Film performers tend to fall into three categories: stars, supporting players, and extra. Stars are usually the best known actors who play the leading roles in a film. Supporting players have secondary and supporting roles in a production. Supporting ...
Film performers tend to fall into three categories: stars, supporting players, and extra. Stars are usually the best known actors who play the leading roles in a film. Supporting players have secondary and supporting roles in a production. Supporting players also called character actors. The star is a very important person(VIP) in commercial films. Stars continue to play a stabilizing role in the contemporary film industry, providing filmmakers with built-in audiences who regularly watch films in their favorite actors and actresses appear.
Then, what is the star persona? According to Stephen Prince, the star persona is the collective screen personality that emerges over the course of a star's career from the motion pictures in which he or she appears. The star persona is a collective creation generated by many films and is greater than any single performance in an individual film. In this context, to become a star is to have a star persona.
According to John Belton, every star houses several different personalities, though they all tend to coexist graciously with one another rather than battle for control. At the base of the star persona lies an actual person, whose physical attributes and psychological makeup provide the foundation for the construction of the personality of the performer who appears on screen.
Stars tend to fall into one of two categories. They are either personality stars or character stars. Of course, we shouldn't confuse character stars with character actors. For example, John Wayne, Barbra Streisand, and Julia Roberts are all performers who have constructed an enduring screen personality that is greater than represented by their appearance in any given film. In the case of Korean stars, Han Sukgyu, Choi Minsoo, and Jeon Jihyun belong to this categories.
By contrast, the character star tends to play a greater range of roles, frequently changing visual and behavioral characteristics from role to role. Examples of character stars are Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Meryl Streep who change accents, nationalities, and body language from one role to the next. In the case of Korean stars, Song Kangho, Choi Minsik, and Jeon Doyoun belong to this categories. Jeon shows an excellent performance in the film Secret Sunshine directed by Lee Changdong.
In this thesis, I deal with an interrelationship between a star persona and spectators. My premise is that if a performer who belongs to personality star could play the role that fits for his own personality, then he or she can please audiences. On the contrary, if a character actor without star persona play the leading role in a film, an attraction of the character will be reduced. Therefore, audiences will lose half their interest in his or her film. From the viewpoint of spectators, the natural and harmonious fusion of a performer' personality and his character is a key point for appreciating films.