![]() ![]() When you think of Marsden, does anything about his personal life come to mind? What about a character type he plays repeatedly that inspires audience devotion and connection? Not quite. An actor also doesn’t become a household name without the PR, gossip, and narrative trends in their work that adds up to an actual persona. The personas of stars - like Marilyn Monroe’s dumb-blonde act - are as scripted as any film they’re in. But once they figure out their star image, each role thereafter tends to reaffirm, subvert, or critique the image we come to associate with them. Or as James Baldwin once said of stars, “One does not go to see them act, one goes to watch them be.” Which isn’t to say Hollywood legends can’t act. Charisma, good looks, and believability in front of the camera matter more than technical acting talent. There needs to be a balance between relatability and mystery. While stardom has changed throughout film history, the strange brew of attributes it takes to be a star hasn’t all that much. These are all Marsden’s biggest obstacles when it comes to major stardom - his versatility and perfect good looks are antithetical to what it takes to be a star. That he can sing and dance as well makes him come across as a computer-generated version of leading-man perfection. He’s a character actor in a leading man’s body. His versatility is unparalleled by his peers: He can play a resplendent romantic lead, airheaded pretty boy, the fool, the straight man, the unrepentant jerk, a dark soul. But placing Marsden in Hollywood’s Golden Age wouldn’t do him any favors either, since the industry has never known what to do with an actor like him. With a bit of that old MGM spit polish from the 1940s, he could be the kind of A-list star he isn’t now, but deserves to be. No one could be that perfect, right? It’s easy, thanks to Marsden’s typically excellent performance, to imagine him existing alongside Golden Age Hollywood actors like Gary Cooper or Fred MacMurray. Teddy is a throwback to a kind of character we don’t quite see anymore, that classic Hollywood couldn’t get enough of: A strong-jawed hero whose goodness is so thorough it feels like a genetic fluke. Instead of winning the girl, he’s meant to always have her just out of his reach. He’s been stabbed, gutted, shot, and left for dead more times than I can count. Instead, on Westworld he’s an android host with a tendency to die in nearly every episode in increasingly gruesome ways. ![]() On another show, from another time, like the long-running Gunsmoke from the 1950s, he’d be the lead. On HBO’s Westworld, which aired its season-one finale Sunday night, he plays one of the show’s few morally grounded characters, the upstanding gunslinger Teddy Flood whose primary motivation is his romance with girl-next-door Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood). Throughout his career, James Marsden has made losing into an art form. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images ![]()
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