Sometimes growing old can be incredibly scary. I mean, stuff like waking up and having lower back aches or feeling a pain in your knee because there’s a storm rolling into town is generally not for young people. But on the other side of the coin, growing old means getting to completely stop caring about trends that happen in the world and to growl at kids for being ridiculous. This goes doubly for people in the entertainment world who see what young up-and-comers are doing to get noticed and it leaves them scratching their heads over it.
Two such people are Michael Caine and Emma Thompson, two well known Hollywood heavies who have been in some huge, blockbuster films and still get a steady stream of work. According to The Wrap, both Caine and Thompson have been outspoken of late about what they’ve been seeing with younger actors and actresses and that they don’t like it one bit. At the royal reception for the British Academy Award winners, Thompson spoke out about recent trends that include hiring young actors and actresses based on their social media following, with studios hoping to cash in on that following to help sell movies.
Michael Caine adds to Thompson’s point by talking about how many young actors see the big paydays that actors receive and go into acting not for the love of the craft, but simply for fame and fortune. He continues that he’s seen young actors burn out in their quest for fame before the age of 30 and that it has ruined careers.
The attempts to gauge popularity via social media aren’t new, in fact, during the mid ’00’s many bands and musical acts were signed to record contracts according to how many MySpace fans they had. In fact, without MySpace, we wouldn’t have Flat Earth truther Tila Tequila in our lives. On that note, maybe we should rethink how we view social media popularity and should look for people who actually cultivate their talents.
(via The Wrap)
