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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

Hollywood relies heavily on networking. Older actors have larger networks.

Prolific actors tend to also own their own production companies. Adam Sandler and Tom Cruise both own the production companies for their movies, which means they can have basically any role they want. Adam Sandler stars in dopey comedies set in on tropical islands with all of the same people because he likes getting paid to hang out with his friends in nice places.

Also, I think we can't discount how amazing plastic surgery is anymore. We don't see "old" actors hardy ever anymore. Even in the 90s, balding actors were pretty common, now you never see them. TC looks 35; same with Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, etc. Why go with someone new when Brad Pitt looks just as young, but is a known quantity?

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I am 35, and none of those people look close to 35. There is a certain look to the youthfulness of the skin on the face that always gives it away. Whatever that subcutaneous fat layer or whatever is that deteriorates and makes things sag or deflate has yet to be fixed in a believable way.

I also assume the films have heavy digital editing to make them look younger.

35 is an exaggeration but Tom Cruise in the new Top Gun, and Brad Pitt in Bullet Train, look closer to 35 than to 60 or 58.

Cruise taped a "thanks to coming to the theaters" thing that ran before Top Gun when I saw it, and it definitely looked about a decade older. Call it 50, while his character looked 40, and he's actually 60. I found it useful to calibrate my guess around how much was due to makeup and movie magic, and how much due to skincare and surgery.

> Cruise taped a "thanks to coming to the theaters" thing that ran before Top Gun when I saw it, and it definitely looked about a decade older.

Yeah I noticed this too. His speech was slower and forced (it seemed like he was having trouble breathing). The skin around his neck was tight in a way that you only see in more elderly folks.

The movie was nothing like this but in that tape it was just completely obvious he was a 60 year old dude. Nothing wrong with that of course you just don't normally see him looking like that and didn't even in the movie itself.

Hey to be fair that movie was filmed some 4 years back.

He was in ridiculous shape for Top Gun, I could hardly believe it.

I should add my favourite detail about the movie - during and after any pilots perform a manoeuvre, listen to their breathing.

This is Brad Pitt at 32: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000093/mediaviewer/rm3781499904...

Both of these guys look very much like youthful middle aged men.

They look good for their age but it's not shocking they're pushing 60, at best I might accept late 40s. Very much Cruise in Maverick and even thought that about Brad on a recent viewing of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which he filmed at 54.

I think there is also something else afoot whether it is health care, skin products, easier living in general, etc... I am often mind blown when I look at pictures of athletes or movie stars from decades ago. They often would look 50-60 years old but then you see they were like 31 when the picture was taken.

The Brimley/Cocoon line twitter account sort of shows this. Wilford Brimley was 50 when Cocoon came out in 1985 - I thought he was easily 70.

https://twitter.com/brimleyline?lang=en

My naïve opinion is that the public is more aware in recent decades of the effects of nutrition, alcohol, smoking, water, sleep and sun.

Some people just age like that. I think a lot of it is genetic. If you bald and go grey at 40, you're more or less going to look like that for the next 30 years.

Uh.... shit. Hopefully that's a look en vogue at some point during that time. Norwood 3 vertex snuck up on me over the last year and my chest hair seems like it got bleached overnight.

If you we worth hundreds of millions, even billions, you'd probably look a lot younger too. And I'm not talking just surgery: better health, less stress, more medical care.

what billionaire has less stress?

Everyone. I'm sure they aren't worried about bills like I am.

I bet it's much more stressful to run giant empires than the typical desk job. And paying the bills isn't that hard - if it is you need to move immediately to a lower cost of living area, you need to save for retirement after all.

People struggling to pay the bills usually don't have the option to "just move to a lower cost of living area", because moving costs money and they also don't have the funds to cover the time it takes to find a new job (presumably paying more relative to the cost of living? how?) in the new location.

Why don't you just take a couple million loan from your parents?

Yes they do. Especially now with the worker shortages, you can get a job anywhere. You can get by in many areas by working at mcdonalds, and people who can't figure this out don't deserve my tax dollars.

On that billionarie has a choice to retire from running the gaint empire.

don't trust they have higher pressure or work hard so everything is ok... they choose it by themselves.

