Who is Sam Worthington Again?

I’ve caught up on a couple of the smaller movies that came out earlier in the year - "Contraband" with Mark Wahlberg, "Safe House" with Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, and finally "Man on a Ledge" with Sam Worthington in the lead role. All decent pictures, but nothing really special, nothing worth writing much about. And yet, "Man on a Ledge" left me thinking about Sam Worthington's career as a leading man. Here we have an actor who has starred in the highest grossing film of all time, "Avatar," and a couple of other major blockbusters, the "Clash of the Titans" remake and "Terminator: Salvation," but I don't think many people would recognize him on the street. I've confused Worthington for his fellow Australian actor Joel Edgerton a few times myself. And as I watched "Man on a Ledge," I kept thinking to myself that Edgerton was delivering a very solid, decent performance. Why hadn't I noticed him before?

With the rise of the CGI spectaculars, we have a new breed of leading man in Hollywood - the stand-in. These are the guys who fill a role, but don't make an impression, the guys who look great onscreen, but tend to blend in with all the color-corrected scenery. This is not to say that these actors aren't talented and hard-working, but their level of star-power is often hugely disproportionate to the movies appear in. These days there are still a handful of A-list movie stars that really bring value to the screen. Think of Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Angelina Jolie, Liam Neeson, and Tom Cruise – stars everyone knows and recognizes immediately. However, where the effects are the main attraction, you see studios increasingly turning to cheaper options like Josh Hartnett, Taylor Kitsch, Bradley Cooper, Karl Urban, Chris Evans, and of course Sam Worthington, who are a lot harder to keep straight.

People like to talk about the critic-proof film, the movie that is so slick and so well-packaged and marketed, it'll have a huge opening weekend no matter the actual quality. These kinds of movies are also frequently actor proof, meaning that as long as the leading man, or less commonly the leading lady, goes through the motions and delivers their lines with some competence, the movie works fine. However, when the performance of the actor is not an important part of a film's success, they either don't become associated with that success, as in the case with Sam Worthington, or sometimes their fame can quickly blow up bigger than their actual talent can sustain. Witness the career woes of Orlando Bloom, who shot to fame thanks to his appearances in "Lord of the Rings" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," a pair of the most successful blockbuster film trilogies ever made. After the failure of "Elizabethtown," his first major non-action film, Bloom has gone almost totally off the radar.

Then there's Daniel Radcliffe, taking it slow and sticking to smaller films for now, like "The Woman in Black." And Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, who keep making indie films on the side that nobody's heard of. As the juggernauts of "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" start to fade, are the young stars they minted going to go on to successful acting careers, or are they going to disappear from the public consciousness along with the films? It's no secret that many big franchises are set up so that the actors become interchangeable. Toby Maguire can be supplanted by Andrew Garfield as the new Spider-man, and the Incredible Hulk can keep cycling through different actors without much fuss. Meanwhile, things do not look good for "Dumb and Dumber 2," a purely star-driven vehicle, since Jim Carrey reportedly quit the picture.

This brings us back to Sam Worthington, who despite his acting talent always comes off a little bland and a little forgettable. I suspect that this actually works in his favor. Worthington is associated with a couple of big hits, but then he’s not like Shia LaBeouf or the “Harry Potter” kids, who are so closely associated with one role or one persona. That makes it easier to slot him into a variety of different parts without carrying all the baggage of his previous work with him. He hasn’t gained much fame from being part of “Avatar” or the “Terminator” franchise, but the recent failure of “Wrath of the Titans” doesn’t seem to have hurt his reputation either. I don’t think Worthington is a movie star in the traditional sense - someone high profile and famous who movies are often created around. Rather, Sam Worthington is best known for movies that have no need of movie stars. He's a pretty good actor though, and I expect that he could still end up on the A-list one day - provided he take on some more interesting roles.
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