Ana De Armas Believes Social Media Killed Movie Stars
Ana de Armas thinks that movie stardom is diminished by the accessibility of social media and the personal lives of celebrities.
Movie stars are dead, apparently, and movie star Ana de Armas knows who did it: movie stars. Movie stars oversharing on social media, specifically. De Armas, who’s best known for starring in movies such as Blonde, Knives Out, No Time to Die, and Blade Runner 2049, explained to Variety exactly what she means.
According to Ana de Armas, the concept of a movie star is someone who you only ever see staring in movies and nowhere else — making them seem mysterious and untouchable. Since social media provides a place for movie stars to share anything they want about themselves outside of films, the stars are now far less mysterious and far more… touchable. Therefore there are no more movie stars, Q.E.D.
Ana de Armas’ logic, of course, ignores the fact that talk shows and tabloids have provided similar opportunities for movie stars to ruin the mystery long before web 2.0 let them eliminate themselves through the destructive act of posting online. It also ignores the fact that some stars’ social media accounts are so blatantly professionally-run that they give no personal insight whatsoever.
Ada de Armas herself is an example of that last point. Her Instagram page (which she apparently used to perform stardom suicide) is almost entirely made of professionally-shot photos and videos. She did take a selfie to celebrate New Year’s Day, though, so that must have been enough to make her not a star anymore.
Of course, Ana de Armas isn’t the only movie star to openly declare movie stars’ collective death. Jennifer Aniston of Just Go with It, Cake and Friends fame declared stardom dead in November, lamenting the lack of glamour and the disappearance of fun Hollywood parties. Interestingly, Aniston also complained about social media when declaring the death of movie stardom, though she didn’t outright blame social media for the concept’s demise.
Jennifer Aniston isn’t the only actress to lament the death of Hollywood parties. Margot Robbie did so as well after appearing in the film Babylon. She had a similar complaint to Ana de Armas’s, saying that the existence of iPhones means that people can’t party with as much abandon as they used to.
Both Jennifer Aniston and Ada de Armas will still continue starring in movies, despite their newly-declared non-movie-star status. Aniston will soon join Adam Sandler in a sequel to Murder Mystery, and will also appear in the biographical drama Hail Mary and an unnamed project helmed by director Sophie Goodhart. Meanwhile, non-star Ana de Armas will star alongside Chris Evans in the action/adventure film Ghosted, and will also star in the John Wick spin-off Ballerina.
Whether the idea of an untouchable movie star has actually died remains an open question — as does the question of whether stars seemed untouchable before social media reared its ugly head on the industry. Either way, the nebulous concept doesn’t seem to have affected the stars’ ability to star in films, regardless of how starlike they are.
