no other female roles.
Aside from Brian DePalma's blink-and-miss it 2013 erotic indie drama Passion, that's it for lead roles or even arguably co-starring roles for Rachel McAdams. She played the girl-to-be-discarded in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris, one of Ben Affleck's handful of would-be love interests in To the Wonder, "the girl" in the father/son time-travel drama About Time, and was the only woman in the otherwise male-centric ensemble A Most Wanted Man ( Philip Seymour Hoffman's final starring role). Her output for 2015 involves being one woman in a sea of dudes (Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery, and Billy Crudup) in the "Boston Globe investigates Catholic Church sex scandals" drama Spotlight, being the married former lover of star Bradley Cooper as he "bonds" with Emma Stone in Aloha, and the aforementioned "gets accidentally shot so Jake Gyllenhaal can have a sad role" in Southpaw. Oh, and she's also in the cast of True Detective as the lone female cop in a cast that includes Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, and Taylor Kitsch.
The vast majority of Rachel's mainstream roles in her post-stardom career have been "the girl" in an otherwise all-male cast. Her relative lack of mainstream starring vehicles is mostly due to the fact that so few female star vehicles get made anymore. There are almost none of the female-centric, somewhat-melodramatic dramas or thrillers that used to give an actress like Ashley Judd her career. Mainstream films, be they romantic comedies, family dramas, and everything in-between, that once starred Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock are all but extinct. Hollywood of the '90's had Meg Ryan vehicles ( When a Man Loves a Woman), Sandra Bullock vehicles ( Hope Floats), and Julia Roberts vehicles ( Stepmom) with room to spare. They were romantic comedies like French Kiss, family melodramas like Something to Talk About, or even supernatural comedies like Practical Magic. But those films don’t get made anymore, to the point that now, a female-driven romantic comedy like Amy Schumer's Trainwreck is considered a "big deal." Once you age out of the young-adult literary adaptations or the newest live-action adaptation of a Disney animated feature, you're basically stuck playing "the girl." Just as importantly, male-centric films usually have room for just one or two major female roles in the cast.
Emma Watson, now 25, grew up in a young-adult literary series (Harry Potter, of course) and is now doing a live-action version of a Disney movie (Beauty and the Beast, scheduled for release in 2017). Will she get stuck playing "the girl" next?
Not to pick on Spotlight, but six talented male actors all get meaty roles in that upcoming production, but there was only room for one actress. Movies like The Fighter have room for both Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale but room for only one Amy Adams. The Judge has got Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D'Onofrio, and but no roles for women save "the love interest" (Vera Farmiga, The Conjuring) and "the love interest's hot daughter" (Leighton Meester). The Imitation Game has fourteen male roles listed on its IMDB page but only one actress ( Keira Knightley) in anything resembling a major role. Rachel McAdams may-well have had a varied and busy mainstream Hollywood career if she had come of age in a time when films like Working Girl or Postcards from the Edge weren't considered a statistical impossibility.
I have no idea if Rachel McAdams cares about the choices she has been offered and the choices she has accepted, and her best work may yet still be in front of her. I am just using her career as a springboard for a broader discussion with no desire to cast her unwillingly as a victim of systematic inequity. But I cannot help but wonder how she feels about getting her start ten years ago as the girlfriend to second-banana Bradley Cooper, only to still be playing his "potential love interest" ten years later, while he is one of the biggest movie stars around and she has no real mainstream vehicles to choose from. You can't help but think of Kristen Scott Thomas, who played the age-appropriate love interest to Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient in 1996, but in 2013, played the mother of Ralph Fiennes's love interest in The Invisible Woman. The tragedy of Rachel McAdams, once the most promising actress of her generation, now doomed to playing girlfriends and token females, is indicative of how our gender equity in mainstream Hollywood has gotten worse, not better.