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How Much Do Celebrities Make From Fashion Deals?
And what’s in it for the brands? As the industry’s model for working with public figures shifts, the power dynamics are becoming increasingly unclear.On Friday in Paris, the Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson will show his first collection as the creative director of the French fashion house Dior. During his previous, 11-year tenure as the creative director of the Spanish brand Loewe, Anderson became known for his avant-garde sensibility and dedication to craft — but also for his unique ability to turn the internet’s so-called boyfriends (those young actors and musicians who are lusted over online with possessive familiarity) into bona fide celebrities.In the front row of Anderson’s fall 2024 Loewe men’s wear show in Paris were the established actors Jamie Dornan, Andrew Garfield and Nicholas Hoult, but also, seated with equal prominence, emerging ones, including Drew Starkey, who was set to star in “Queer” (the 2024 Luca Guadagnino movie for which Anderson oversaw the costumes), and Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, who would soon appear as romantic leads in Guadagnino’s film “Challengers,” a film that helped them reach mainstream heartthrob status, and with which Anderson was also involved as a costume designer. The following June, at Anderson’s final Loewe men’s runway show, the rising actors Kit Connor, Evan Peters and Enzo Vogrincic sat front row — suggesting, based on the strength of the designer’s track record, that they too would also soon become leading men. For Loewe, it was a display of cultural currency; for the actors, it was free publicity.It used to be that an association with a brand was, if not a career-killer, then certainly not chic for an actor. It was hard to be taken seriously as both an artist and a de facto fashion model. But in recent decades, the rise of social media and the expansion of the fashion industry have blurred the lines between model, actor and influencer. Back in the 1980s, the Italian fashion house Armani began dressing Hollywood celebrities, including, most notably, Richard Gere for his role in the 1980 movie “American Gigolo.” But gone are the days when one megastar served as a company’s global face. Today brands adopt a multitiered system of ambassadors that includes international stars, yes, but also up-and-comers and influencers. While these cliques are often described by their members and parent brands as “family,” and frequently represent a genuine affinity, they are also carefully constructed to maximize a company’s exposure on red carpets and billboards — but also very specific corners of TikTok. Now, as this business decision solidifies into standard practice, the question is, Who ultimately wields the power, the celebrities or the brands?Until 2010, “a few brands had ambassadors, but it was mainly for fragrance,” says Ben Cercio, the founder of a consulting agency specializing in brand strategy and communications with clients including the French fashion house Givenchy. But with the launch of Instagram that year, a shift occurred: companies began to engage not just with major actors but also with “microinfluencers” — online personalities with less than 100,000 followers — to reach their audiences early on. And because social media has accelerated the rise to fame, whenever a new talent in any field emerges from the crowd, “every brand wants to get its hands on them,” says Cercio. Now an ingénue like the actress Mikey Madison, who starred in last year’s “Anora,” might have a dozen offers from brands immediately after making a buzzy debut at a festival like Cannes, suggesting that it’s often the young actors, rather than the brands, who are in control. When Madison accepted her Oscar for best lead actress in March, she wore a custom look from Dior.A Calvin Klein billboard featuring the actor Jeremy Allen White in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, photographed in 2024.© Richard B. Levine/AlamyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Television
Gailard Sartain, Character Actor and ‘Hee Haw’ Regular, Dies at 81
Though best known for comedy, he also played serious roles, including a sinister sheriff in “Mississippi Burning.” The director Alan Rudolph cast him in nine films.Gailard Sartain, a character actor who moved easily between comedy, as a cast member on the variety series “Hee Haw”; music, as the Big Bopper singing “Chantilly Lace” in “The Buddy Holly Story”; and drama, as a racist sheriff in “Mississippi Burning,” died on Thursday at his home in Tulsa, Okla. He was 81.His wife, Mary Jo (Regier) Sartain, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.Mr. Sartain spent 20 years on “Hee Haw,” the country equivalent of “Laugh-In,” hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark, which combined cornpone sketches with music. The characters he played included a bumbling store employee, a chef at a truck stop and Officer Bull Moose. At the same time, he also developed a movie career that began with “Nashville” (1975), Robert Altman’s improvisational drama set against the background of the country music industry.In that film, Mr. Sartain played a man at an airport lunch counter talking to Keenan Wynn. “I just said, ‘Ask Keenan what he’s doing in Nashville,’ and he did,” Alan Rudolph, the assistant director of the film, said in an interview. But Mr. Rudolph saw something special in Mr. Sartain and went on to cast him in nine films he directed over the next two decades, including “Roadie” (1980) and “Endangered Species” (1982).