What on earth does Star Trek have to do with the new generation in Hollywood? No you haven’t missed any new star climbing amongst the ranks of Star Trek; there isn’t even a show on right now. The Star Trek effect is just an expression for actors and actresses that get their name fused with a certain role. If you mention names like William Shatner, Leanord Nimoy, James Doohan or George Takei most people don’t know who you;’re talking about. Yet if you mention Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty or Sulu they will know.
This doesn’t just happen to people on Star Trek; usually actors are used that aren’t too well known up to that point. Once they got on the Star Trek shows and the shows became popular (though in the case of the original Star Trek it was after the show ended, but the same is true for the newer shows) they weren’t known as themselves but as their characters.
There are plenty of teen actresses that have to deal with the same problem; they never get rid of a certain role in a way. People will always see them for their breakout part and not for the rest of their career and sometimes this really hurts their careers. The best example from the past in my mind doesn’t actually come from Hollywood but from Austria. Maybe not everyone is familiar with the Sissi movies but they’re about a Bavarian princess that marries her cousin to become empress of Austria, the story is based on historical figures.
The lead actress Romy Schneider played in the first Sissi movie when she was sixteen, two sequels followed and even though a lot of money was offered to her to do it again she didn’t. She felt that Sissi was hurting the rest of her career; in the end she was right. She never got rid of the part, she was always seen as Sissi up to the point she committed suicide through a combination of alcohol and pills (she was an alcoholic) when she was 43. Of course the accidental death of her son was also a major part in this but to this day more people see her as Sissi than as Romy Schneider.
These days in Hollywood there are actresses that are facing the same problem or will be facing the problem in the future. Take Hilary Duff, every second article you read about her she’s still mentioned as “the Lizzie McGuire star”. She might be young but she ended being Lizzie McGuire four years ago now, though in her case it’s also because of a lack of other successes. She’s trying to get rid of that good girl image but in all honesty I think she’s trying to overdo the whole I’m a sexy girl thing now. Overcompensating also isn’t the right way to go, it would have been better to just gradually go into that direction. She’ll probably always be known for her start on Lizzie McGuire, but I doubt it will hurt her career forever.
Someone who might have to deal with this for years to come is Emma Watson. Just now she’s only doing her first part that’s not Harry Potter and it’s for a BBC TV movie. So the big audience will still only have seen her in the five Harry Potter movies that have been released so far and the ones that are to be released in the next couple of years. Just like Daniel Radcliffe will be Harry Potter forever Emma Watson will be Hermione Granger forever. That’s something they’re already dealing with now actually, there probably are more people that recognise them as their characters than as a person. Show their pictures to ten people and ask who they are, I’m quite certain most people name their characters and not their own names.
That’s just the case if you break out with one role and never really did anything else before; Hermione Granger was Emma Watson’s first role. Someone else who will have to deal with that is Miley Cyrus; she did a couple of guest spots on TV shows and a very minor role in a movie. Then all of a sudden she went to stardom as Hannah Montana, she is Hannah Montana to a lot of kids now. When she shows up for an autograph signing half the audience yells for Hannah, not for Miley. Her coming concert tour will probably confuse people even more when she performs as both Hannah and Miley.
As an actress it’s just best if you manage to do a wide array of roles early on. The problem just is that if they get their big break on a TV show or in a series of movies they’re seen as the same character a lot. So people identify them with that character and this can haunt them for the rest of their careers.
Tags: Emma Watson, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus
