Introduction: Star-Making, Cult-Making and Forms of Authenticity

Abstract

The phrase ‘cult film star’ has had a marked presence and circulation in popular culture for at least the last twenty-five years. From Danny Peary’s reference book Cult Movie Stars (1991), to The Guardian’s obituary for ‘cult movie star’ Edward Woodward in 2009 (Addley 2009), or the official invitation to ‘join cult film star Tommy Wiseau’ on the Tommy Wi-Show YouTube channel throughout 2011, the term has been employed in publicity and popular journalistic writing as a commonsense term, ostensibly as a means of differentiating certain actors or recognizable personalities from that of the conventional star and often with the purpose of celebrating their unconventionality. The rise of the cult star is undoubtedly linked to the growing discourse around, and industry acknowledgement of, cult film, offering one means with which to understand the appeal of cult and subcultural media through championing the excesses and offbeat qualities of those ‘stars’ who appear in such texts (whether, as J. P. Telotte argues (1991), they are conventionally considered as mainstream or marginal films). But the term is also employed away from canonical cult texts to describe other atypical performers who nevertheless have a presence within mainstream film and media, such as Simon Pegg, Jackie Chan, Lee Van Cleef, Johnny Depp or (as chapters in this collection illustrate) Montgomery Clift and Bill Murray, all of whom appear to offer different pleasures in their on- and off-screen performances/behaviour to that of the ‘film star’.