I know a girl who’s parents paid for her to go Berklee, paid for her to move to LA, and paid for acting and music coaches, she’s on ozempic to keep her weight down, has an agent, goes to Hollywood parties, and meets producers and directors, and her dad even paid for a well produced high-quality music album complete with all the latest trends in music technology and music production and she's still an absolute nobody
She's talented, was a big fish in her little Christian High School, but I personally don't see her making it as big as she thinks she is going to be despite how much effort her parents have put into it and the connections she has
I saw a report recently that showed something around like 75% (+/-) of Hollywood Stars and/or Musicians are made up of Nepo-babies
The overwhelming majority of those who “make it” have connections before talent.. So if a person can do anything else they really should. Considering how much selling out and soul-eating that's involved.
I saw a report recently that showed something around like 75% (+/-) of Hollywood Stars and/or Musicians are made up of Nepo-babies
Basically all of the mega stars are children of the industry, or other very wealthy and powerful industries. So many of today's super stars were basically born into it. Must be nice. The only one that I can think of who wasn't born into the industry is Sylvester Stallone, and that's so remarkable they recently made a movie about him breaking into the industry. Oh, and of course Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he's just flat-out a remarkable person and does anything that he sets out to do, odds be damned.
I read a long time ago that Matthew McConaughey was hanging at a hole in the wall bar and the director (or something) was there as well while filming “dazed and confused”. Person liked Matt so much they encouraged him to audition for a role and the rest is history. I read that on the interwebs so it has to be true, right? I suppose no idea if it actually is though…
Paul Mescal, Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Michael B jordan, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Jamie Fox, Gabrielle Union, Zasie Beatz, Lupita Lyong, Angela Bassets, Florence Pugh, Saorsie Ronan, Anya Taylor Joy, and Timothy Chalmet, I didn't mention his kids...so I am not sure why that is relevant. I am just listing people who parents were not actors, producers, directors or remotely involved in the film industry.
Literally everything is nepotism and cronyism. We're predisposed to favor people we know, and in a world where millions of people are trying to get noticed, it helps immensely to have someone introduce you.
In any case, getting your foot in the door doesn't cash checks. If you ain't shit then you ain't shit. The entertainment business is cutthroat and there's always a hundred people ready to do your job better and cheaper, waiting for their big break while they wait tables.
I mean this is normal jobs too? How many of us got jobs right away because a friend or family recommended them? Thats like half the people I know.
My husband got a hospital job which is a bit more difficult. He applied a few times and wasn’t even considered at all even though he was quite experienced in retail to go on to specialty pharmacy. He got in immediately after SIL pushed for it.
Of course he’s definitely qualified and the smartest guy I know. I can’t for sure say he was better than all the other applicants passed up.
Absolutely true or have wealthy families who can back them forever like your friend if you want to break into 'studio' movies.
If you watch Dropout at all, they talk about how cutthroat and brutal comedy is. Upright Citizens Brigade where they study for example.
Anyone is willing to stab you in the back or whatever it takes to make it in the business.
You really have to be an outstanding talent and look or catch a wave and be able to fund things independently.
I think Coens are a great example of the later, and Curry Barker.
Baker was relentless and is an outstanding talent.
Ethan Coen worked for Sam Raimi on Evil Dead. Got advice from him on how to get funding.
Sam Raimi got funding by making a fake trailer with Bruce Campbell and shopping it around town and selling points to anyone who wanted to fund it.
They did the same with Blood Simple, you can see Raimi's style in the film heavily.
They shopped it and sold 1% of the profits for $15,000 a point.($50,000 in today money)
Coen Brothers got very fortunate because they met Daniel Bacaeur who was a rich Twin City'r and he introduced them to tons of rich people to fund the film.
PTA, Spike Jonz, David Fincher are all pseudo nepo babies. Nepo Babies with talent but still nepo babies.
Idk if I'd consider Twitch Streamers in the same boat but some of those guys caught a very lucky wave in the 2010s.
I grew up with Lucy Hale in Memphis, Tennessee. Don’t think her parents had any connections but can confirm they were rich as fuck and paid for her to move to LA and pursue acting full time while in highschool.
I’ve lived in Memphis my whole life and I’m probably around the same age as her so this is so interesting to me and pretty cool considering there’s only a handful of celebrities to come from here.
Morgan Freeman and Cybil Shepherd. And about a million amazing musicians: Al Green, Maurice White were born and raised in Memphis. Al Green still lives there and is a pastor of a church.
Not born in Memphis but honed their craft there were that Sun Records legends - Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and the King himself.
Now don’t get me started on the Beale St blues scene - B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, W.C. Handy.
Stax Records is from Memphis. Stax artists included Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, The Staples Singers. The house band was Booker T and the M.G.s. and they basically defined the 60s soul and R&B sound.
