The thing I’m wondering about is fansites showing up for people that haven’t actually done anything yet. Being a fan would suggest that you admire someone for what they do, so to be a fan you would need to have seen something of the person being admired.

The best way to describe what I mean is examples; last year New Line Cinema released The Golden Compass which was basically intended their next epic movie series after the Lord of the Rings. It was a major flop so I doubt we’ll ever see a sequel to it which is probably a good thing. Another thing it intended to do was launch the career of Dakota Blue Richards who starred in the movie; The Golden Compass being her first movie.

I keep an eye on the younger generation in Hollywood so of course I looked into what she had done before which was nothing, the more surprised I was to actually find fansites on her. Why? All the people starting those sites could have seen of Dakota Blue Richards is the trailer for The Golden Compass. It’s just a trailer, of course a trailer can grab your intention but it’s impossible to tell whether you will be a fan of someone or not. So it doesn’t actually surprise me that these sites have pretty much ceased to exist now.

This makes me think that the people starting these sites actually bet one someone being successful so they can say that they run the first or biggest fansite of that celebrity at some point. I don’t think that works though, to run a fansite you also need passion to run that site. If you don’t actually like the person the site is on you have a problem, you can’t fake to be a fan forever.

Another example would be Noah Cyrus; granted she has appeared in six episodes of her father’s TV show Doc and five episodes of her sister’s show Hannah Montana but that’s hardly something someone builds a fanbase on. Especially not seeing her parts in all of those shows was tiny. She of course is going to appear in the DVD movie RL Stine’s Mostly Ghostly but that won’t be out until the fall. Yet today I ran across a Noah Cyrus fansite which hasn’t even been updated with the Mostly Ghostly news.

Do we even know whether Noah wants a career in show business? Chances that she wants one are quite high seeing she has three family members in show business but it’s not a guarantee. No guarantee she will be as successful as her older sister either, I would even say it’s unlikely. I guess people that start a website on Noah have hopes that she’ll develop into another Miley, though it’s hard to know what the real motivation is.

The main problem still is will the owners of these fansites actually be fans of the person in question? You can only be a fan if you’ve seen the person work and like that work (though a real fan doesn’t have to like every single thing of their idols does). I can understand the desire to be the first to have a fansite on the next big name in Hollywood but sometimes it’s impossible to predict. If it then turns out the person running the site doesn’t actually like the celebrity it’s just a waste of time. I would just wait until the celebrity actually had a career and I liked her, though I have no interest in running any fansite.

I just wonder what other fansites will start showing up in the future or on who, just because someone is cast in a major movie or being the sibling of someone famous isn’t a guarantee.

Image: New Line Cinema

It can be funny sometimes if you look at filmographies and it turns out that you’ve seen them in movies before without even realising it. I’m not counting tiny guest spots on TV shows right now; if I did that I could be going on forever seeing that’s pretty much how every actor gets started.

The first time I really had that was when I was looking at the filmography of Jena Malone. Granted, she’s not really a superstar but she still gets a fair amount of movies done. At some point I did check out her filmography because I didn’t really know her, turns out I have a on DVD with the woman; Contact in this case which she made when she was twelve years old. Her role in that movie is better known for a difficult special effect (It’s extensively mentioned in the extras; Jena is running towards a mirror but you can’t see the camera. In 1997 that was a lot more difficult than it would be these days.). She plays the younger version of Jodie Foster in the movie.
Another case like this is Hilary Duff, though I had seen her on Lizzie McGuire before seeing the movie Human Nature. Human Nature is a movie by Studio Canal, a European studio, in which she plays the younger version of Patricia Arquette. It did take some time before the movie was released which is clearly shown by the fact that Hilary looks a fair amount younger than on Lizzie McGuire. I didn’t even recognise her in the part.

Most recent example would be Miley Cyrus; people in general think that Hannah Montana is her first acting job. Well it isn’t, I only saw part of the movie Big Fish before every hearing of Miley Cyrus but it turns out she’s in it. Granted she only says two words in her whole appearance but she’s still there. She’s not even on the cast list as Miley but as Destiny Cyrus, I guess she was still a bit behind on her growth back then seeing she was playing an eight year old when she was ten.

For another Disney star, Vanessa Hudgens, it’s known that before doing High School Musical she was in the flopped Thunderbirds movie. Not that many people realise that she was in the critically acclaimed Thirteen; which launched Evan Rachel Wood’s career. I sure hadn’t a clue that she was in it before her name was known to everyone.

Even Dakota Fanning played the young version of Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama before anyone really had heard of her as a child actor. It just shows that real overnight sensations are extremely rare though some studios are now trying to create some. Like New Line which is trying to launch Dakota Blue Richards through the Golden Compass movies.

So the next time if you think you see an overnight sensation you might want to check out the rest of their filmography, it might turn out that you’ve seen them before.