Cult Actor Essay

422 Words1 Page

How might an actor or an actress be defined critically and/or theoretically as a ‘cult’ figure? For this essay I will be discussing what makes an actor/actress a cult figure. I will be discussing the differences between a normal star and a Cult star and what has to happen for a certain actor/actress to become Cult. There are many different ways you can become a Cult actor/actress. The main ways that an actor/actress can become cult is when they get become mainstream and if the star dies tragically (Mathijs and Sexton, 2011), which I will be discussing, in more detail later on in this piece of writing. I will be using works from Richard Dyer, Kate Egan and Sarah Thomas, Forbes, Stephen Kruger, Warren Manger and Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton to strengthen my argument and supply the essay with different people’s opinions. I will be using Mark Hamill as my case study for this essay …show more content…

They did this because everyone recognises Leonardo DiCaprio as an amazing actor, so they know that the film will be good because he is in it. Along side this Richard Dyer states that there is a paradox of becoming a star, as ‘a star is both ordinary and extraordinary’ (Dyer and McDonald, 1998). This means that a star must be normal like the rest of the world but at the same time they shouldn’t. A star must be slightly eccentric to stand out from the rest of the world but not too much, the best example of this I can think of is Johnny Depp. At the Mortdecai premiere in Leicester on the 19th January 2015 a fan shouts at him ‘Johnny, you bae!’

Open Document