We’re all wise to those phoney rotters who hold ‘luxury beliefs’ – the excellent phrase coined by the social commentator Rob Henderson in 2019 to describe ‘the modern trend among affluent Americans to use their beliefs as a way to display their social status… a belief held or espoused in order to signal that a person belongs to an elite class’. I’ve recently noticed a new side-effect of extreme privilege; luxury self-deprecation, as seen principally in actors who diss their own vehicles (if old) or express dismay at becoming famous (if young). I call them the Slamming Hams – Shams for short. These star-turncoats are headed by Hugh Grant, who recently said ‘I slightly hate [making films], but I have lots of children and need money’ at a press conference to promote his latest film Wonka, in which he plays an ‘Oompa Loompa’. He went on to compare wearing a costume to ‘a crown of thorns’ but no one will ever mistake this miserable old git – who appears to have been in a bad mood ever since he was discovered getting noshed off in a car way back in the twentieth century – for Jesus.
The acting profession has a whopping 85 per cent unemployment rate
I’d have reckoned that young actors might be more appreciative of fame and fortune, but 27-year-old Paul Mescal has recently said that he would be ‘profoundly depressed’ if his leading role in the upcoming Gladiator 2 makes him globally famous. You’d think that someone who had an agent even before he graduated from drama school and has worked ever since – including showing off his bum a lot on the BBC – would be prepared for the consequences of rampant ambition, but there’s nowt so queer as theatrical folk.
Maybe Paul Mescal feels sad because he was in Normal People, with all that endless mithering on about ‘feelings’? What’s the furthest an actor could get from such drear introversion – I know, James Bond! But no, here’s Daniel Craig back in 2015, venting to Time Out, asked if he’d be up for making a fifth Bond film: ‘I’d rather slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on… at least for a year or two. I don’t know what the next step is. I’ve no idea. Not because I’m trying to be cagey. If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money.’ He was obviously offered enough, as No Time To Die was released in 2021. O well, maybe Daniel Craig feels sad about being James Bond because the character is a sexist dinosaur – I bet no hot youngish actor in a super-successful feminist film would suffer from the same ennui? But no – when ‘I’m Just Ken’ bagged the Critics Choice Award for Best Original Song, Ryan Gosling could be seen looking positively perturbed as the dishy musician Mark Ronson went up to accept it.
Why do some actors behave this way? Is it shame? Are they fully aware that they had exactly the same chance as everyone else to train as teachers, as doctors, as firefighters when they were young – and are embarrassed for it to be so universally witnessed that they chose instead to play let’s pretend for a living, for which they will be rewarded far beyond the appreciation shown to teachers, doctors and firefighters? Is it a kind of modesty? Hardly, because they never say that they’re not good enough for the vehicle and that another actor would have done it better – it’s always the vehicle that isn’t good enough for them. There’s something morally repulsive about openly saying you’re just doing it for the pay cheque; it’s insulting to everyone who worked on the film and refrained from slagging it off, let alone to the audience who took the trouble to leave the comfort of their homes and actually go to a cinema.
Of course, no one in a regular job can do this; a barista can’t confide in a customer how bad the coffee is. Even bosses can’t do it; remember the jeweller Gerald Ratner saying of his stock ‘People say ‘How can you sell this for such a low price?’ I say: ‘Because it’s total crap… we sold a pair of earrings for under £1, which is cheaper than a shrimp sandwich from Marks and Spencer, but probably wouldn’t last as long.’ That was more than thirty years ago, but to this day executives fear ‘doing a Ratner’ like nothing else; only those who tout their wares in the bazaars of Thespis seem to find such contempt for their consumers acceptable.
Still, are the Shams actually hurting anyone except their own reputations? Which brings us back to luxury beliefs, as so much does these days. In last year’s book Reconnect, the sociologists Lemov, Lewis, Williams and Frazier elaborated on Henderson’s invention as ‘an idea that confers social status on people who hold it but injures others in its practical consequences.’ The acting profession has a whopping 85 per cent unemployment rate; by snapping up plum jobs while despising the work, successful actors who don’t need the money could be said to be harming fellow actors desperate for both. I’m sure that at least some of it is down to spite; whenever I see Hugh Grant dialling in his latest performance, I can’t help thinking that part of the reason he took the role was so it couldn’t be offered to the vastly superior Richard E.
Snootiness from a few actors will possibly make audiences feel less kindly towards all actors when it comes to the question of AI in entertainment; Grant has even moaned about being in Paddington 2, of all the benign bear-shaped projects – ‘CGI is very confusing…you can’t tell what’s going on’ – before revealing that his children ‘pretty much hated it.’ Though Barbenheimer bucked the trend in the latter part of last year, cinema attendance in the first three months of 2023 were the lowest since 2014, the year the BFI began quarterly reporting, excluding lockdown. Actors who openly slam their own work – and in doing so show contempt for those who pay to see it – cannot be helping the situation. There’s a lot talked about privilege these days, but beyond everything from white privilege to pretty privilege, there is the rare and precious privilege of being paid a fortune for doing the thing you love for a living; I have it myself, and at 64 I still feel as full of wonder at this fact as I did at 17, which may partly explain why I keep getting better. So if some Sham tells you that their latest entertainment is rubbish – believe them.
False modesty / The rise of the sham actors
13
22
22.01.2024
We’re all wise to those phoney rotters who hold ‘luxury beliefs’ – the excellent phrase coined by the social commentator Rob Henderson in 2019 to describe ‘the modern trend among affluent Americans to use their beliefs as a way to display their social status… a belief held or espoused in order to signal that a person belongs to an elite class’. I’ve recently noticed a new side-effect of extreme privilege; luxury self-deprecation, as seen principally in actors who diss their own vehicles (if old) or express dismay at becoming famous (if young). I call them the Slamming Hams – Shams for short. These star-turncoats are headed by Hugh Grant, who recently said ‘I slightly hate [making films], but I have lots of children and need money’ at a press conference to promote his latest film Wonka, in which he plays an ‘Oompa Loompa’. He went on to compare wearing a costume to ‘a crown of thorns’ but no one will ever mistake this miserable old git – who appears to have been in a bad mood ever since he was discovered getting noshed off in a car way back in the twentieth century – for Jesus.
The acting profession has a whopping 85 per cent unemployment rate
I’d have reckoned that young actors might be more appreciative of fame and fortune, but 27-year-old Paul Mescal has recently said that he would be ‘profoundly depressed’ if his leading role in the upcoming Gladiator 2 makes him globally famous. You’d think that someone who had an agent even before he graduated from drama school and has worked ever since – including showing off his bum a lot on the BBC........
© The Spectator
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