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CASTING
director Jane Jenkins remembers Patrick Dempsey in his
pre-McDreamy doldrums. So did a lot of other people in
Hollywood. For no apparent reason, she said, “We had to
fight with everyone to hire this guy.” In 1989 he had
been the romantic lead in Loverboy; by 2000 he was the
cop in Scream 3.
Then, of
course, Grey’s Anatomy popped like a
Champagne cork.
“It took
a hit television series for him to suddenly become
everybody’s leading man,” said Jenkins, cofounder of the
Casting Co., a firm that has helped film and television
directors narrow down their casting choices for 27
years. Known as sexy neurosurgeon Derek Shepherd on
ABC’s four-season medical-show phenomenon, Dempsey is
now starring in Disney’s big-screen hit Enchanted. Next
year he’ll play the romantic lead in
Columbia’s
comedy Made of Honor.
As the
class divide between TV and film keeps shrinking, TV has
been solidifying its role as a maker of leading men.
Original shows, on cable as well as network TV, are
shifting attention to more mature and complex
characters. The small screen is now crowded with
charming, smart, confident, humorous grown-up men who
are riveting critics’ attention.
Kyle
Chandler’s manly, moral husband/father/coach centers
NBC’s Friday Night Lights. Jon Hamm’s mysterious,
unfaithful husband/father/ad executive takes charge of
AMC’s Mad Men, and Jeffrey Donovan, the intelligent,
haunted and irreverent bachelor/ex-CIA agent adds depth
to USA’s Burn Notice.
Jenkins
said it doesn’t matter if Donovan’s isn’t a household
name yet. She’s confident it soon will be.
“People
in the business have all taken notice at this point, and
the world will follow,” she said.
Donovan,
who described his pre-Burn Notice career as having
“risen below the radar,” just landed a part opposite
Angelina Jolie in director Clint Eastwood’s film The
Changeling.
Likewise, Hamm, who seemed to come from nowhere last
summer, has since been pictured as his glamorous 1960
character Don Draper in leading magazines and
newspapers. Though Hamm said he’s not exactly getting
Hollywood’s “Vinnie Chase” treatment, he still sits in
meetings he wouldn’t have had six months ago. And he’s
now starring in an independent film, The Boy in the Box.
For his
part, a grateful Dempsey credits the nature of his
“perfect man” character, the writing and the visibility
television offers. “Studios are willing to bankroll you
because of that exposure,” he said.
A
certain comfort level
THESE
TV-bred leading men are clearly men, not guys. But
befitting the medium that created them, their
masculinity seems to be a rather domesticated one,
signifying perhaps a cultural shift in what
audiences—both men and women—want from men. Where film’s
leading men from the eras that spawned, say, Cary Grant
and Paul Newman had a special-occasion remoteness, a
sense of formality, TV’s leading men have issues:
families, children, wives and ex-wives, problems at
work. Television offers a familiarity, an intimacy, that
brings actors not only into everyone’s homes but also
into their everyday lives for weeks on end. It’s no
wonder that in the end, they come off as everyday men,
not larger-than-life superheroes—even in the case of
Hamm, whose character actually does come from the Cary
Grant era.
The
actors who embody this new masculinity have gained
career options along with their aura of self-effacing
approachability.
Chandler,
42, (King Kong, Grey’s Anatomy) said he enjoys the
growth he’s found in roles he’s played on stage, screen
and TV. “TV’s been good to me,” he said. “If I can keep
doing all three, in the end, I’ll call that successful.”
With the
substantial improvement in television quality, it may,
in fact, be difficult for the actors to find movie roles
that are as interesting as the ones they’ve had on TV,
said film historian David Thomson. Because more people
are watching television, “to be in a hit television
series now is almost a more impressive kind of stardom
than movie stardom,” he said.
In the
past, the fortunate few who crossed over from television
into Hollywood’s pantheon of leading men never looked
back. Clint Eastwood (Rawhide) led the way, to be
followed by Warren Beatty and Robert Redford (Playhouse
90, among others), Bruce Willis (Moonlighting), Johnny
Depp (21 Jump Street) and George Clooney (ER)—arguably
the only leading man of the day who could rival Grant or
Clark Gable for a knowing, twinkly eyed smirk. The envy
of many actors today, Clooney famously parlayed his
appeal into a producing and directing career as well.