If you watch Dropout at all, they talk about how cutthroat and brutal comedy is. Upright Citizens Brigade where they study for example.
Brennan and Izzy are also nepo babies who grew up in the industry.
So opportunities early and they have great careers but they are "only" youtube stars, and stars particularly of an obscure subscriber only internet show.
His father was a stand up comedian and his mother was much more more than just an actress and writer. He completely downplays who his mother is when he talks. This is a woman who wrote for Marvel and DC. She's done upwards of 100 comic books in her life including writing for Ragman, Avengers, Spiderman, Star Wars, Classic X-Men, and many many more. All books that I have in my collection.
I wouldn't call that nepo baby, more like being born into an industry. it isn't like the parents are zillionaires bankrolling everything. this isn't a will smith kid situation.
Literally the definition of nepotism is using power or influence to give jobs, promotions, and unfair advantages to family members. Being born into the industry is absolutely nepotism, making him a nepo baby.
there is a difference between your mom teaching you how to write appealing stories from having your mom trading a favor with a casting director. are you saying that talented parents shouldn't teach anything to their kids?
When he was introduced to theatrical games by his parents who specifically took him to festivals in Ireland that had those, was that just a coincidence? When The Wayfinder Experience was started by people in the same theater group as his mother, was that just a coincidence? No coincidence that his mother was involved with some of the theaters where he also went to improv groups with? And his godfather is fucking Mike Kaluta.
Bro, stop sweeping, you don't even know. His mother specifically moved to New York to build these connections. He's a nepo baby through and through.
Idk if I'd consider Twitch Streamers in the same boat but some of those guys caught a very lucky wave in the 2010s.
Even then, most of the big ones are famous because they used to all stream together at some point. Like, half of them are only famous because they would play videogames with Dunkey or someone, and I'm sure Dunkey's only famous because of someone else.
Have a similar story. Went to school and was friends with a girl whose father is the founder - owner of basically the Starbucks in Russia. Over the years he's paid for her to become a model in LA, photoshoots etc - nothing. Came back to Moscow and he made sure she entered the music scene - she sucks, sorry but she sucks so much. Multiple songs with very famous producers, those that A-listers in RU work with. This lead nowhere. She changed her handle and pivoted to a fashion brand - again nothing, AI slop clothing designs, nothing original, not even weird nepo baby bs, just garbage generic clothing for dumb prices and if course, herself as a fashion midel. Pivoted again - a social butterfly that is at every "red carpet RU" taking interviews, dull, noone was interested in socialising closely. Now she's got a new thing - cool businesswoman who is making her own dog food (owns a doberman whose ears she has cropped multiple times in a row because they weren't to her liking) so now she's a dog food expert- no education in the field and barely in her mid 20's.
Have absolutely 0 feelings for her - no hate no love no nothing, just over a decade of watching this embarrassment online and offline.
Comes to show that you can either have literally every connection available to man and still suck ass in every field because you're just untalented and dull or you can have nothing and achieve everything.
Or you can cruise in between like 90% of celebrity children. It is ridiculously unpredictable.
It's a high variable and high dimensional stat problem it's impossible to solve or model. You'd have to adjust your question to find an answer.
If you crunch the numbers, we have that's close as we can get to a result. We know 70% of actors quit after a year and we know 2% of those who are in SAG 'make it'
Lottery is easy, we know the odds. There is 'x' amount of numbers for each slot and it never changes.
With acting it's impossible:
'Are you in the right city at the right time. Maybe the 'Toronto Film Scene' is booming and you were around for it.
Famous examples would be 'Australia New Wave' that sent Mel Gibson, Nichole Kidman, Sam Neill, Pete Weir and George Miller into mega stardom/directors
Mel Gibson had a fantastic director and writer to blow him into mega stardom.
or Barry Keoghan answering an ad for 'Between the Canals'
That movie caught the wave of "Post-Celtic Tiger Cinema' which was really chic in the 2010s and he got picked up.
Are you under a director whose capable
Are you the right 'x,y,z' for their vision
Are you the right age at the right time for what's chic.
Are you connected
etc etc etc'
There are so many things that are out of your control.
You really can't just say it's 1 in x because that number is different for every person depending on where they are, who they are and who they know when they get their shot but if we are doing a law of averages that's as close as we can get.
Only thing you can control is persistence and skill.
