Luck, looks and a very big ego

IT must be quite good fun being a movie star, what with the adulation, money and red carpets.

Who wouldn’t want to go to the pictures, buy a £7 hotdog and watch themselves pretending to be someone else on a big screen?

You could turn to the people behind you and say things like, “That’s not really my bum.” or “They’ve actually cut all my best bits out.”

Essentially, you need either star quality and a magnetic screen presence or an enormous lucky break.

It helps if you’re a bombshell or a screen siren, brooding and devastatingly handsome or so uniquely ugly that children run away in the street.

There’s no point being a movie star unless you bag the lead roles. Also, while it is acceptable to die in a film you really need to have done something pretty interesting beforehand.

It’s ok to make one arty classic in your career but what you’re really after is big blockbusters. The aim is box office hits and billion pound budgets, most of it spent on trucks to carry your ego between the various exotic locations.

Once you’ve established yourself in a particular character genre I’d recommend you stick with it.

Romantic heroines should avoid playing evil dictators who cackle while action heroes shouldn’t attempt comedy. Only Arnie has ever really pulled that one off.

Getting a role in a film which has three sequels and five prequels is a good idea because it means you only have to conjure up one set of facial impressions and one walk. It’s a lot easier than taking on a different persona in every film like Hugh Grant does.

The movie business has changed considerably due to special effects and computer generation. Many stars are no longer allowed to do their own stunts, not even things like forward rolls, and in lots of films the tears in the sad bits are super imposed afterwards.

As a result, to earn their spurs and keep it real any self-respecting movie star now needs to tread the boards of theatre at least once, usually in a role so worthy that they have to take their clothes off. They call this “stripping the character down”.

Once you get to a certain level of movie stardom, probably the £15 million a movie mark, you can start making demands so ridiculous you wouldn’t dare mention them if your mother was in the room.

The pinnacle of any movie star’s career is the winning of an Oscar. Shocking then that they tend to destroy all their new found credibility with a half hour sob at the podium.


Next week… The Art of Being Literary