Seeing stars

stellar first times

If you went to the movies in 1991, you probably saw an indelible scene. A skinny, absurdly winning blonde guy shows a woman on the run how to rob a convenience store using a hair dryer as a prop. If you were me, you came out of Thelma and Louise thinking two things: That was great but a bummer and that hot dude is going to be a big star. And yes I know Brad Pitt had done some things before but for much of America this was the first we’d seen him and we were impressed.

There’s something magical about those first times in film, those moments when someone you’d never heard of or seen before showed up and blew you away, so much so that you were sure you were seeing a star in the making. Here are a few of my faves:

In 1994, I rented a VHS—yes, I’m old—of 1983’s Flesh and Bone, a surprisingly dark film noir starring then married Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Quaid’s character, it turns out, has a very bad man for a dad—an excellent James Caan—whose tooling around Texas in a big car with a young blonde. The blonde, 17, in her few scenes is riveting. Honestly, if you saw her then, you probably weren’t surprised when, two years later, Gwenyth won an Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love.

In 1985, my local art theater run a week of Smooth Talk, a superb film based on Joyce Carol Oates' unsettling short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?. Its 17 year old star, Laura Dern, is in every scene and you cannot look away from her. In that role, Dern is still one of the most believable teenage girls I’ve ever seen. Forty years later, I can still see her face in the film’s final scene.

In 1981’s Body Heat, one of my favorite films, William Hurt was completely upstaged in his two scenes with a young arsonist we first see lip-syncing to Bob Seger’s Feel Like a Number. The role, considered to be Mickey Rourke’s breakout performance, again convinced me that guy is going places. (The next year he also shone in Barry Levinson’s Diner—who can forget the popcorn scene?) 45 years later, he still makes the news, though, sadly, rarely for his art.

1994 introduced the world to the future queen of the galaxy, Natalie Portman. In The Professional, after seeing her family wiped out, wishes to become a killer. The film would have failed had it not been for the grit employed by Portman. Again, see the film and you’ll see a future Oscar winner.

I do love a movie with a big twist and whoa, does Primal Fear (1996) deliver. The final scene left me gasping—thank you Edward Norton. I don’t want to say another word—no spoilers!—but, he is incredible, better, even, I think than he is in Fight Club and I think he’s marvelous in that.

More recently, in 2019, I saw, on the big screen, a small film, Wild Rose. You think you’ve seen this story before—a young singer dreams of stardom—but the movie resists any tropes. It’s really a tale of growing up, rather late, by an electrifying young Irish woman who, upon her release from jail, slowly gets her shit, and her singing, together. Right now, you can see her at winning at the Baftas and getting ready for the Academy Awards—Jesse Buckley’s been fabulous in every movie I’ve seen her in. (Wicked Little Letters is a blast, by the way.)

I could go on, of course. There’s Amanda Seyfried in Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, Jennifer Hudson in Dream Girls, Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire, and more. What have I missed?