“I only wish I could have fit him into another nine,” he said. “Gailard had a certain silly magic about him. Most of my films are serious and comedic at the same time. In ‘Roadie,’ he was opposite Meat Loaf, as beer truck drivers, and that was about 700 pounds in the front of a beer truck. That should be funny.”One of Mr. Sartain’s most notable roles was in “Mississippi Burning” (1988), Alan Parker’s film about the F.B.I.’s investigation into the murders in 1964 of the civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were buried in an earthen dam. Mr. Sartain played Ray Stuckey, a county sheriff whose deputy was among the Ku Klux Klansmen who killed the men.Mr. Sartain played a racist Southern sheriff in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.” “Nobody likes to be typecast as a barefooted hillbilly,” he said, “so when I had the opportunity to do other roles, I happily did it.”Orion PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Television
Lynn Hamilton, a Steady Presence on ‘Sanford and Son,’ Dies at 95
A former Broadway actress, she was a no-nonsense foil for the unruly Fred Sanford. She also warmed hearts with a recurring role on the “The Waltons.”Lynn Hamilton, who became a familiar presence in American living rooms in the 1970s playing Donna Harris, the elegant and unflinching girlfriend of Redd Foxx’s irascible Fred Sanford, on “Sanford and Son,” and Verdie Foster, a dignified matriarch, on “The Waltons,” died on Thursday at her home in Chicago. She was 95.Her death was confirmed by her former manager and publicist, the Rev. Calvin Carson.Before landing her breakout television roles, Ms. Hamilton had considerable experience onstage and onscreen. She made her Broadway debut in 1959 in “Only in America,” in a cast that also included Alan Alda. She appeared in John Cassavetes’s first film as a director, “Shadows” (1958); two films starring Sidney Poitier, “Brother John” (1971) and “Buck and the Preacher” (1972); and “Lady Sings the Blues,” the 1972 Billie Holiday biopic starring Diana Ross.Still, almost no experience could have prepared her for working with Mr. Foxx, a hallowed comedian who grew up on the streets — he palled around Harlem with the young Malcolm X during their hustler days — and made his name with nightclub routines that were socially conscious and unapologetically dirty.“Sanford and Son,” a groundbreaking NBC hit, broke racial barriers. A predominantly Black sitcom, it starred Mr. Foxx as Fred Sanford, a cantankerous and wholly unfiltered Los Angeles junk man, and Demond Wilson as Lamont, his sensible, long-suffering son.Ms. Hamilton was originally cast, as a landlady, for only one episode during the show’s first season. She made enough of an impact to earn a regular role later that season as Donna, Fred’s girlfriend and, eventually, fiancée.Ms. Hamilton’s character and Mr. Foxx’s came close to getting married, but they never did. Tandem Productions/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Bobby Sherman, Easygoing Teen Idol of the 1960s and ’70s, Dies at 81
First on TV and then on the pop charts, he became so popular so young, he once said, that he “didn’t really have time to have an ego.”Bobby Sherman, an actor and singer who became an easygoing pop-music star and teen idol in the late 1960s, and who continued performing until well into the 1980s, has died. He was 81. His wife, Brigitte Poublon, announced his death on Tuesday morning on Instagram, providing no other details. She revealed in March that Mr. Sherman had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, though she did not specify the type of cancer.Mr. Sherman was 25 when he was cast in the comedy western that made him a star. On “Here Come the Brides,” a one-hour ABC series, he played a bashful 19th-century Seattle lumberjack. George Gent, reviewing the show for The New York Times, declared Mr. Sherman “winning as the shy and stuttering youngest brother,” although he predicted only that the show “should be fun.”“Here Come the Brides” ran for only two seasons (1968-70), but that was more than long enough for Mr. Sherman to attract a following: He was said to be receiving 25,000 pieces of fan mail every week.He had already become a successful recording artist, beginning with “Little Woman,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 and proved to be his biggest hit. He went on to score three other Top 10 singles in 1969 and 1970: “La La La (If I Had You),” “Easy Come, Easy Go” and “Julie, Do Ya Love Me.”By the end of 1972 he had seven gold singles, one platinum single and 10 gold albums.When TV Guide in 2005 ranked the 25 greatest teen idols, Mr. Sherman took the No. 8 spot, ahead of Davy Jones and Troy Donahue. (David Cassidy was No. 1.) He appeared countless times on the cover of Tiger Beat, a popular magazine for adolescent girls. Even Marge Simpson, leading lady of the long-running animated series “The Simpsons,” had a crush on Bobby Sherman, as she confessed to her daughter Lisa in one episode.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Jaws’ Is a Masterpiece, but ‘Jaws 2’ Deserves a Legacy, Too
