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Hollywood needs nepotism babies Talent outlives good fortune

Before Goop (Frank Trapper/Corbis via Getty Images)

Before Goop (Frank Trapper/Corbis via Getty Images)


September 7, 2022   6 mins

During the summer holiday, one week of family viewing was devoted to the Hunger Games series. It reminded me what a vintage star-is-born story it was when Jennifer Lawrence went from the indie hit to Winter’s Bone to making The Hunger Games and the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook in the same year, so I googled how she got started. Her family was on holiday in New York from Kentucky when a talent scout spotted the 14-year-old in the street and suggested that she try modelling. She chose acting instead. “I had that feeling like, I understand this,” she told Vanity Fair. “This is the first time I’ve ever understood anything.”

You have to love the fairytale serendipity of that backstory: one chance encounter and a life is changed — but another kind feels increasingly common. While watching Normal People, I looked up Daisy Edgar-Jones and learned that she was the privately-educated daughter of a film editor and the former head of entertainment at Sky. Does that make her performance any less impressive? Not a jot. But it does make her a nepotism baby.

Back in February, a young Euphoria fan called Meriem Darradji tweeted: “Wait I just found out that the actress that plays Lexie is a nepotism baby omg [crying emoji]. Her mom is Leslie Mann and her dad is a movie director lol.” Darradji’s surprise was surprising. Apatow has a distinctive surname and five of her seven big-screen credits are in movies directed by her dad, so she’s hardly working undercover. Still, the phrase took off with TikTok users, who quickly improvised a taxonomy of nepotism — actors with wealthy, well-connected parents are less suspect than those with bona fide movie stars in the family for example. Some said how disappointing it was to click on the Wikipedia page of a hot young newcomer and see that their parents already had their own blue-linked entries, while others were enthralled by this Hollywood quasi-aristocracy.

Whether the phrase is contemptuous, affectionate or ambivalent depends on who’s using it but, as the softness of the word baby implies, the tone is usually more playful than angry. It’s an amusing way to interrogate privilege, inequality, the limits to social mobility and the promise of meritocracy. Nepotism, which entered English from the Italian in the 17th century, isn’t quite the right word for this phenomenon. It strictly means favouring one’s relatives with privileged positions, which is easy to achieve in business and politics but less so in an industry where employment is episodic and unpredictable. You couldn’t make Succession about a family of actors because there is no glittering prize to bestow on a favoured son or daughter. The advantages that second-generation celebrities enjoy are more nebulous. Connections, of course. A familiarity with how things work, from film sets to the paparazzi. And, let’s be honest, genes: beautiful people make beautiful people. (Exhibit A: Zoe Kravitz.)

No industry, therefore, has as many nepotism babies as modelling, where the likes of Lila Moss, Kaia Gerber, Iris Law and the Hadid siblings make the old tradition of scouts plucking gorgeous unknowns from provincial shopping centres seem quaint. Conversely, musical talent does not seem to be hereditary; very few major artists have famous parents. In fact, as Julian Lennon or Jakob Dylan will tell you, there is such violent suspicion of anyone seen to be trading on a famous surname that failure is more likely than not.

Acting, a field in which looks and charisma go a long way but aren’t enough on their own, falls somewhere in between. Hollywood has always been a place where the American dream could seem like more than spin. As the title of his autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, indicates, Kirk Douglas literally went from rags to riches. Marilyn Monroe grew up in foster homes and orphanages. “I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house,” she said. “When I heard that this was acting, I said that’s what I want to be. You can play.”

At the same time, it was an industry where dynasties mattered: the Barrymores, the Hustons, the Fondas. Liza Minnelli, Carrie Fisher, Jamie Lee Curtis and Isabella Rossellini all had at least one very famous parent. No doubt it is easier to get a break if you’re the child of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher but many of these celebrity scions felt anxiety about their privilege and how it was perceived. Nicolas Cage changed his surname from Coppola to avert suspicion of favouritism and begged interviewers not to mention the fact that his uncle directed The Godfather.

