he invasion of British and Irish leading men in Hollywood has now gone beyond a joke for many in the American entertainment industry.
First noticed some time in 2011, the trend was initially dismissed as a novelty: an interesting phase that would pass, rather than as a threat. But this summer actors and directors are calling for action to mobilise American drama teachers and schools to counter it.
A serious backlash has started in America, with film-making heavyweights such as the actor and producer
Michael Douglas... calling for an urgent rethink in the industry.
Douglas has spoken of a
“little crisis going on among our young actors at this point”.
The resistance movement has been growing since January when Richard Hicks, president of the Casting Society of America, pointed out that a search for new faces had become an epidemic. “I went to see a movie,” he told
Entertainment Weekly “and four casting directors were sitting around talking about, ‘What’s up with all the Brits and Australian actors snagging all the leads?’”
Hicks and his colleagues put the problem down to a failure to train American actors in character work. It is by building up a portfolio of cameo roles that a talent can develop, he argued. In answer to the dearth of substantial male talent, his fellow casting directors cast their net wider, giving serious roles to actors who had picked up technique in comic roles. So Steve Carrell was cast in
Foxcatcher, Adam Sandler in
Punch Drunk Love and
Funny People,
Ben Stiller in
While We’re Young and now Vince Vaughn stars in the bleak second season of the hit television series
True Detective.
for all the reasons.)