The sequel had a tough act to follow, but it still delivered a terrifying monster movie with grand sequences, a sweeping score and an indelible tagline.As a child, I collected so many shark jaws that my mom disappeared them all one day while I was at school because my room allegedly smelled “fishy.” I suspect it was my general fixation on the beasts that didn’t pass the sniff test.When I first saw “Jaws” at age 8 — more than a decade after its 1975 release — it exploded my already shark-obsessed young mind. I should have been more scared, but instead I was captivated. When I saw “Jaws 2,” not long after, it spawned another great love of mine: monster movies, with all of their suspense, horror, surrealism and spectacle.The original, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, is of course a monster movie, too — probably the best monster movie ever made — but it was also a masterpiece that changed cinema. But “Jaws 2,” released in 1978, was not trying to be anything but a monster movie. On that score, it’s a horrifying success and a feat in its own right — a sequel that delivers more of everything I want (which explains why I rewatch it every summer): more shark, more shark attacks, more screaming teens.Roy Scheider reprised his role from the original.Universal PicturesThe film takes us back to Amity Island four years after the events of the first movie, with some of the same cast members returning. Roy Scheider is Martin Brody, the beleaguered police chief who once again is fighting to protect the seaside town from another killer great white. Scheider plays him with full-tilt, man-on-a-mission madness. Lorraine Gary is Martin’s wife, Ellen, and is more present in the sequel, offering crucial balance to her frenetic, spiraling husband. And Murray Hamilton is Mayor Larry Vaughn. How the mayor kept his job perhaps requires more suspension of disbelief than the fact that another shark is terrorizing the same community.Unlike the first film, which is known for perfectly executing the slow-burn buildup to its monster reveal, the sequel gives us the creature immediately after the opening credits, when it swoops in on two scuba divers photographing a shipwreck.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Jay Ellis Considers Colson Whitehead His Literary GOAT
“‘Harlem Shuffle,’ ‘Crook Manifesto,’ ‘Underground Railroad,’ ‘Nickel Boys’: I feel like I did not understand or see myself in fiction until I read him.”So far this year, Jay Ellis has played a basketball coach in the Netflix comedy “Running Point” and a record-setting M.V.P. in the action movie “Freaky Tales.”This summer, he’s swapping free throws for freestyles as he steps into the role of a hip-hop star in the Off Broadway play “Duke & Roya,” at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The drama finds him stumbling into a cross-cultural romance with life-threatening consequences.“At first glance,” he said, “there’s no reason why you think these two people would ever hit it off.”He added: “We’re in a world where everyone yells, no one listens. Everybody really just wants connection, to be seen, to be understood, and I just loved the idea that these two characters do.”Ellis, 43, temporarily relocated his family of four to New York from their home in Los Angeles. One particular aspect of the local culture suits him well.“I absolutely love pizza,” he said, name-dropping his latest find, Fini. “My daughter took a bite and was like, ‘Why don’t we have pizza like this in L.A., Daddy?’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘SVU’ Star Mariska Hargitay on Her Mother Jayne Mansfield
Mariska Hargitay was at home, and she was sprinting up the stairs, bounding between the corners of her very full life. I had to hustle to keep pace.She checked in with her oldest son — tall, polite, home from his first year at Princeton — and supervised the setup of an engagement party she was hosting for her goddaughter. Gardeners buzzed about the terraces of her Manhattan penthouse. She apologized, superfluously, for the noise.Her latest obsession, a family heirloom grand piano that had recently entered her apartment via crane, dominated the living room, with a custom “M” bench, courtesy of her husband, the actor Peter Hermann (“Younger”). “That’s my next thing — I’m going to learn to play soon,” Hargitay vowed.Another dash and we were on the floor below, a warren of cozy offices, painted in jewel tones, with overstuffed couches and muscular art by Annie Leibovitz. Tucked on a bookshelf were some of Hargitay’s awards. She has earned Emmys for playing Olivia Benson, the beloved “Law & Order: SVU” hardass, and for producing the 2017 documentary “I Am Evidence,” about the backlog of rape kits.This is where Hargitay had conceived, edited and even shot some of her newest and perhaps most life-altering project, the documentary “My Mom Jayne.” It’s at once an unflinching portrait of her mother, the 1950s star and pinup Jayne Mansfield, who died when Mariska was 3; a homage to her father, the bodybuilder and actor Mickey Hargitay; and an investigation into her own clouded and secretive origins. Directing the film, which will air June 27 on HBO, and proclaiming her story has unlocked something profound for Hargitay, 61.“I am so clear now about the truth,” she said. “This big haze came off — a veil of fear. And now I just feel so much at peace. It’s like a miracle to me to feel this way. I never thought I could.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