They're also not staying in the sun for long or going to tanning salons. If you stay under the sun, skin will suffer and age more then if you stay out of it.

Some of these actors may have tanned, like Stallone, but many others were careful to not do that.

None of those people look close to 35.

Source: I am 35

Which indicates I see myself in the mirror all the time, and I likely associate with others around my age, day in and day out, and I look at any of those 60 year old celebs, and they do not look like my cohort.

And then I specified exactly what about their face - which is a lack of a certain “bounce” seen in younger people’s faces.

I mean, he's not wrong. Can you imagine your job being to digitally de-age people like Tom Cruise all day?

> Adam Sandler stars in dopey comedies

With the hottest actresses, you can definitely notice he does casting.

Adam Sandler is like the modern version of the Stratemeyer Syndicate behind the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

Most of his movies are exactly the same with different dressing. I think Happy Gilmore was the prototype. Same plot, same type of girl, same jokes, different SNL buddies making an appearance.

That may have been true in the past but his latest work, like "Uncut Gems" and "Hustle" are far from "Happy Gilmore".

As my friend pointed out, he had a strangely age appropriate wife in Hustle. :)

But mainly I'd say Adam Sandler is a good actor when he's acting in things other people have written, and he's just having fun getting paid to hang out with friends in nice places when he's in movies he writes.

As long as he keeps switching off between good and dopey, I think he can run his con for a long time.

> con

Con? Interesting word choice there.

I mean it's mostly tongue in cheek, but he did convince Netflix to basically pay for him to take exotic vacations with his friends.

In Uncut Gems, he was only an actor, as opposed to the vast majority of his work, which comes from his production company (Happy Madison Productions). Of the films from that production house, "Hustle" is the only one that stands out as a quality production; the rest very much adhere to the formula described above.

Reign Over Me was actually good; but it also doesn't use the same formula as others.

He deserves more credit for the art films he does like ‘the cobbler’

I remember seeing that and thinking wow, a Sandler film can be good!

Other than that I think you have to go a long way back for toned down 'dopey' though, before he hit that particular stride. Or maybe I was just younger and not so bothered by it - can't think of an example at the moment.

It's nothing to be bothered about!

Think of Cheez Whiz... is it a fine artisan cheese? Hell, no. Is it tasty melty substance that makes a good cheesesteak or nacho? Absolutely!

Canadian comedian Steve Smith joked about it being a "urine product" (because of the "Whiz"). It might have been in skit in the Red Green Show.

I don't know what that is but it doesn't sound appetising, no.

He definitely found a formula for Happy Madison films

He owns it all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Happy_Madison_producti...

But that doesn't explain a trend. If it was mainly networking, why wasn't this true in the 1980s?

It's networking, plus the fact that they often own their own production companies, plus the ability to portray a younger role well into their 50s. Brad Pitt is older now than Marlon Brando was in The Godfather.

You have a lot more professional options if you can pull off a younger character.

Because it's bullshit. They're bankable stars in an era where bankability is key (ie. superhero movies).

Their production companies exist as a vehicle to get a piece of that pie and have more creative control.

ISTR lots of articles around and since the turn of the millennium about the TV/Film desirability gradient starting to reverse, at least for people not already at the pinnacle of movie stardom, with young actors with modest early career movie success actively working to love to TV, rather than vice versa.

EDIT: And, though less frequently, I've seen similar things for other jobs in making filmed entertainment, with TV getting a lot more respect as a medium for storytelling.

yeah, I'm sure the networks were as strong or stronger since hollywood became a thing

I get your drift, but having just watched Lost City, Pitt definitely is showing his age. I'm guessing tons of makeup, lighting effects, and editing are responsible for his looking younger in other films. Check the trailer @ 2:21 or so -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKO9rYDmE8

Don't get me wrong, dude looks amazing for his age, but definitely not 35.

You can go back a few years and watch him in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. He looks late 30s, early 40s.

I’d also be curious how much of this is simply the influence of modern sun protective practices. Are actors apparent ages naturally changing more slowly than in the pre sunscreen days?

You go with someone new because they are the fraction of the price and headache as someone with star power. That's why when it comes to quantity over quality productions in the streaming era, all the leads are people you've probably never seen before.

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