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How many actors actually make up Hollywood? Anyone who has stepped inside a movie theater over the last few years would probably guess a pretty low number. In fact, crowding around the exact same 20 to 30 actors for every single mid-to-high-budget film seems to have become a favorite mass sport among Hollywood studios—right alongside figuring out how to squeeze Zendaya into the cast after all that expensive fun (because no matter how the rest of the casting turns out, she simply cannot be missing under any circumstances)!
When this trend snuck its way into Hollywood, the arguments in its favor, and why it ultimately inflicts massive damage on cinema as an art form are what I’m unpacking in this article. A concise analysis, seasoned with a healthy dose of opinion.
(This trailer is linked here primarily so I have a thumbnail for this post without violating any copyrights. It’s a trailer for Euphoria, but Zendaya might as well be playing M.J. from Spider-Man here…)
In my observation, the emergence of the trend described in this article—casting the exact same stars over and over again—can largely be explained by how Hollywood stardom itself has evolved in recent years.
Stars have existed in Hollywood for as long as Hollywood has existed. Whether Charlie Chaplin, James Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson, or Tom Cruise—film history has always been written in large part by individual actors and actresses. Hollywood didn’t change purely from within; rather, it was changed by adapting to the outside world.
Anyone going to the cinema in the 1930s saw Charlie Chaplin on screen and enjoyed his acting performance. Upon leaving the auditorium, however, the audience left Chaplin behind, and Chaplin left the audience, until they met again for his next film. Anyone who stepped inside a movie theater in the 1970s might have experienced Gene Hackman in The Conversation (1974), rooted for him, and discussed his top-tier performance with their companion on the way out. You might bump into Hackman on television at some point down the line, but you’d almost certainly only meet him again at the movies.
Relationships between stars and audiences have always been a cornerstone of Hollywood and crucial for both sides, but until relatively recently, they were fleeting and strictly confined to the movie itself—simply because there wasn’t much else to know about the star. Since the advent of more compact cameras and the accompanying paparazzi boom of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, private information about stars became far more accessible. The healthy distance between consumer and creator (if you want to call it that) shrank massively. This evolution was ultimately perfected by so-called “social media.” Actors are no longer just actors; they are influencers, opinion-makers, and lifestyle advisors. Their films now play a supporting role (or at least no longer the exclusive lead role).
Anyone seeing Tom Holland and Zendaya in a theater today isn’t just focused on their attempt to breathe life into their respective characters—they’re simultaneously thinking about whether the two are actually married yet, what Tom Holland said on Hot Ones recently, and asking themselves why Zendaya basically plays the exact same role in every movie.
Simply put: movie stars are increasingly becoming more than just actors. They are influencers, memes, and talking points with built-in fanbases that drive ticket sales all on their own. Hollywood knows this—and has been exploiting it heavily ever since they realized it.
As a general rule, I’ve always believed the film industry operates on one core principle: give the audience what they want.
To an extent, that’s exactly what’s happening here. When movies make more money by stacking their casts with A-listers; when the consensus among moviegoers is that they’ll see a film because a certain actor is in it, or give another franchise a chance because a familiar face returned—we naturally get more star-driven films. And honestly, we can’t really complain about getting what we ask for. Great directors often rationalize using the exact same stars in the exact same roles by arguing that even for a minor character, casting a big name ensures the audience actually pays attention instead of using an unfamiliar face as a cue for a bathroom break.
For the sake of completeness, movie stars aren’t inherently a bad thing. In most cases, they’ve earned their status, and there’s no denying they bring a unique star appeal to the screen that can work wonders in the right moment. But those arguments start to look pretty flimsy when you examine the other side of the coin:
When it comes to filmmaking, people often say that good editing is editing you don’t notice. The same used to be true for acting. An actor’s job is to disappear into a character—ideally making the audience forget that they’re watching an illusion. That magic is getting harder and harder to pull off. How could it work when you see someone like Tom Holland glide across the screen as Telemachus one week and Peter Parker the next? Personally, whether I’m watching The Odyssey or his Spider-Man movies, I no longer see the character. I just see Tom Holland playing a role.
I don’t even blame Holland for this. Historically, only a handful of exceptional stars ever manage to escape that trap when they try—Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and perhaps Robert Pattinson come to mind (the latter is fully embedded in meme culture, yet somehow consistently manages to let the character take center stage). Still, the situation is fatal. No one can convince me that cinema isn’t losing a fundamental ability when the people on screen feel less like living, breathing characters in a story and more like actors just doing a job.
Obviously, a lot of these thoughts stem from upcoming releases like The Odyssey (2026), where it’s practically easier to list the stars who aren’t in it. Christopher Nolan loves filling every conceivable role with the biggest names possible, and fans often defend this by claiming a sea of familiar faces makes his notoriously complex plots easier to follow.
The best counterargument to that claim comes from Nolan himself, who is famously on record saying you should never treat the audience like they’re stupid. Anyone using that defense is directly contradicting the writer, director, and producer himself. Ultimately, the simplest explanation for why Nolan does what he does comes down to box office math: big stars with massive fanbases promise higher returns.
This is the most tragic part of it all: if the same dozen stars are the only ones ever considered for a lead role (or, in Nolan’s case, every single supporting role), major productions will simply stop taking risks on unknown actors who might actually be perfect for the part.
Look no further than Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles biopics, currently filming with Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan, among others. All four Beatles are being played by high-profile names who are all over 30 years old. By the time the Beatles broke up, every member of the band was still in their late 20s. That means even if the films focus exclusively on their final years—which seems unlikely—the cast is already technically too old. I’ll go out on a limb and say that 30-year-old Paul Mescal isn’t the ideal choice to play a 19-year-old Paul McCartney in the band’s early days. Set photos circulating online certainly don’t offer much hope on that front.
If ever there was a story made for a massive open casting call across the UK, it was the Beatles—four complete nobodies from Liverpool who took the world by storm. Finding four unknown, perfectly suited top talents and giving them a shot at world stardom would have honored that legacy. Instead, Hollywood stuck with the safe bets they already had on rotation.
What’s the solution to this problem? It comes back to what I said earlier: audiences get what they pay for. I could say things like “we as a society need to support smaller films and lesser-known actors,” but the world obviously doesn’t work in such a rosy way, and that’s fine.
As long as the mainstream masses (and by that, I explicitly don’t mean die-hard cinephiles like the ones reading this text) give a movie more attention simply because an A-lister they follow on Instagram is in it, we’ll keep seeing movies cast based on follower counts.
The strongest counterargument to my stance—and perhaps the best possible reality check—is that the actual quality of a production rarely suffers dramatically just because it’s overstuffed with stars. The Odyssey might have been a tiny bit better if someone else had played Zendaya’s or John Leguizamo’s roles, or maybe not. It certainly wouldn’t have changed a single line of dialogue or a camera setup. In the grand scheme of things, it’s almost certainly not worth a half-star difference on Letterboxd.
But what would be worth a lot is giving new faces a chance. We’re likely left with little choice but to accept this artificial scarcity of screen talent and watch as countless other actors (unless something completely crazy like Obsession happens) get left by the wayside. What really breaks my heart isn’t the state of the movies themselves—it’s how much incredible talent will never get the recognition it truly deserves.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Where am I hitting the mark, where do you disagree, and what angles did I miss? Drop a comment below if you would!
As you can hopefully tell, a lot of love went into this post. CineMaximal! will, of course, always be completely free to read, but if you’d like to send a little token of appreciation my way, you can buy me a movie rental—which I’ll put toward my next 99-cent Amazon deal pick. Thank you so much!
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