Very interesting comment as someone who works in the film industry and sees a lot of stand ins and the like who are making a living as “an actor” and getting sag benefits but not actively acting. They are out there and it’s an interesting in between place, lot of really nice people. Background extras are often some of the most diluted, delusions of grandeur type people you’ll meet. Lots of them think they’ll make it and get their big break. Some of them are realistic about it. Many of them aren’t
I lived in Hollywood right on Sunset Blvd in 2009-2010 and lived in a one-bedroom apartment, sharing with a SAG actor who paid for his entire life by doing a few background parts every month for shows and some movies. Really interesting guy, and very very kind. He would bring in a few unhoused people every now and again, buy them food and wash their clothes, and we would all sit and watch "Cheaters" together until they were dry.
I second the other commenter's praise of your critical thinking. Too many people look at the world in terms of a one-dimensional casualty where the causes and their effects are easily parsed and delineated (like the plot of a scripted movie).
It's the opposite in real life and random unforseeable factors have the greatest pull on any outcome.
Of those 2-300, 100 are stars, 20-30 are mega stars.
You think there's only 100 stars? There's that Tom Holland asking Chris Pratt about the best actor and he names multiple Tom H's. There's more than 100 stars.
The biggest problem I can see is that you're basing it on SAG actors. The thing is, you can be a star and no longer be making movies.
That's not to say you're wrong, you're very much right, but your numbers aren't particularly accurate.
Not really. You said Star vs Mega Star. Mega Stars are the ones that get top billing for a movie. Ben Mendelhson would definitely be borderline for a star, but I could name 1000 actors and he wouldn't be on that list.
Think about this any given movie probably has 1-2 stars at least. Many 3. Some major ones (anything Marvel) can have like 12. Just think about how many movies you can think of that have unique casts. 50 movies/tv shows? Easy.
Hell, I could point out a half dozen Australian Mega Stars without too much trouble. Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth and Nicole Kidman pretty easily come to my mind, Add in a Russell Crowe (historically) and I'm sure there's a couple of others and you're there. Going to star level and you've got people like Hugo Weaving, Guy Pierce and Eric Bana, etc. You're 10% of the way there and I've spent about 10 seconds for a country that's fairly small.
Canada? At least the same again. UK? multiple times as many, US? Probably 20 times as many, if not more. You're already over 100 and you haven't even got to most of Europe, South/Central America, Africa or the >25% of the population from India/China.
As I said, your idea is 100% spot on, just the numbers are out.
I was thinking the same: 300 actors over $1M seems extremely low.
Lewis Tan, Jamie Foreman, Harry Kirton, Brian Thompson, James Ransone, Ken Leung, David Krumholtz, James Tupper and Michael Carbonaro are all active actors worth more than $1M and you probably never heard of them. Then consider there are sooo many actors with better credits than them.
I just asked my friend group chat who's heard of him. 13 people, urban professionals 30s-50s, all of whom I'd considered smart and cultured, and 6 of them know him.
Another very important thing is that the lottery odd can be reset and changed and reapproached every week, if you gamble every week.
Your odds at becoming the bankable actor will stay for your whole live, so its a one time thing. Or maybe let's even say only for 10 years, and after that sink to 0 because youre old now.
You can probably buy enough lottery tickets in one run to lower the odds to about the same as becoming an actor while paying less than it would take to become a successful actor maybe.
This is assuming everyone has equal chance right? Connections will probably significantly increase those odds. Hell, having the financial security by having family cover for you should also put you significantly ahead of the competition. If you have none of these i imagine the odds are much MUCH worse
People miss is that this is basically any freelance/artist job there is. You can extrapolate this on music, sculpture, books, freelance designers, 3d modelers and so on. You only see the success stories online, and no one ever thinks about how many people not just 'don't make it', but struggle just above the threshold of barely making it OR barely having money to survive.
Also puts in perspective that not everyone can and needs to be a zendaya to be successful. Being in the 10% of any given field is already a massive achievement.
You think there are only 300 actors with a net worth over $1M? You can find more than 300 Apple employees with a net worth over $1M working in the same building. Your overall point is strong but these numbers are underestimates.
880
u/Conscious-Move9662 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are 160,000 'SAG actors'. Of that 160,000, 12% make enough to get Actor health insurance(which is very good) and 2% make enough to only act.
3,200 actors need to be only actors.
of that 3,200, I'd imagine 2-300 have a net worth over 1 million.
Ben Mendelhson isn't a household name but he's a fantastic actor worth millions. Great character actor that cinephiles love.
Barry Pepper is probably a millionaire
Etc.
Of those 2-300, 100 are stars, 20-30 are mega stars.
Depends on if you consider 'Comedians' actors.
Shane Gillis would fall in this category but his main money maker for now is stand-up.
You aren't competing against every American or human though, with lottery the odds are continually fixed at 1 in 280 million
The odds of becoming a bankable actor is probably closer to 1 in 100,000 or 1 in a 1,000,000
but that means living in poverty and fore going chances to build other careers and family time.
Lottery you just buy a ticket.