I fell in love with the ‘90s leading man (but now he’s middle-aged and retired)

Before Kevin Spacey was a do-good teacher with a sad past, inspiring students to Pay it Forward, he was a hair-rising psychopath  the type a child might be drawn to because he was wagging a lollipop, only to find that kid’s face the next day, wanted, on a milk carton. He was the “but…” in the dark side of ‘90s Hollywood, the “dun dun dun” to some chilling mystery, the unsettling denouement to that twist you never saw coming. He earned our trust in The Usual Suspects. We didn’t even know his name (he was John Doe) in David Fincher’s Se7en. We thought he was a cliché American suburbia homophobe in American Beauty. But — dun dun dun — all sentiments are trashed once the credits roll. That’s because Kevin “dun dun dun” Spacey left us jaw-dropped, and very, very afraid. If there’s an award for someone who successfully plays the role of playing the role of someone else, then Kevin Spacey took the prize. He was Hollywood’s favorite antagonist, and twist.

Then there was Tom Hanks, who I would call Hollywood’s American sweetheart. Sleepless in Seattle is still a long-standing reference point in the chick flick genre, but he didn’t have abs, nor was he fluent in the language of women. In Sleepless in Seattle, he had just lost his wife, was suffering insomnia and had a kid. In the same decade, Tom Hanks also charmed everyone as a naïve and slow-witted prodigy with a story told from a park bench in Forrest Gump, and played a gay lawyer with AIDS, in love with Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia. He was America’s sweetheart because he was a sweetheart in all roles that he played, be it straight, gay or slow-witted. And he didn’t have abs.

Long before Mel Gibson was accused of various forms of bigotry, he made the “family man” sexy. If ‘80s Mel was all about leather pants, fighting, explosions and family (Mad Max), the ‘90s Mel was all about chinos, skirts, fighting, explosions and family (Ransom, Braveheart). If Liam Neeson’s daughter had never been taken, we’re not sure fatherhood could be this sexy again.

The new lead

In fact, I’m struggling to say much about the cinematic men of the 2000s. It almost feels like they’ve been written off, but maintaining all the good qualities of their pretty boy faces for the posters. Today, the leading man is submerged in so many other factors, which then takes the lead role in the movies. The leading man is submerged in an over-the-top plot (Leo DiCaprio in Inception), or in CGI (Gerard Butler in 300), or makeup (Johnny Depp in 80 percent of his filmography), or muscles (Vin Diesel in 100 percent of his movies, The Rock, 300, etc.).

Even ‘90s leading men are trying to keep up. Ben Stiller can’t just do comedy anymore about his thing caught in a fly (There’s Something About Mary) — he has to do it in a museum, which comes alive every night (Night at the Museum), with a cameo performance from Robin Williams. No one saw much value in Robert Downey Jr. when he was just a man destined to help five souls complete their unfinished business in Heart and Souls, even if he had an addicting, feel-good rendition of Walk Like a Man. He needed to become a billionaire playboy, and Iron-Man. Edward Norton couldn’t just be the leader of a white supremacist gang (American History X), as if that wasn’t aggressive enough, he needed to be a mutant too (Hulk, the second version).

Plus, it doesn’t help that we need to see three versions of everything. Trilogies of one blockbuster movie after another leaves little room for new stories.

The leads to love

Of course there are still some Hollywood men and their characters that we absolutely adore, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

Yes to James Franco, but only as a pothead in Pineapple Express, not for his stint in Spiderman. Yes to Ryan Gosling, not the corny passionate lover in The Notebook, instead, he of the receding hairline and alcohol problem in Blue Valentine; or the mysterious and violent driver with a dark past in Drive. Not Shia LaBeouf when he was chillin’ with the autobots, but as an annoying but hilarious teenager in Disney’s Even Stevens.

I fell in love with loads of leading men in the ’90s. They were lovable, or mysterious and surprising, they were apparent, and written in simple storylines but with an in-depth characterization. We watched movies because actors could play wonderfully written roles. 

But the times have changed and those leading roles seem to be ready for retirement, as the men of 2000-Hollywood present a new kind of characterization. It may or may not be a good thing, I don’t know yet. But at least they have abs.