Dear Gossips,
Matthew Belloni’s latest Puck newsletter is all about movie stars, and ranking the ones “who actually matter”. Over the last decade or so, one of the ongoing conversations about celebrity in general is whether or not movie stars are made anymore. And what it takes to remain one.
Matthew’s piece is based on the National Research Group’s biannual study, polling 3000 Americans between the ages of 12 and 74 with one specifically worded question:
“Please list up to five actors or actresses that would make you most interested in seeing a new movie in a theater in the future.”
The key word here is “theatre” – and that also frames the definition of “movie star”, because of course these days you can watch a movie at home when it first comes out, but with that specificity, the survey places the “movie star” firmly at the theatre; as in, what movie stars will draw you out of your home and into the theatre?
According to the most recent version of the list, Denzel Washington is #1, followed by Tom Cruise. Depressingly the entire top 10 is male actors. And all of them were born in the 70s or before. Remember, Gen Z is part of this survey so even among the young, it’s the olds who they consider to be movie stars.
The top ranking female actor is Scarlett Johansson at #11. The youngest actor on the list of top 25 is Zendaya, she’s at #17, but she’s the only one who is under 30 in the top tier. The second youngest is Margot Robbie.
If you take every other generation out of the equation and only leave Gen Z to do the survey, Zendaya does crack the top 10, placing #7, but is the only woman to do so and the youngest. The other 9 are all men and none of them are under 45.
There are all kinds of takeaways and you can deep dive more on the survey at Puck but for now, once again, a reminder of the power of Zendaya. And remember, she’s been quiet this year so far because she’s working her ass off on so many projects: filming Euphoria season three concurrently with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, then going straight into Dune: Messiah and the new Spider-Man, and Shrek 5 – all of which will release in 2026. That’s FIVE super high profile projects. Will be interesting to see how high she ranks at the end of that year.
Here's Zendaya on the Euphoria set earlier this week. They’ve been at it for three months already and supposedly production will continue for several more. And if that’s the case, she’ll also be back and forth between Euphoria and Dune/Spidey. Law Roach said recently that he’s “resting up for 2026”. No kidding. She’s wall-to-wall in 2025 and next year she’ll be carpet to carpet to carpet.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
