ELI5: why do people idolize actors/actresses? As someone who loves tv/movies I mean no disrespect to the career, I just don’t understand why people idolize someone whose entire job is centered around pretending to be someone else.
ELI5: why do people idolize actors/actresses? As someone who loves tv/movies I mean no disrespect to the career, I just don’t understand why people idolize someone whose entire job is centered around pretending to be someone else.
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Could be for a lot of reasons. People see rich, beautiful people putting on a performance and are entranced by them. Others form a one sided relationship with performers like when people make someone like Taylor Swift their own identity.
I’m with OP – their lives mean nothing to me, and try as I might, I cannot understand why anyone would care so much as it seems they do
Because they have decided to take an interest in the lives of others rather than their own.
It’s a profession with lots of money and fame attached to it, that entirely consists of presenting a tightly controlled image of themselves to an audience. I can’t think of any job that lends itself to idolization more than that
Even as a kid, I thought dating/marrying an actor or actress had to leave a lot of questions. Do they actually love the person they are with? Or are they just acting?
I wouldn’t demean their job in that way… I think actors do a lot more than “pretend to be someone else” for society. Actors can inspire, educate (as delivery systems for the work). A con man pretends to be someone else.
But other than that, I’m with you. Celebrity worship, of any celebrities, has always been lost on me. In the same way, when a celebrity is a piece of shit I don’t much care either. I neither need nor expect celebrities to be paragons of virtue, and I don’t worship or condemn them.
A huge number of people in America are functionally unable to determine fact from fiction.
My partner gets excited when she recognises actors from different films and tv shows and I’m like yeah that’s their job.
Basically people confuse who the person is with what they see them doing. They don’t actually know the celebrity, but they see them in a movie they like and enjoy the character. They imprint the character on to the celebrity. Also many celebrities take great care to ensure the public sees them as likable. Most people will only ever see those “good moments” and think that is the celebrity’s entire life.
All of this basically leads to people creating false impressions of the celebrity in their minds. They don’t actually know the person, but they think they do and that mental imagine is usually an extreme.
I mean actors do a job, and they’re able to do it because we watch them. Feels kinda weird to look down on their job when you are by your own admission one of their main customers.
People idolize actors for the same reason they idolize any other performer or artist or cultural icon in their life: they make you feel things. They’re in a field that revolves around human expression, and we connect to those expressions. We get excited at exciting movies and sad about sad songs. Is their job more important than anyone else’s? Of course not. Do people go overboard and start feeling personal connections to these total strangers? Yeah. But it’s no surprise that people feel this way.
Because talent, beauty, and success. Why is this even a question.
Why do you like your friends, because they exhibit things you admire.
Their entire job isn’t to be someone else, it’s to accurately portray feelings in a way that most people can’t.
Look at Jude Laws eyeballs glaze over the moment he falls in love in Wilde.
The fuck you mean you love film. No you don’t. You view it as a job and not a craft. You minimalize it to a paycheck instead of a passion that they fulfilled.
Please tell us your thoughts on the job of theatre.
Who the fuck posts something like this. Go binge watch your series.
Idolized actors and actresses tend to have many qualities that engender idolization, like physical attractiveness, talent, charisma, success, wealth, and fame. And though their work is somewhat “pretend,” they still help others by entertaining them.
Fame is fun for some people to have escapist daydreams about.
Brains are weird. Sometimes, it responds to digital stimulation in the same way it responds to real objects and people. At times, movies and music trigger an emotional response establishing a connection. Repeated exposure for some can strengthen an emotional one-sided bond.
You might feel like you know them, that they understand you, that there is a connection. You might seek out more of their content.
Parasocial relationships are entirely one-sided.
It’s not a new thing either. Just look at all the screaming girls at Beatles concerts, in love with the members. Internalizing that they really do want to hold their hand.
The jobs of entertainers inherently involve showing their faces to lots of people. Humans are very good at recognizing and remembering faces, so we become familiar with on-screen performers. It’s very easy to recognize that the guy in the Mission Impossible movies is the same as the guy in the Top Gun movies, so we start to form opinions about what kind of characters that guy plays and what he contributes to the movie. Meanwhile, it’s basically impossible to guess who is doing the cinematography for those movies just based on the on-screen product (go ahead: one of the MI movies has the same cinematographer as Top Gun; can you guess which?) This is even more true of most jobs done on our behalf. Who sewed your shirt? Who paved your road? Etc. Even if you can tell me e.g. who fixed your toilet because you saw him at the door, that guy can only fix a handful of toilets a day. Modern entertainment, meanwhile, can be reproduced and broadcast essentially costlessly. Showing your face in a movie can make you familiar to billions of people.
So, it’s extremely normal for audiences to at least be familiar with the identities of the on-screen talent. Realizing this, movie studios intentionally encourage even deeper relationships. Starting from the point of “Hey, I’ve seen that guy,” they can teach you enough about what that guy is like off-screen that you might start to think “Hey, I like that guy,” and from there they can start to sell you entertainment products on the basis of having that guy, rather than any particulars about the story or production. This is loosely referred to as the “star system.”
The whole point of acting is to convey an emotional response in you. Is it weird that people would form an emotional connection in that case?
I don’t understand it either. I appreciate what they can do or the range they have, but it doesn’t go beyond that. I’ve heard people freaking out about singers or rappers and it’s like…you know they are just making words rhyme right? Dr. Seuss did that.
> whose entire job is centered around pretending to be someone else.
They often pretend to be really wonderful people, and if they are really good at it then sometimes people have trouble believing they aren’t really like that.
And that confusion doesn’t just happen to actors and actresses who play wonderful people. When someone does a great job portraying a villain they often find some people treat them badly as though they were really the villain.