Male thespians are often seen as emblems of ‘how to be’ in their era. At their best, they are arbiters of style, behaviour, attitude, outlook and sexuality; chameleonic, charismatic, and somehow in tune with the times. Think John Wayne, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen, Sidney Poitier, Jack Nicholson, Denzel Washington, Tony Curtis, Tony Leung.
However, stages and screens can be great deceivers, and more often than not, actors are not the beacons of cool we wish them to be but a peculiar, insecure, ill-at-ease bunch. Most of the time, that manifests quite charmingly, as in the case of Robert Pattinson’s strange, frenetic GQ profile from last year. Other times, well, you can end up like Kevin Spacey.
Between those two poles, you’ll find all manner of bizarre exploits. Think Matthew McConaughey’s red-pilled self-help book, Jonah Hill’s therapised outbursts, Damien Lewis’s lounge jazz version of God Save the King at the Grand Prix, Jeremy Renner’s snowplough habit, or the horrifying Imagine video from the depths of lockdown. Then, of course, there is the entire concept of Jeremy Strong.
While there are a few kooky female actors out there (Tilda Swinton, chief among them), there is an obvious disparity when it comes to male actors going off the deep end in their personal lives, and in the way they present themselves in the media. Male actors appear to be more obsessed with ‘The Method’, more keen to be taken seriously, more disposed to public weirdness.
On the promo circuit, male actors often appear as a flurry of tight suits, transatlantic accents, low-slung beanies, diabolical music projects and bruised egos. If they’re not doing Al Pacino impressions on Graham Norton’s sofa, they’re appearing on Jon Bernthal’s podcast, talking about their ‘journey’ and calling each other ‘bro’. Juxtapose that with the endless churn of ‘these stars teach you British slang’ videos an actor now has to commit to, and it can build a very unknowable breed of person, someone who is forced to flit between everyman relatability and alien glamour.
Thinking back over my own sightings and encounters with actors, I can remember once being in an overpriced deli in Hackney where a man in a low-cut white T-shirt and Ray-Bans held up the lunchtime queue, blissfully unaware, as he fussily asked the stuff to show him various tubs of ricotta. The perpetrator? None other than Hitman and Homeland star Rupert Friend.
Then there are the countless stories you hear on the grapevine – the ones you hear from someone’s cousin’s girlfriend who found themselves on a yacht once. That Hollywood hunk, the one whose love life is a constant storm of speculation and controversy? His ‘thing’ is apparently only ever having sex wearing huge noise-cancelling headphones, pumping hard techno throughout.
Something in the profession either attracts people who are a little odd, or makes people a little odd. And speaking to a number of people who have either acted, tried to act, or spent time with actors, the mystery as to why this is only deepens.
