A New Grimy Golden Age for Hollywood A-Listers

Obviously, I’m talking about Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner. They’re as 2020s as it comes. And yet Kylie, whose whole life has unfolded in front of us across a reality television empire – and, subsequently, her social media, where she updates her millions of followers on the most mundane moments of existence – has kept this two year long relationship away from both the public eye and iPhone camera lens.

This is a new age of Hollywood.

Or rather, a return to the old ages of Hollywood. Within the space of a decade, the pendulum has swung so totally back to a pre-digital era that it’s difficult to remember just how omnipresent every aspect of famous people’s lives was on the internet. Not influencer celebrities, who are still pioneering new and predominantly digital landscapes to stay culturally afloat. But Hollywood’s current leading pack, who are betting upon their star power alone to maintain household name status.

Millennials sound like war veterans, attempting to explain the sheer goofiness Hollywood’s leading pack would present themselves through in an attempt at appearing relatable. Jennifer Lawrence falling over at another awards’ ceremony was so utterly of the 2010s zeitgeist. But at some point, Lana Del Rey and Rihanna stopped threatening to beat people up on Twitter. Anna Kendrick, class valedictorian at the School of Millennial Relatability, no longer tweets about how much she likes burritos. Due to Instagram changes, we stopped seeing Demi Lovato’s thirst traps. Hyper-onlineness peaked with that cursed pandemic “Imagine” rendition, orchestrated in great earnestness – and even greater ineffectiveness – by Gal Gadot. All it took was a mere international lockdown and ensuing years of political upheaval to remind audiences that famous actors aren’t, actually, meant to be Just Like Us. I’m not sure we ever wanted them to be.

It is a great relief that, after all this time, the A-Listers have started behaving like A-Listers again.

Fast forward six years. Zendaya and Tom Holland got married recently. How do we know? Because Law Roach mentioned it briefly in an interview. That’s literally it. No Vogue shoot; no behind the scenes wedding content a la Nicola Peltz and Brooklyn Beckham; no guest list in sight. They’re perhaps this decade’s other most publicized young couple, and nobody knows anything about them. Instead, we know what they want us to know: pretty much nothing.

Unlike A-Listers, content creators must overshare their tears and their insecurities, their problems and their pitfalls, as the currency of their career. The former, in their wake, have retreated into the shadows of mystery and intrigue. A-Listers – or their teams, even – know that today, accessibility disqualifies eligibility of legend. It’s this refashioned veil of separation that reminds the public they’re property owners on Mount Olympus, not renters on Influencer Boulevard.

Because quite honestly, how boring would Jacob Elordi be if he constantly Instagrammed selfies of him in bed with Olivia Jade? Do we even know if he’s currently with Olivia Jade? His leading man credentials are sharpened with the razor of real-world mystique — big purses and all.

This is a broader cultural movement beyond celebrities being offline. Hollywood is returning to a glitzier, more glamorous yesteryear, where star quality speaks for itself. Attention seeking hijinks, once considered fun and refreshing, are now gauche in their earnestness. Cast feuds, that so nutritiously fed the internet during the 2022 Don’t Worry Darling press tour, have been rendered tiresome in the mutually destructive war of It Ends With Us. And to reflect this aesthetically, red carpets have moved away from the shocking and statement making. Instead, it’s vintage archive gowns and wickedly tailored tuxes. The stars no longer desire to compete for clickbait tabloid attention. Even the 2026 Actor Awards have leaned in. For the first time in the ceremony’s history, a dress code has been imposed: “Reimagining Hollywood Glamour from the ‘20s and ‘30s”.

Naturally, there’s dark depths beneath the intoxicating allure. The dress code may be ‘reimagining Hollywood’ a hundred years ago, but that era was as much grit for its starlets as it was glamour. Actresses even at Marilyn Monroe’s level of stardom were bullied into drastic measures to lose weight by studio executives. Of course, nips and tucks are nothing new to the 90210, but today’s Ozempic culture presents a haunting mirror to a former age, when starlets like Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford were forced on extreme diets and exercise regimes by their studio executives. Judy Garland was even prescribed amphetamines. This hyper-obsession with uber-perfection, that waned in the 2010s, is back.

The reach of this parallel extends beyond the starry streets and skies of Los Angeles and pulses across the nation to the White House itself. For all the bonafide glamour of the Golden Age of Hollywood, it was also a time of economic anxiety, strident censorship and the sweeping malevolence of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare.

I’m not suggesting that Jimmy Kimmel being taken off air is quite this generation’s electrocution of the Rosenbergs. But there is an ominous echo of the fanatical anti-Communist fever that ruined the careers, reputations, and lives of many of Hollywood’s supposedly untouchable elite in today’s culture wars. When tensions reach a boiling point, and the President himself encourages his followers to view the industry with suspicion, there is a precedent for Hollywood retreating into its own mythology.

If history is cyclical, we are doomed to repeat it.

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