10 Movie Stars Who Should Never Promote Anything (Ever)
When your movie dies at the box office, just remember who you hired to sell it.
Under normal circumstances, celebrity interviews are a social contract; a delicate balance of competing requirements; unspoken give and take. The interviewer is after five to ten minutes of charming, witty, Hollywood magic to dazzle their audience - one of the beautiful people to descend from the silver screen and bewitch all in attendance.
Done right, neither party really gets what they want. The subject is regurgitating old stories and one liners from a dozen other identical situations, while the interviewer is usually keen to get the overly-earnest plug out of the way as soon as possible. Plenty of celebrities have the gift of the gab, of course: George Clooney and Jennifer Lawrence are funny raconteurs who can charm the birds from the trees.
Equally, someone cheerfully engaging like Jonathan Ross or Conan O'Brien can get three minutes of genuinely amusing interview footage out of a guest's latest movie release.
And then there are the car crashes. It's a lovely bit of schadenfreude, watching an interview die a death. The social contract is suddenly shredded: the unspoken give and take is exposed for the charade it really is, as one or both parties simply stops playing. Some celebrity interviews are the interviewer's fault... they're confrontational, poorly prepared, too flippant or familiar, or just rub the interviewee up the wrong way. And then there are the men and women who, for whatever reason - house personality defects, foot-in-mouth disease, alcoholism, grumpiness, sheer insanity etc., and shouldn't ever be allowed in front of a TV camera to hawk anything.
10. Daniel Craig
Recently having essayed the role of James Bond for the fourth time in Spectre, crotchety old p*sstaker Daniel Craig shows no sign of mellowing his typically iconoclastic approach to interviews. He basically answers questions entirely as he feels on the subject at the time, with very little filter.
Hence why, when asked whether hed be ready to play the role for a fifth time in a couple of years, he replied:
"Now? I'd rather break this glass and slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all. That's fine. I'm over it at the moment. We're done. All I want to do is move on. If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money."
Clarifying how he really feels on the subject, when asked who he imagines could take over from him to become the seventh Bond: "Look, I dont give a f*ck. Good luck to them!"
It's not just for Spectre, either. Asked to demonstrate some Bond moves during the press tour for Skyfall, he deadpanned. "'I'd rather suck pus out of an abcess." He's always disliked the press and failed to suffer fools of any stripe gladly, as this clip from the Tintin premiere shows:
But getting back to the new Bond. When invited to speculate about what we could take from Bond to inspire us in our daily lives, he was typically brusque. "Nothing. Let's not talk these films up as some kind of life changing experience." And as for Bonds suave playboy ways? "Lets not forget that hes actually a misogynist. A lot of women are drawn to him chiefly because he embodies a certain kind of danger and never sticks around for too long."
Oh, well good to know. Why is it were supposed to go and see this film again, Daniel?