Matthew Modine's theory of stardom

Walk uptown to Central Park [with Matthew Modine]. Expounds his theory on what makes a movie actor into a STAR. He argues that if your character can kill people and still keep the audience on your side, then you've made the transition - murder as a career move. 'Take Bruce Willis - unless he's shooting people nobody wants to know. Same goes for Arnie and Sly, Eddie Murphy and Tom Cruise'. To my 'Yes, but -' he retorts, 'It's been the formula since the first film about the Great Train Robbery. Gary Cooper finally cracked the Oscar when he killed people in High Noon. Gable, Grant, Bogart, Connery, Brando, Pacino, De Niro, Newman, Redford, and now it's Anthony Hopkins for eating people in Silence of the Lambs, Jeremy Irons for injecting insulin into Glenn Close.' 

I think he is talking a load of nonsense at first and laugh at him, saying, 'This is exactly the sort of insane theorizing that actors get into when not working', but Matthew is serious about this idea and there's no talking him out of it. He is convinced that if you can be sexually attractive, heroic and kill people, you move over into a kind of real secure stardom. 'Look at the career of Al Pacino. When he's doing a nice guy nobody wants to know. He may be a great actor doing that, but when he was in The Godfather trilogy he was untouchable. Mesmerizing. Because you saw him kill.

'So how many people have you popped off, Matthew?' 

'Clearly not enough! How about you?' 

'I haven't killed anybody, except Julian Sands - and that doesn't really count'.

- Richard E Grant, recounting a conversation with Matthew Modine in With Nails: The film diaries of Richard E Grant, 1996, p.271

See also:

Movies: Parker Posey on working with Christopher Guest, 31 August 2020
Movies: Brian Blessed on Katharine Hepburn, 2 October 2017
Movies: Towering Inferno, 14 November 2015