Why Does It Feel Like We Can’t Get The Same Actors Off Our Screens?

Cinema feels like it’s in the best place it’s been for a long time, with hits like The Odyssey and Spider-Man lighting up the box office and original films like Obsession dominating discourse. But one complaint a lot of people have been making (whether valid or not) is that it often feels like the same crop of actors are popping up everywhere.

Is it really true that the likes of Jacob Elordi, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Paul Mescal and Margot Robbie “are in everything”? And if so, why? Read on as we take a dive into the stars that we can’t seem to get off our screens.

A new generation of film star

There’s been chatter for years that the movie star is dying out, replaced by franchises and even studio power (how many films have you watched because it was made by A24?), and that perhaps someone like Tom Cruise is the last person remaining who can draw audiences to a film by his name alone.

And yet, in the last few years, a new pantheon of A-Listers has been forming that now seems inescapable. Some of the names include but are not limited to: Zendaya, Tom Holland, Jacob Elordi, Timothée Chalamet, Pedro Pascal, Sydney Sweeney, Paul Mescal, Anne Hathaway, Margaret Qualley, Glen Powell, Austin Butler and Florence Pugh.

They’re not all in the same generation, but they’ve certainly been dominating our screens- “Tomdaya”, as people have taken to calling the Hollywood power couple. Both had substantial roles in The Odyssey and Spider-Man this summer, and Anne Hathaway will have been in at least five films in the span of seven months. In some cases, it might be the “newness” of them that makes us feel overexposed to them: Paul Mescal broke out with Normal People in 2020, and in a few years was starring in Gladiator II and cast in Beatles biopics. While not every one of these stars is guaranteed to make a film a success because of their name, as Zendaya arguably did with Challengers, they’re certainly at the forefront of Hollywood.

Actors may not be in everything, but we hear about them all the time

Celeb culture is certainly nothing new, but both social media and ever longer press tours mean it sometimes feels like we can’t get away from famous people. I wrote recently about celebrity interviews and how everyone (particularly actors) appear on a revolving circuit of stops during press tours, from Hot Ones to podcasts to Graham Norton. Sure, Margot Robbie might have only appeared in Wuthering Heights this year, but after seeing her all over your social media feeds for months around the time of its release, it certainly feels like you’ve seen a lot of her.

Even when a star is between projects, you often hear about them and their opinions in our polarised and reactive internet world. Sydney Sweeney appearing in a jeans ad is talked about for weeks, and Timothée Chalamet mentioning opera and ballet is repeated over and over again until you’re sick of it. Of course, we wouldn’t be hearing about these same stars if there wasn’t a big audience for their exploits, but sometimes it does seem like you’ll be overexposed to them whether you like it or not.

The nepotism factor

The nepobaby discourse, which particularly kicked off a couple of years ago following a New York magazine article, zeroes in on the fact that quite a few of the same actors who feel like they’re “everywhere” are the kids of already famous people.

Margaret Qualley, who we’ve already mentioned, is one particularly notable example, being the daughter of Andie MacDowell. Lily Rose-Depp, Johnny Depp’s daughter, is another. While no one who’s seen Maid and Nosferatru will doubt the talent of these actors, perhaps it only compounds the issue that we feel like we’ve seen them everywhere- and not just because they look like their parents. Once you’ve already been seen, like Mescal or perhaps Mikey Madison, you’re certainly going to have a foot in the door, but if your mother or aunt or uncle is a producer or director, it’ll be a lot easier to crop up in plenty of projects.

While no one who’s seen Maid and Nosferatru will doubt the talent of these actors, perhaps it only compounds the issue that we feel like we’ve seen them everywhere.

Doubling up 

Another less talked about fact in terms of why it feels like we can’t get certain actors off our screens is that TV is so much more prized by Hollywood than it used to be. In years past, many big Hollywood stars pretty much abstained from appearing in TV shows altogether- you weren’t going to get Jack Nicholson in a 3-season-long detective drama.

Now, however, with TV and movies so closely blended in style and budget, actors regularly hop from the small screen to the big screen. Rebecca Ferguson will be in Mission Impossible and the new Kathryn Bigelow one minute, and appearing in Apple TV’s Silo the next. There are still actors who appear first in television and then make the jump to film stardom, but increasingly they’ll end up re-appearing on TV anyway- Elordi was in both Wuthering Heights and Euphoria Season 3 earlier this year. And even adverts with their seemingly limitless budgets can make you feel like you can’t go one minute without seeing famous faces- like when Andrew Garfield was in all of those Sky ads. This all contributes to that inescapable feeling where you literally can’t get the same actors off your screen, whether it’s the cinema, TV or phone.

But is any of this actually new?

The big question is, is feeling like certain actors are everywhere and in everything actually new? The honest answer is no, not really. Go back 20 years, and it will have felt like Leonardo DiCaprio (who now seems super selective on projects) and Will Smith were in everything.

Go back further, and it was the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger in countless 80s action movies. Go back further still, and the golden age of Hollywood was producing countless films with Cary Grant, John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn. Were people back then getting sick of seeing actors we think of as much-missed legends like Hepburn everywhere as well? Probably. When we look back on the 2020s and only remember a couple of the most successful Tom Holland films, we might have a similar nostalgia and the same complaints about whoever is dominating the box office then.