(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Seasoned actors Matthew McConaughey Kevin Spacey Jon Voight Jeff Daniels and Woody Harrelson are all nominated this year for Emmys after having built much of their careers in film.Television is increasingly opening its doors to Hollywood stars as tonight’s Emmy Awards will attest but TV royalty still struggle to make the transition to the silver screen. Emmy nominees Matthew McConaughey left and Woody Harrelson from the HBO series True Detective.- AP
Seasoned actors Matthew McConaughey Kevin Spacey Jon Voight Jeff Daniels and Woody Harrelson are all nominated this year for Emmys after having built much of their careers in film.
McConaughey a favourite to win a lead actor Emmy for his role in HBO crime drama True Detective is riding high after winning an Academy Award for last year’s Dallas Buyers Club.
House of Cards hero/villain Spacey already has two Oscar statuettes. Voight nominated for Showtime’s Ray Donovan won a best actor Oscar a generation ago while Harrelson (True Detective) is a two-time Oscar nominee.
For them having a go in a successful broadcast or cable series adds gritty prestige to their glittering careers.
But cross-pollination in the other direction has proven more difficult.
Heart-throb George Clooney who shot from the show ER into the Hollywood mega-star firmament “was the last one who really did it” said Glenn Williamson a professor at UCLA’s School of Theater Film and Television.
In contrast though Jennifer Aniston parlayed her “girl next door” appeal from hit show Friends into several big-screen roles the 1990s comedy’s other stars have had stunted success in the transition.
The same holds true for stars of more recent TV mega-hits like Desperate Housewives and Lost.
Some stars have thrived on television without ever becoming bankable in Hollywood: Julianna Margulies David Duchovny and Robin Wright are among those who earned numerous film roles but never won the accolades there that came with TV.
Kerry Washington praised as much for her role in Quentin Tarantino’s movie Django Unchained as for TV’s Scandal is in that small clique of actors comfortably navigating between the two worlds. Another is Claire Danes who hit it big as teen Angela Chase in 1990s series My So-Called Life.
She followed up with a number of roles in Hollywood films like Romeo + Juliet and Shopgirl before returning to television with a bang as the troubled star of Showtime thriller Homeland.
With blockbuster series Mad Men and Breaking Bad coming to an end it remains to be seen whether their respective stars Jon Hamm (nominated this year for best lead actor) and Bryan Cranston (also nominated and who has already won three times) can successfully make the jump.
“No matter how well known a feature film role only lasts a little more than two hours” said Ellen Seiter a professor of television at University of Southern California.
“By comparison successful television series roles last for dozens of hours” sometimes over years meaning “actors become inextricably linked to those roles in the eyes of the audience” she added.
Tom Nunan founder of Bull’s Eye Entertainment and a UCLA film professor said comedians often make a better switch to film like Tina Fey from Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock who is good value in Hollywood.
Steve Carell Amy Poehler Mila Kunis and Chris Pratt also came from comedy TV to see their movie careers take off.
Nunan also observed that there are “women and men in their 30s 40s and 50s who are able to find really great work on great TV shows” which is not always the case in Hollywood where youth is so often the lodestone.
US studios typically revolve around movie franchises which traditionally are action comedy or superhero-focused. “Studios aren’t making dramas anymore” he said. Those are mainly reserved for independent or foreign filmmakers.
That leaves small-screen producers — for web series cable video on demand and broadcast TV — to pick up the slack. The result many argue is high-quality television. “It’s no surprise that you see movie stars of the caliber of Kevin Spacey or Matthew McConaughey” he added.
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