I was interviewed a few days ago by the Colectivo Cala of Alburquerque (Badajoz, Extremadura) for their radio segment (available as a podcast) ‘Hombre tenías que ser’, in which they comment on diverse aspects of masculinity. I was asked to comment on ideal masculinity, men and cinema, a topic which I had not considered in a while (since I published my book on US men in documentary, in 2023). I checked diverse online lists of the kind that tell you who’s currently the most popular male star, and, together with the veterans, the main names that came up were Timothée Chalamet, Tom Holland and Jacob Elordi.
I’ll comment on them eventually, but let me begin by noting that actors are usually subdivided into generations and since they are active from childhood to advanced seniority, there is an enormous variety of personalities to consider (take your pick!). Veteran Clint Eastwood (95) clearly represents a male model quite different from that of Christian Bale (52) or Chalamet (30). It is, then, quite difficult to select just one man as the icon dominating current cinema and, in many ways, it has always been so. The passage of time helps to simplify each period, so that now the reign of Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Robert Redford and other star actors seems more absolute than it was in their time. I might be wrong about that, though.
From the questions I was asked, it seems that we still measure the men on the screen against the macho model of 1980s action cinema. Yvonne Tasker studied this model in her essential monograph Spectacular Bodies Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (1993), a book that flaunts a shirtless, sexy Jean Claude Van Damme on the cover. My hosts mentioned Bruce Willis in the context of that type of cinema, and I noted that Willis has now become associated with the extreme vulnerability that illness brings to the male body (he suffers from frontotemporal dementia), a topic that needs to be further explored in public discourse (think also of Michael J. Fox). Tasker coined the word ‘musculinity’ to label the type of male screen presence that idealized the muscular body, a model that still survives in action cinema and in superhero sagas (think of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor), perhaps with less exaggeration than in the past, but still as a sign of male discipline and control over the body, even for senior men. I’m thinking here of Ralph Fiennes (63) as a suprisingly muscled Ulysses in The Return.
This is a moment of change, in which older values coexist with the public’s demand for more vulnerable, more caring models of masculinity in all types of cinema, including action and superhero movies. With or without muscles, male characters are supposed to show deep feeling while male actors are supposed to emote authentically, and not simply be interesting masks. Younger male actors are, perhaps for that reason, avoiding specialization and typecasting, so that nobody is surprised to see Paul Mescal as the depressed young father of indie hit Aftersun and the fierce fighter of blockbuster Gladiator 2.
This later film, which is simply atrocious, is interesting for my discussion for two reasons. Mescal (30) plays the son of the protagonist of the original Gladiator (1999), Maximus, played by Russell Crowe (currently 62, 35 in that film). Crowe looked more manly than Mescal at a similar age, but at the same time he’s a rather catastrophic example of how not taking care of your body can spoil your stardom. Brad Pitt and Crowe are the same age, and that says much about how some men have embraced self-care and others have not (though, as we know now from his children, Pitt’s genial persona is pure façade). In Gladiator 2, Mescal’s (false) antagonist is played by Pedro Pascal (51), an actor everyone adores now but who only broke through with his role as Oberyn Martell in Season 4 of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2014). Pascal’s ambiguous sexuality is no obstacle for him to be much liked, which certainly is an advance over previous times when top male actors were forced to conceal any departure from strict heteronormativity, the most extreme case being, no doubt, Rock Hudson.
Box office takings indicate that the most popular male actors today are men in the 50-60 demographic or over: Leonardo Di Caprio (51), Brad Pitt (62), Tom Hanks (69), Denzel Washington (71), Johnny Depp (62), Robert Downey Jr. (61), Tom Cruise (63), Will Smith (57), Christian Bale (52) or Keanu Reeves (61). I’ll add Matthew McConaughey (56) for good measure. I would say that Hanks and Reeves are close to being universally liked, embodying kindness, each in their own way, as few men do and apparently being the real thing. If you’re missing actors of other nationalities of global appeal, I can add Javier Bardem (57), Antonio Banderas (65), Jean Dujardin (53), Omar Sy (48) and Song Kang-ho (59).
As you can see, I have not added yet any British actors. It seemed to me that Henry Cavill (43) and Tom Hardy (48) were the most likely candidates to be major global stars, with their good looks and talent, but something has limited them, whether bad luck with their roles or other factors. The British, by the way, have been struggling for years to replace Daniel Craig (58), the last James Bond so far (seen in No Time to Die, 2021). Craig’s Bond was much vulnerable and did learn to care for others, which turned the character into someone very different from Fleming’s original creation. It seems quite impossible to keep Bond alive in our times, almost as hard as choosing the adequate actor to play him. The names bandied about have included Idris Elba (Craig’s choice), James Norton, Theo James, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. There is now talk of Callum Turner, Harris Dickinson, Jacob Elordi, and even Tom Holland.
