Has Hollywood destroyed the “movie star” so it has an excuse to pay actors less?

Posted On April 4, 2025April 4, 2025

When Captain America: New World Order star Anthony Mackie recently appeared on the Pivot podcast, he had several thought-provoking comments about the nature of modern movie stardom. Undoubtedly, the most fascinating thing he spoke about was his theory on why Hollywood has, by and large, stopped creating movie stars. This topic has been floating around for several years at this point, and many potential reasons for the supposed lack of bankable movie idols have been put forward. Mackie’s theory, though, is that Hollywood purposely destroyed the “movie star” in order to justify paying actors less than ever before. Is he onto something?

Now, before going any further, something must be addressed. Does it seem silly for Mackie, the lead actor playing a superhero in a new $180million blockbuster, to question whether or not Hollywood is in the business of making movie stars anymore? Yes. Kind of. However, if you take a step back, his comments are actually more damning and eye-opening than if you or I said there were no new movie stars.

After all, this man is starring in the lead role in a major motion picture, but he still doesn’t consider himself a true movie star. He knows that Captain America—or the Falcon—is the star of the show, not Anthony Mackie. Indeed, his career outside of Marvel, which largely consists of straight-to-streaming movies and ensemble roles, would attest to this.

“It’s interesting now because the category of acting has changed, you know what I mean?” Mackie mused. “Hollywood doesn’t make stars anymore. Think about it. When we were kids, you had [Arnold] Schwarzenegger, [Sylvester] Stallone, Tom Cruise, Denzel [Washington], Morgan Freeman, Wesley Snipes, [Al] Pacino, [Robert] De Niro. I’m not even talking about the women, and you can name 50 dudes who were making ten to 20million a movie. Now… who is our De Niro?”

A few names spring to mind when trying to think of modern movie stars capable of pushing back against Mackie’s theory that the only people still drawing money are those who have been stars for decades already. Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, and Glen Powell are generally seen as the biggest young, up-and-comers in Hollywood, and it’s entirely possible they may establish themselves as box office draws for years to come. Currently, they’re certainly super famous, and many people—especially on the internet—love them.

However, is Chalamet really someone who puts butts on seats in the way Leonardo DiCaprio did in the 1990s for original movies? He’s a very good actor, no doubt, but his biggest hits are Dune and Wonka— both based on recognisable intellectual properties (IP)—and his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has tapped out at $136million at the worldwide box office. Similarly, Zendaya’s biggest hits are the Spider-Man movies and The Greatest Showman, although Challengers did show some movie star promise. Sweeney and Powell’s Anyone But You arguably makes the best case that those two have elevated into movie star status, but there isn’t enough evidence yet to say whether they are stars who will endure.

In truth, perhaps modern movie stardom is more than simply analysing whether a film makes money at the box office. The movie landscape is so fractured these days, franchise culture is so prevalent, and social media stardom so varied and lucrative that maybe it’s out of touch to say the likes of Chalamet and Sweeney aren’t stars like Cruise and Julia Roberts were in the ’90s.

However, Mackie’s inside baseball-style theory points to the notion that Hollywood prefers movie stardom in this modern mould, as opposed to the days when the likes of Cruise, Roberts, and Washington knew they were important to making or breaking a movie and could charge the studios accordingly.

“There’s nobody out there making $10million a movie,” Mackie claimed. “It’s just not happening anymore. But ticket prices are going up, right? It’s $25 to go to the movies, whereas when we were young, it was $8, and they were making 20m a movie. Now, we’re making five to seven, so there’s a huge disparity. Where’s that extra money going?”

Overall, Mackie—theoretically one of these stars making five to $7million per film—believes that Hollywood purposely made recognised characters, brands, and IP the stars of most movies for a very specific reason. “If you don’t make huge stars, you can pay them less,” he said with alarming simplicity.

He’s got a point, too. Studios don’t need to pay Anthony Mackie, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson $20m to play Captain America, Spider-Man, and Batman these days because the character is what sells the movie, not the actor.

With that in mind, perhaps the real question isn’t whether Hollywood has stopped making movie stars. Instead, we should ask if this new version of movie stardom, which grants less agency and control to the actors, is truly good for the movie business. At the end of the day, if Hollywood has intentionally fostered a landscape where actors can’t sell original movies anymore, based on their names alone, have they scuppered the future of the business with shortsightedness and greed?

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