The
Sopranos raised the bar for high-class television and
made careers for its stars, Thomson said. “James
Gandolfini was made by The Sopranos. He will never do
anything like it,” Thomson said.
Television has also likely linked the name Kiefer
Sutherland with “Jack Bauer” for the foreseeable future.
Sutherland had played supporting roles in films, but
after 24 he became an international star. A film
version, said to be in the works, would bring him back
to theaters as a star for his television role.
Alec
Baldwin rose from TV (Knots Landing) to film but
returned for a career boost with 30 Rock.
Dempsey,
for one, said he wants to continue making feature films.
He said his future depends on the outcome of the
writers’ strike and that he intends to honor his
contractual obligations to the network. But he said, “I
enjoy the process of making a movie.... I like the fact
that there’s a beginning, a middle and an end.”
The
current crop of leading men has kicked around
Hollywood long enough without jackpot rewards to view the
specter of big-screen success with some ambivalence.
“I was
never into the big, supermovie-star guys,” Hamm said. “I
appreciated what they did. But I was more drawn to Jeff
Bridges and the guys who were two or three down on the
call sheet but got to do really cool movies. I loved The
Big Lebowski.”
Still,
at 36, he said, “It’s nice to be invited to the big
kids’ table.”
Donovan,
39, a theater actor who’s also done film (Hitch, Believe
in Me), said he likes the freedom that comes with making
enough money to pay the rent and make his own career
choices but still being able to go shopping without
being swamped by paparazzi. When he landed the role in
Eastwood’s film, he said, he smiled from ear to ear for
a day. “Then terror set in. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I
have to act with Ms. Jolie, Mr. Malkovich and Mr.
Eastwood.’”
Donovan
knows his everyday looks won’t land him on People
magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive List. (Dempsey was
runner-up after Matt Damon this year.) While agents see
him as a leading man, he sees himself more as a
character actor, along the lines of Jimmy Stewart.
Of
course, as casting directors point out, what makes an
actor a leading man is often simply a matter of taste.
Keli Lee, ABC’s executive vice president of casting,
said Dempsey had made three pilots for ABC and was on
creator Shonda Rhimes’s radar from the start. “Shonda
envisioned that that character should be her perfect
man,” and Dempsey fit the bill.
Building
Mr. Perfect
BUT
there’s consensus about some aspects of the leading-man
type: By definition, he is someone women want to date
and men want to hang out with, Jenkins said. It’s an
intangible and variable mix of qualities that, depending
on whom you talk to, include smart, sexy, funny,
charming, charismatic, interesting, tough, irreverent,
confident, comfortable, cuddly, strong, likable,
trustworthy, suave, debonair, secure, manly, deep and
mature.
“What
makes an actor appealing is that they’re somebody you’d
like to spend time with, no matter who you are,” Jenkins
said. And, once solidified in the right kind of role,
the appeal tends to be universal over time and
continents, she said. Clooney, Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks
are all popular abroad.
Historically, audiences have wanted to believe that a
leading man is also being more or less himself in the
various parts he plays. Thomson said Gary Cooper once
offered this advice to a screenwriter struggling to
devise a script in which Cooper would star: “I’ve found
if you just make me the hero, it usually works out.”
When a
star pops as a leading man, it’s often because the role
matches his own personality.
Burn
Notice creator Matt Nix said some of Donovan’s earlier
roles didn’t click because they were one- dimensional
and didn’t showcase Donovan’s innate mix of humor and
intensity. “He’s too good to be bad and too bad to be
good,” Nix said.
Fortunately for older actors, the zeitgeist has shifted
slightly to accommodate an appreciation of adults,
offering actors a chance to bring their own experience
to more complex and flawed characters.Hamm said when he
first came to California, it was during the “Dawson’s
Creek era,” when most parts were for teens. “I was 25
but looked much older. I couldn’t get arrested,” he
said. “Eventually, I caught up with my own age,” he
said.
Chandler
said at this point, he feels like a leading man.
“Usually leading men have a certain sense of themselves.
They know who they are.” Now a husband and father of
two, he said, “I have a good idea of who I am.”
His
performance as Coach Taylor comes from a part of himself
he’s never been able to use before, he said. “I’ve never
had a role quite like this—a father, a husband, a leader
of these kids.” Many of the moral decisions the coach
faces are similar to those he’s starting to experience
in his real life, he said. “I get to stretch my real
world within this other world.” |
