Being ‘Netflix Famous’ Is ‘Interesting,’ Says ‘Hill House’ Star: ‘You’re the Most Famous Person in the World,’ Then a New Show ‘Completely Takes Over’
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Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s string of Netflix hits includes 2018’s “The Haunting of Hill House” and 2020’s “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” two Mike Flanagan-created horror series that garnered the 37-year-old actor a global popularity he’d never seen prior to starring in Netflix originals. He parlayed the success of these series into a film career that spanned both streaming (2021’s “The Lost Daughter,” also for Netflix) and theatrical hits (Universal’s 2020 reimagining of “The Invisible Man”).
But is Jackson-Cohen a star? The actor recently joined The Independent for an interview where he briefly touched upon life as a performer who is “Netflix famous,” which he basically summed up as star power that lacks any kind of actual longevity cause it’s always on to the next.
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“[Being] Netflix famous…It’s quite an interesting thing,” he said. “You’re the most famous person in the world for a while and then the next show comes along and that completely takes over.”
The turnover rate of Netflix stars is fast and furious. Outside of the cast of “Stranger Things,” not many of the streamer’s home-grown talent hold on to their star power that explodes when their titles first make their debuts on the streaming platform. Perhaps that’s one factor behind the recent death of the movie star, which many celebrities have been reflecting on as of late.
“There are no more movie stars,” Jennifer Aniston proclaimed in an Allure magazine cover story in 2022.
“I feel like the new generations don’t have that concept [of a movie star], because of social media,” Ana de Armas told Vanity Fair last year. “There is so much information out there and oversharing. The concept of a movie star is someone untouchable you only see onscreen. That mystery is gone. For the most part, we’ve done that to ourselves — nobody’s keeping anything from anyone anymore.”
Regé-Jean Page was one of Netflix’s biggest stars for a time when the first season of “Bridgerton” set the world on fire back in December 2020, but even his reign has come to end. Not that he believes much in the power of movie stars these days.
“To cry about that particular tragedy, it’s like, ‘Okay, but are there good movies?’” Page told Vanity Fair last year about the death of the movie star. “I’m not sure that I was ever in love with going to a movie to see the actor. I go to the movies to see the movie. It’s like crying that there are no rock star sound designers anymore. This one department isn’t getting this outsized amount of attention that they got used to for a while? Cry me a river, man.”
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