“I’m really a product of nepotism,” Jeff Bridges once told me. “I was literally carried onto a film set when I was six months old… Usually one of the hardest things is getting your foot in the door so that was kind of handled. But I had to prove to myself that I didn’t get the job because of whose son I was — that I had some real talent. It took a few years for me to say, oh, OK, I guess I have some value of my own.” Of course, Bridges went on to have a far more substantial career than both his father Lloyd, who is best remembered for the Airplane! movies, and his brother Beau, which suggests that ultimately it’s the work that counts. That takes time though.

It was a while before it became obvious that Ben Stiller or Michael Douglas were stars in their own right. “As the child of someone, you get access other people don’t have, so the playing field is not level in that way,” Gwyneth Paltrow (daughter of Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow) recently explained to model Hailey Bieber (daughter of Stephen Baldwin). “However, I really do feel that once your foot is in the door, which you unfairly got in, then you almost have to work twice as hard and be twice as good because people are ready to pull you down and say… ‘You are only there because of your dad or your mum.’” The phrasing is typically tone-deaf — are other actors half as good and working half as hard? — but Paltrow earned her place. Like Stiller and Bridges, she eclipsed her parents.

Nepotism babies inspire ambivalence because most of them are clearly talented and apparently charming. A list of the most interesting young actors around would include Dakota Johnson, Margaret Qualley, John David Washington, Zoe Kravitz and Riley Keough. Even those whose unusually prestigious debuts would appear to scream nepotism — Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper in Licorice Pizza; James Gandolfini’s son Michael playing the young Tony Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark — garnered great reviews across the board.

Perhaps the only really glaring case of unearned familial privilege is Brooklyn Beckham, who is true celebrity royalty in the sense that he has nothing to offer except his bloodline. Fame is both his birthright and, in lieu of discernible talent, his job. The smart ones are honest about their advantages. “I think I’ll get a couple chances on their name and then if I suck, I’ll get kicked out of the kingdom,” Maya Hawke (daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman) told People. “And that’s what should happen.”

This new fascination with nepotism reminds me of the fuss, a decade ago, about old Etonian or Harrovian actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne. They were obviously gifted, and nobody seriously believed that the headmaster of Eton could phone a movie director and secure a plum role as easily as a starter job in the City. Yet there were so many of them, all at once, that something smelled off. Individuals became lightning rods for a broader concern that the game — meaning society rather than Hollywood — was rigged.

That debate came in the wake of the financial crisis and the Occupy movement. Talk of nepotism babies coincides with another wave of economic anxiety and heightened awareness of inequality. Yet the conversation is for the most part refreshingly clear-eyed, curious and nuanced. It’s not the individual that matters; it’s the ecosystem. If there is still diversity of experience and opportunity, and most actors haven’t grown up in the industry, then a nepotism baby is an object of curiosity rather than a systemic problem. There is a healthy sense of perspective, too. As long as people like Eric Trump exist, one can’t get too het up about Maude Apatow.

I think that Bridges and Paltrow are right to suggest that Hollywood is not a meritocracy in the short term but becomes more so in the long term. Talent outlives good fortune. The perfect test case is Sofia Coppola, who experienced what you might call a nepotism baby do-over. After Winona Ryder dropped out of The Godfather Part III, Francis Ford Coppola cast 18-year-old Sofia as Michael Corleone’s daughter Mary. She bombed. On top of her lousy screen presence, the impression that the role was entirely undeserved inspired such brutal reviews that she gave up acting all together. “I didn’t realise how much pressure I would be under — people want to see Francis’s daughter fall on her face,” she told Entertainment Weekly. A decade later, though, she directed The Virgin Suicides, a debut so confident, distinctive and unbeholden to her father that she could start again. You can’t help noticing that all of her films have been about the privileged and unhappy.


Dorian Lynskey is an author, journalist and UnHerd columnist.

