Where do movie stars come from? In Hollywood’s golden age, they were spotted by the soda fountain, groomed like thoroughbreds within the studio stable and trotted around the paddock for Joe Public to assess their form. As the studios weakened and New York came to the fore, we got the rise of the Actors Studio, the method and rough diamonds such as Brando and Jimmy Dean stumbling in from the street, openly contemptuous of studio gloss, mumbling their lines like rockers at a beauty pageant.
In the modern era, we have a hybrid of the two systems, oriented ever younger to produce a steady stream of teen talent — don’t call them child stars, for, in this Age of Bieber, they are all child stars