Once upon a time in Hollywood, movie stars were the definition of grace under pressure. Sure, Tom Cruise would occasionally jump up and down on Oprah’s couch like crazy and every once in a while Justin Timberlake would swing a paparazzo. But for the most part, they have kept their cool.
In fact, they’ve paid teams of prestigious publicists millions to make sure their carefully curated public figures remain completely untroubled.
Not anymore. Today, celebrities connect with their inner demons and melt in front of the entire world. And frankly, it’s becoming increasingly painful—and even disgusting—to watch.
Take Johnny Depp. For nearly four decades, the 58-year-old “Pirates of the Caribbean” star has enjoyed a super privileged position in the Hollywood ecosystem. Not just a movie star, he was a loving icon, part Marlon Brando, part Keith Richards, who displayed a malicious, cynical mystery, above all that made him one of the most deceptive leading men on earth.
But it all went out the window last week in a televised defamation trial against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, in which recorded evidence — which Heard herself surreptitiously taped on her phone — revealed Depp in an intensely human moment of pain and anger, screaming “Mother”—er” as he was shattered. for the kitchen cabinets in their West Hollywood home.
This was hardly the worst of it. Testimony has been given of horrific insults, discarded wine bottles, severed fingertips, binges on drugs and alcohol, and even allegations that they were heard retaliating on their marital bed (don’t ask). Many of these discoveries were first revealed in 2020, in a previous experiment in England, but actually watching them on TV, watching Depp shivering in the witness chair, made it all the more disgusting and humiliating. Not to mention the confusion. Depp lost that first case and yet he chose to bring this case to trial. Why would the world want to live the experience again, this time in front of American cameras?
Will Smith’s disaster at the Oscars wasn’t a serious one, but it was just as upsetting. Over his more than three decades in the field, the 53-year-old “King Richard” star has developed a super-genius, all-American image that has made him one of the most cunning humans on the planet. Then he took a quick swipe at Chris Rock and delivered this tearful apology as he accepted his Best Actor award, one evening tearing down one of the most carefully designed public figures in Hollywood history. It was a truly shocking sight, like witnessing the sudden disintegration of Mount Rushmore.
Of course, the public has always been tempted to peek into the private lives of celebrities, which is why the American magazine published “They are just like us!” Pages has been a popular feature and why TMZ still attracts 50 million visitors per month. But the embarrassing photo of Ben Affleck showing his butt crack at a gas station is one thing. What we are witnessing now is completely different, and much more harmful. It’s as if Smith and Depp are putting culture through the celebrity aversion cure, jamming the airwaves with plenty of humiliating and dirty personal information about themselves and their buddies—seriously, Amber, can’t you find the bathroom? The very idea of fame has become a turning point.
In some ways, these breakdowns are almost understandable. After all, being famous is not what it used to be. The star system that had maintained Hollywood for 100 years—which arguably peaked in the mid-1990s, when Smith, Julia Roberts and two Toms (Cruz and Hanks) managed to summon huge crowds simply by pasting their names on a marquee—has crumbled to dust. Their $30 million movie salary is long gone. Her fan bases are becoming more gray and less enthusiastic, as younger audiences have moved on to whole new crops of easily accessible “influencers” on YouTube and TikTok.
But what we are witnessing today seems to be more than just an aging generation of actors dealing with shrinking salaries and declining prestige in the age of social media. There seems to be something deeper going on, something that speaks to a larger change in pop culture: perhaps no less than the end of “celebrity” as we know it.
For fame to succeed, it requires a certain mystery. Movie stars are supposed to be larger than life both on and off screen. They’re supposed to be ambitious characters, with more charming and wonderful lives than the rest of us poor in the cheap life benches. Inspiring, enticing, and enticing the audience with grace, beauty, and attractiveness – sometimes even their talent – is pretty much a complete job description.
So when that facade cracks — or, as with Depp and Smith, it completely disintegrates in public, in ways that leave the rest of us mere mortals in disgust — it blows the delusion of all the celebrities. Suddenly, instead of looking at movie stars, we find ourselves looking at them with contempt and pathos.
Because these days they’re not just like us – they’re much worse.
