Already established as a sequin-wearing, free-loving pop idol for years, in 2022 Harry Styles donned a new getup: leading man. Although he made his film debut in 2016 with a small, but well-received role in Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic, Dunkirk, followed by a mid-credits cameo in Marvel’s Eternals last year, his main-character era truly dawned this fall with Don’t Worry Darling and My Policeman, both of which are now streaming.
Questions like “Is Harry Styles a Movie Star?” and “Harry Styles, Actor: What Would Make Him a Good One?” have since been raised—queries not typically asked about a performer with just a handful of credits. But given his dreamboat persona and legions of devoted fans, expectations for Styles’s acting career are unavoidably high. “Seeing Styles on screen feels like something of an event, a sense of occasion that he rises to meet,” Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson wrote of his turn in Don’t Worry Darling. And those stakes can lead quite the comedown: Styles’s top-billing status in My Policeman, Lawson writes, is a responsibility he’s “not yet up to.”
To divine what Styles will do next, one could read the tea leaves of his past, such as the roles he reportedly passed on, including Prince Eric in the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid and Henry Golding’s role in Last Christmas—suggesting he’s interested in more than reinforcing his heartthrob status. Indeed, both My Policeman and Don’t Worry Darling feature Styles as dashing men, yes, but ones plagued by dissatisfaction and haunting secrets. Styles was also up for the lead role in Elvis, which ultimately went to Austin Butler because Styles is “already an icon,” according to director Baz Luhrmann. And therein lies the issue facing the burgeoning actor: How does a performer with few roles but millions of fans build a freestanding film presence? Let’s look at those who have attempted similar career pivots, to varying degrees of success, from Frank Sinatra to Robert Pattinson. Ahead, the lessons an aspiring leading man can learn from those who came before him.
Robert Pattinson: Take Risks
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“Being in such a specific pigeonhole right now, it’s very strange,” Pattinson told Vanity Fair in 2011, a person couldn’t swing a vampiric baseball bat without hitting a Team Edward shirt. “Having a persona people recognize, it’s the thing that probably gets you paid the most—but it’s also the thing that virtually every actor in the world doesn’t want. ’Cause, like, no one would believe me if I wanted to play something ultra-realistic, like a gangster or something.”
In the decade since Twilight’s final installment, Pattinson worked to prove just the opposite and undo his teen heartthrob status, trading mainstream fare for challenging roles in films from David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog, Claire Denis, and Nolan. And yes, he even got to play that “ultra-realistic” gangster in 2017’s Good Time, a hard-boiled thriller directed by Benny and Josh Safdie. Pattinson’s blockbuster origins and recent indie presence collided for his weirder, more detached take on Bruce Wayne in The Batman earlier this year.
Dwayne Johnson: Lean Into Your Strengths
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Nearly two decades before Johnson was considered a presidential contender, not to mention one of the biggest stars in the world, it was unclear if he would even be taken seriously as an actor. He was credited only as The Rock, his professional wrestling name, for his first several films, including The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King. At times, Hollywood struggled with which space to slot Johnson into—testing him as a family-friendly lead in The Game Plan and Tooth Fairy and brawny supporting player in comedies like Get Smart and The Other Guys. But it was his casting in the Fast & Furious franchise as Hobbs, a character he’s played in five films and a spin-off, that first truly tapped into Johnson’s built-in action-star charisma.
At the time, Johnson says he reinvisioned his career around fellow heartthrobs turned movie stars like Will Smith and George Clooney. “I said, ‘Those are the guys who are on top. And I don’t know how, but I feel like if we can all go shoulder to shoulder on this, I feel like there’s a pathway to that kind of success, only different and maybe better or bigger,’” he told Vanity Fair. With box office smashes such as Jumanji, San Andreas, and the recently released Black Adam, it appears that Johnson’s vision has been realized to the tune of $430.4 million in box office receipts in recent years.
Zac Efron: Explore Different Genres
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Rolling Stone first labeled Efron “the New American Heart Throb” in 2007 on the heels of his star-making turn as Troy Bolton in Disney Channel’s ultra-popular High School Musical franchise. “I hate it,” he said of the moniker in 2012. “It follows you around, but you don’t deserve it.” At that point, there were four years between Efron and the Danny Zuko–like character that had made him a household name. He’d eased into natural next roles, playing another charming, singing high schooler in 2007’s Hairspray remake and charming, basketball-playing teen in 2009’s 17 Again. Then Efron seemingly struggled with where to go next—trying on everything from Nicholas Sparks’s leading man (The Lucky One) to indie supporting player (The Paperboy).
Efron found a sweet spot in comedy thanks to 2014’s Neighbors, in which he held his own opposite Seth Rogen as his warring frat boy neighbor in a raunchy, R-rated landscape. He’d lean into that persona for later studio comedies such as Dirty Grandpa, Baywatch, and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. It now appears that Efron is in yet another discovery phase, established enough to experiment with a variety of projects. In recent years, he’s played Ted Bundy, launched his own travel docuseries, and has attached himself to two remakes—2022’s Firestarter and the upcoming Three Men and a Baby, which is slated for Disney+.
