Celebrities: Fame on Loan

Look at this massive yacht - I wonder who is partying on here...
..oh it's cold-n-flu-cautious Leonardo DiCaprio in June 2020 going to celebrate his 23 year old girlfriend's birthday.
Leo with his pals, staying safe just like his mom told him.

You may see paparazzi shots of actors and celebrities on yachts and think wow these guys have it all – money, attractive partners, expensive toys, travel, luxury – they can do whatever they want, whenever they want!

Even stars need selfies: Environmentalist Leonard DiCaprio on his super yacht.

While Leo is definitely hanging out in luxurious locales, as far as freedom goes, looks can be deceiving…

The ‘gift’ of fame

When a studio decides to cast a no-name actor in a blockbuster role, they know that they are handing that young person a valuable gift – fame.

Do you want fame, little boy? Are you sure?

Once that actor has the PR machine aimed at them, their life changes immediately and often forever. They are recognised on the street, offered sexual opportunities at random, and now have the ability to monetise their image and identity in ways and for fees that the average joe could barely imagine.

With great power, comes great contractual obligation.

Being handed that kind of fame is essentially like being made into a prince… and from the point of view of the king.. princes are potential liabilities that need to be controlled.

Hollywood Contracts in the ‘Golden Age’

It wasn’t that long ago (1920s-1960s) that Hollywood actors were essentially employees of the big five movie studios.

These actors would be on 4-7 year contracts and paid a fixed salary, during which they were obligated to appear in as many movies as the studio could physically pump out.

These ‘stars’ were contractually bound to all sorts of things:

they couldn’t work for other studios (unless the studio decided to loan them out)
they couldn’t refuse a role (!)
they were forced to take on a stage name
they had to change their appearances (including plastic surgery)
they were given false personas and backstories to portray (outside of work)
they had to maintain strict weight ranges and controlled diets
they had to cater to the press and perform in staged photo ops (ie. paparazzi)
they had to participate in fake love lives (’sham dates’) and marriages to promote films
they were barred from marriage if it was preferred they were single
there were penalty clauses for getting pregnant
filming delays due to sick days result in hefty penalties
they had to use ‘studio assistants’ aka studio spies who would report back
rumours or scandals could result in contract termination

Do any of these sound familiar?

While these terms and conditions might sound like the rules for sex trafficked girls locked up in a Dubai brothel, from a business point of view they make a lot of sense.

Producing movies is an extremely expensive process and if the actor isn’t available and ready to perform, the machine grinds to a halt while the money hose is on full-blast.

Alfred Hitchcock famously called actors ‘cattle’ – what he meant to say was ‘factors of production’.

Now supposedly the studios shifted away from the factory model with the advent of television, and actors started to negotiate contracts on a per-project (or multi-picture) basis. This theoretically left the stars with more flexibility and power as they were now operating as ‘free agents’.

But were they?