Dorianlynskey

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Ben J
Ben J
2 years ago

It’s just another manifestation of how we’re heading back to the 17th century, and of course the nepotism babies all have identikit political views too. As for posh British actors, it’s simple; you can afford to (a) go to RADA and (b) afford to ‘rest’. And, like any top-end public schoolboy, you have an inherited rolodex of people mummy and daddy know to sort you out.
It’s a shame, as a generation of truly great British actors were from humble backgrounds. Caine. Connery. Burton. Stamp.
I doubt we’ll ever see their like again.

mark taha
mark taha
2 years ago
Reply to  Ben J

Be fair- Mason and Niven went to public schools.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  mark taha

He is not saying public school educated kids are all useless.
He is merely pointing out great actors from poorer backgrounds are no longer making it, while they were common in the 60s.

odd taff
odd taff
2 years ago

It’s not very different in other businesses. Nepotism is pretty universal but over time people without connections can rise by their own effort, talent or pure luck. The latter factor is often overlooked because none of us like to believe our lives are hugely influenced by something as arbitrary as chance.

Maggi B
Maggi B
2 years ago

Very unsurprising that young people follow in parents/family footsteps. Have seen so many children of doctors, lawyers, engineers etc follow the same careers. The understanding of how things are done permeates the domestic environment coupled with expectations. That isn’t nepotism at that level.

J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago

Great article. I certainly agree that talent outlasts nepotism, privilege, or even luck.
One of my favorite actresses of all time is Rebecca Hall, daughter of the eminent theatre director, Peter Hall. She grew up amid acting royalty and I bet daddy pulled a few strings to give her a start, but pure talent carried her through.

Robert Quark
Robert Quark
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

As touched upon in the article, a foot in the door is just that. Although getting that handed to you has given you an enormous advantage over others, it’s what you do with it that counts and whether you have the talent to make use of it.
The acting world is littered with actors with famous and powerful relatives who never amounted to anything: Frank Stallone, Don Swayze, Tori Spelling. They all got a foot in the door, but they all felt it slam on their back on the way back out.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Roedean and Cambridge certainly helped, as they are meant to.

jane baker
jane baker
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I saw her in,I think it was 2007 in what must be the best production there has ever been of As You Like It at Bath Theatre Royal. She played Rosalind.

keith stael
keith stael
2 years ago

Film acting’s not hard, any good looking nitwit can do it. Sport, on the other hand is difficult which is why nepotism is practically non existent.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 years ago
Reply to  keith stael

I suggest you try it, particularly on stage, live. Looks have almost nothing to do with it.

jane baker
jane baker
2 years ago

Didn’t we,the UK pass a law a couple of decades ago making nepotism officially illegal but our society,in fact the whole world is rife with it. Its tough on outsiders but it actually makes a lot of sense. I’m not saying I’m in favour of it but I see how it works. In my working life two of the places I worked at only took on people who already had a relative working there. This was the official policy even though it was NOT WRITTEN DOWN ANYWHERE. On the radio that Laurie Taylor talked to a Canadian academic who had studied why nepotism is so rife in TV and film production. That’s the people making the content,not the performers. She explained most tv now is made by small production companies that only employ a core permanent staff so when they are commissioned to make a TV show or series they hire lots of people. It’s all very fast and furious,they don’t have time to advertise,see loads of people etc. Instead the hirer at the company has the phone number of people who regularly work for them plus they offer jobs to their pals sons and daughters leaving uni,to their own nephews and nieces,to friends of friends,its all done on the grapevine and by personal recommendation. They need people they know can do whichever job it is,and they know this one or that is intelligent and hard working (when it’s needed) most of all they want amiable people who get on with everyone,sadly moody geniuses get struck off the list. That’s an old phenomenon. I read one of IK Brunels letters. He needed a new personal assistant. He said in the letter to a friend,he didn’t want an engineering genius (like himself),he wanted an amiable young man who would copy his letters for him,make cups of tea,be smiley and be pleasant to have around.
That sounds pretty much the criteria of these film companies from what this academic was saying. Why employ some stranger who might prove incompetent and cost you money when your niece who you know is both competent and amiable is available.
Its ALWAYS been who you know.

Last edited 2 years ago by jane baker
mark taha
mark taha
2 years ago

Hardly unusual for children to follow in parents’ footsteps.

G Cruse
G Cruse
2 years ago

I’ve always loved Gwyneth Paltrow. She has become the classiest classless woman in business.
She is as cringeworthy as she is bingeworthy.
Nobody does it better.