I say ‘even’ Tom Holland because at 29 Holland is just too young to play Bond. His lean physique made him a good choice for Spiderman, but he lacks credibility to be the manly man Bond is supposed to be. My interviewers pointed out that Holland is a very positive model precisely because he does not emphasize manliness (in the line of his Spiderman predecessors Andrew Garfield and Toby McGuire) and, attention!, because he’s dating a taller woman (Zendaya). The title of my post today is ‘looking for the poster boy’ and this is so because I told my interviewers that to determine which actor embodies currently ideal masculinity we should think of which poster we would hang on our bedroom’s wall (if you’re young) or office. Sorry, but I would certainly not choose Holland! Nor Timothée Chalamet, a man who, like Di Caprio, will always look like a grown-up boy and, who, excuse the gossip, is dating a woman from the Kardashian-Jenner clan.
Until recently, perhaps the most obvious poster boys (men!) were Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, and, no doubt the handsomest, Chris Hemsworth, an actor who presents himself as a committed father and husband, and who has a healthy sense of humour as shown in the short films he made with Taika Waititi mocking his superhero roles. These men, now past 40, are huge stars, but not at the level of the 50-70 cohort I mentioned before. Among the actors around or under 40, other names frequently mentioned (apart from Chalamet, Mescal and Holland) are the following (see how many you recognize): Robert Pattinson, Michael B. Jordan, Austin Butler, Ansel Elgort, Lucas Hedges, Noah Centineo, Barry Keoghan, Harris Dickinson, Fionn Whitehead, Taron Eggerton, Richard Madden, Regé-Jean Page, Henry Golding. There has been a rather intensive operation to turn Glen Powell (37) into the next best thing, as a men’s man who can also please the ladies (yes, it’s that old-fashioned!), but something has not clicked. Unfortunately, cancer robbed us of an actor who had the charisma to become a truly major star and role model. I’m talking about Chadwick Boseman, who passed away in 2020. As Wakanda’s king, he projected something truly majestic, and thus made an ideal poster actor.
It might be perhaps positive that there is not a single desirable model of masculinity, but a variety represented by all the actors I have mentioned here (and don’t forget supporting actors; I once wrote a post about Paul Bettany, one of the best we have today). Current preferences call for a masculinity that is flexible, culturally diverse, unafraid of vulnerability, capable of showing emotion and, yes, stylish in a personal way. Musculinity is not totally gone, but physical resilience has replaced brute strength. Male actors and the roles they play (unless they play villains!) must show empathy, self-control, good social skills, total acceptance of equality, and hold unprejudiced views. Traditional masculinity is not wholly gone, that is obvious, but it is no longer tolerated without the traits I have mentioned and a higher emotional maturity, which is also much sought after in real-life men. In that sense, it’s interesting to contrast the same characters in past and present iterations, beginning for instance with Tom Cruise’s Maverick in Top Gun (1986, 2022) or the diverse Batman, a character with a particularly dark disposition despite being heroic.
I’m writing here about the male actors that usually play positive role models but, of course, the essence of current masculinity might be better represented by far less adjusted roles. The success of Joker (2019), with the title character played by Joaquin Phoenix, truly horrified me, as this film openly sympathizes with a horrendous man (I really don’t care about his past traumas). At the same time, the variety of male characters, though apparently enhanced, is still quite limited. Chalamet’s breakthrough film was Call Me by Your Name (2017), in which he played a gay teen. However, like Brokeback Mountain (2005) with Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger, Call Me by Your Name has also failed to normalize the presence of gay protagonists. A rumour is now circulating that trans man Elliot Page might play Achilles in Nolan’s Odyssey, directly challenging Brad Pitt’s role in Troy (2004). It will be interesting to comment on the reactions if/when this happens.
I haven’t spoken about series because I don’t like them (too time-consuming). I’ve been, however, following the new version of All Creatures Great and Small (2020-, 6 seasons), a gentle British comedy about three rural vets in Yorkshire, based on the books by James Herriot, and set in the 1930s and 1940s. The three main male characters (Herriot himself, and brothers Sigfried and Tristan Farnon) are quite different men, but they are honest, honourable, hard-working men. The show is quite candid about Sigfried’s shortcomings, poking fun at his cantankerous, rude behaviour. I don’t know whether these men would welcome a female colleague (Aleen Cust, the first woman veterinary surgeon in the UK, qualified in 1922), an issue not raised so far in the series. Yet, I’m enjoying a masculinity that excludes deep anger and violence, even though Sigfried (a WWI veteran) and Tristan (deployed in Sicily during WWII) carry their own traumas. It’s a traditional, very British type of gentlemanly masculinity, and I take my enjoyment as a sign that fed up with the toxic US male characters we’re force-fed on our global screens.
I realise, re-reading the post, that I have said nothing about Jacob Elordi, seen in the same year as Frankenstein’s monster and as Emily Brontë’s monster Heathcliff, and a firm candidate to play James Bond. He’s also in the series Euphoria, playing the far from ideal Nate Jacobs. Well, give Elordi a positive male character and he might be the poster boy for our times, given his very good looks. As long as he is only offered toxic roles, he won’t be able to truly shine. Ultimately, this is the main problem: there are many good male actors, but we need them to play many more positive male characters. Let’s ask for them to be written.