Justin Timberlake: Subvert Expectations
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Timberlake may have started his career as a featured player alongside Ryan Gosling and Britney Spears on The All New Mickey Mouse Club, launching him to boyband stardom and beyond with ’NSync, then a successful solo music career. But it was Timberlake’s pair of Emmys in 2011 and 2009 for guest-hosting Saturday Night Live that would catapult him as a movie star in the 2010s. His SNL appearances, which peaked with the Lonely Island–created “D*** in a Box,” poked fun at Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” persona. His best onscreen work similarly played with—and often subverted—his pop-star persona in supporting roles: as smooth operator Sean Parker in The Social Network, a corny coworker to Cameron Diaz’s Bad Teacher, and Inside Llewyn Davis’s cashmere-clad, incredibly earnest folk musician.
Timberlake’s leading man projects—In Time, Runner Runner, Friends With Benefits, Trouble With the Curve—now live mainly as cable reruns and in-flight entertainment. Since declaring himself a man of the woods in 2018, he’s largely retreated from the silver screen, outside of 2021’s under-the-radar Apple TV+ Palmer and a two-episode arc on his wife Jessica Biel’s Hulu true-crime series Candy earlier this year.
Will Smith: Embrace Career Shifts
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His movie star viability may be in flux post-Oscars slap, but Smith is no stranger to a rebrand. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he rose to prominence as a rapper and titular star of NBC’s beloved sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Smith’s likability was first bolstered for a string of blockbusters in which he could save the day and sell a catchphrase while doing it, like Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men in Black. The following decade saw Smith dip into more dramatic roles, earning Oscar nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. Outside of his Academy Award win for last year’s King Richard, he has struggled to find consistent footing with critics or at the box office as of late, starring in a string of misfires including After Earth, Collateral Beauty, and Gemini Man. Smith’s next project, Emancipation, looks to be a return to heavy awards fare, perhaps signaling yet another career overhaul.
Mark Wahlberg: Build a Persona
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The man formerly known as Marky Mark, a rapper behind “Good Vibrations” and an infamous Calvin Klein ad, had plenty of doubters in his move from Funky Bunch heartthrob to serious actor, reportedly including Leonardo DiCaprio, his costar in 1995’s The Basketball Diaries. But it was his performance as aspiring porn star Dirk Diggler, which required him to complete a full-frontal scene, that silenced skepticism about Wahlberg’s commitment to the craft. “Boogie Nights was a moment for me where I had to say, ‘You know what? I can’t keep worrying about what the guys in the neighborhood are going to think,’” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “‘I’m an actor. I gotta go for it.’”
Roles in auteur films that would similarly bank on Wahlberg’s everyman affability—Martin Scorsese’s The Departed in 2006, David O. Russell’s The Fighter in 201o—followed. These days, he’s mostly turned his talents to centrist studio movies like Ted and Transformers, as well as based-on-a-true-story adaptations with director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day). Consider the memory of Marky Mark a mere glimmer.
Jamie Foxx: Timing Is Everything
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Foxx was introduced to Hollywood as a charming jack of all trades—singing, performing stand-up comedy, and appearing in sketches via series such as In Living Color and The Jamie Foxx Show. But it was more subtle supporting performances in films such as Any Given Sunday and Ali that would chart the path to his breakout year in 2004. That’s when Foxx became the first Black actor to earn two Oscar nominations in the same year—best supporting actor for Collateral and lead actor for Ray—and he took home the Academy Award for the latter. Now that his dramatic onscreen credentials are established, Foxx is free to explore a variety of his passions —releasing R&B albums, leading Oscar-winning films, and even hosting a game show—secure in his industry reputation as a multihyphenate.
Elvis Presley: Don’t Rely on Formulas
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Presley’s film career is a mere blip in Baz Luhrmann’s nearly three-hour Elvis opus, an indication of its place in The King’s legacy. Like Sinatra and Bing Crosby before him, Presley was more or less thrust into the movies in part to capitalize on his musical popularity. He made his onscreen debut with 1956’s Love Me Tender, followed in quick succession by titles including Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, and Girl Happy.
Most of his films followed a tried-and-true formula set forth by Presley’s 1961 hit, Blue Hawaii, as Susan Doll, author of Elvis for Dummies and The Films of Elvis Presley, previously told Vanity Fair. “When you say, ‘Elvis movie,’ everyone thinks of the musical romances, what Elvis himself jokingly called ‘the Presley travelogues,’” she explained. “Elvis plays this archetype where he’s a free spirit with an exciting job in a vacation spot, so he’s never part of the humdrum, everyday world. And then he meets up with his costar, the leading lady. She either wants nothing to do with him and he chases her, or he’s not interested, but she chases him. But that’s what gets him to settle down.” By 1969, Presley had made 31 films in 13 years, none of them significant enough to overshadow his onstage persona.
Frank Sinatra: Consider a One-for-Them, One-for-Me Mentality
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When Sinatra transitioned into film, he did it his way. Ol’ Blue Eyes had accrued a dizzying number of hit songs in the 1940s, including “I’ll Never Smile Again” and “In the Blue of the Evening” before breaking into the movies alongside Gene Kelly in 1945’s Anchors Aweigh. The film, in which he starred as a crooning Navy sailor, was a natural star-making studio vehicle that would help set the course for Sinatra’s ensuing filmography. He’d go on to mix crowd-pleasing musicals such as On the Town, Guys and Dolls, and Pal Joey with more challenging dramatic work, bolstering his reputation as a charmer with heavier roles. In 1954, Sinatra won the best-supporting-actor Oscar for playing the droll Private Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity. His performance would revitalize Sinatra’s career and lead to similarly splashy turns in The Man With the Golden Arm, Some Came Running, and Ocean’s Eleven—the modern remake of which would launch a new era of the heartthrob decades later. Perhaps Styles will bring the moment full-circle with a heist movie of his own.
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