Battle of the A-Listers
Which Stars Are Best At Attracting Moviegoers?
Show business isn’t for the faint of heart. Hollywood sees A-list actors come and go, with stars rising and falling as the decades go by. That said, a select few actors never really stop churning out hits, whether the films are gripping thrillers, cockeyed comedies, or heartfelt dramas. These stars have been around long enough to build dedicated fan bases who follow their body of work year after year. And while those fans are more likely to love anything their favorite actors star in, it’s interesting to see which films they love most — and which they’re lukewarm about.
Because we have over 10 years’ worth of voting data from fans of the film industry’s biggest stars, Ranker Insights can give us a very strong sense of how these audiences view their idols’ movies. To demonstrate, we took a look at the fan bases of five A-list actors and charted their sentiment toward some of their favorite actors’ biggest roles over time, helping us to understand which films endear them most to their fans. While none of these charts feature every movie their respective star has been in (many movies don’t have a statistically significant affinity with their stars’ fans), they feature most, if not all the films for which they are best known. The results can tell us whether a given star’s fans are more drawn to their Oscar-winning dramas or their blockbuster action flicks, as well as whether they’re more or less forgiving of a given movie with their chosen star than the rest of the moviegoing public.
Brad Pitt
Movies Voted on by Brad Fans: 21
Average Movie’s Affinity Score: 166
Time Span: 1991-2019 (28 years)
Fan Favorite: Inglourious Basterds (281)
Fan No-so-Favorite: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (40)
Given Brad Pitt’s star caliber, his filmography has a bumpier reputation with his fan base than you might expect: the average Affinity Score for Pitt films among Pitt’s fan base is 166, meaning the average Pitt fan is about 2X more likely to enjoy any given movie of his.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the Pitt film least beloved by his fans, which could mean that moviegoers hoping to see Pitt the action star were disappointed by this slow and contemplative movie that won rave reviews from critics. Conversely, Troy, a panned movie Pitt is sometimes mocked for starring in, has a strong rating of 219, well above the average. The tendency of Pitt’s fans to prefer action-packed movies like The Departed, Inglourious Basterds, and Fight Club over moody dramas bodes well for his latest film, Bullet Train — although, given that these movies were all helmed by famous directors, they may be skeptical of relatively green director David Leitch.
Meryl Streep
Movies Voted on by Streep Fans: 30
Average Movie’s Affinity Score: 260
Time Span: 1978-2019 (41 years)
Fan Favorite: The Devil Wears Prada (530)
Fan Not-So-Favorite: Silkwood (26)
Of the stars featured in this article, Meryl Streep boasts the longest career by far. Starting with The Deer Hunter in 1978, Streep is notable not just for the number of movies she’s made, but also for how many of them prompted positive reactions from her fan base. With an average Affinity Score of 260, the second-highest average among the set of actors covered here, Streep supporters are around 3X more likely to watch any given movie in which the actor stars.
As with Pitt, some of the films Streep’s fans are least likely to love are beloved by critics: the heavy melodrama Silkwood, for example, is a movie the actor’s fan base feels downright ambivalent about. They’re similarly down on Woody Allen’s seminal Manhattan (not that we should blame Streep for that) and Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of Little Women. Other critical darlings like Sophie’s Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer score just as well with Streep’s devotees as they do with reviewers (though none can compete with the crowd-pleasing The Devil Wears Prada).
Leonardo DiCaprio
Movies Voted on by Leo Fans: 17
Average Movie’s Affinity Score: 312
Time Span: 1993-2019 (26 years)
Fan Favorite: The Departed (530)
Fan Not-so-Favorite: The Quick and the Dead (123)
The movies that Leonardo DiCaprio’s fans have voted on in statistically significant numbers span 26 years. His filmography boasts the highest average Affinity Score of any star covered in this article, with the average Leo fan over 3X more likely to enjoy a given film he stars in. That could be due to the relatively short span of time this selection of films covers. But there’s something to be said for the consistency of his appeal: only The Quick and the Dead, The Basketball Diaries, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood have Affinity Scores below 200. None of the films featured here has a score below 100.
An impressive number of movies cross the 400 line among DiCaprio’s fan base, including the Martin Scorcese-helmed The Aviator, The Departed, and The Wolf of Wall Street — Gangs of New York and Shutter Island do nearly as well. DiCaprio’s fan base is less consistent about the actor’s collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, as they’re over 4X more likely to love Django Unchained and less than 2X more likely to love Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (fans of his co-star Brad Pitt are slightly more likely to enjoy the 1960s period piece). In contrast with some of the other fan bases covered on this list, popular blockbusters like Titanic and Inception aren’t quite as popular with his fan base as dramatic acting showcases like The Aviator and The Departed.
Tom Hanks
Movies Voted on by Hanks fans: 29
Average Movie’s Affinity Score: 227
Time Span: 1987-2019 (32 years)
Fan Favorite: Forrest Gump (659)
Fan Not-So-Favorite: Charlie Wilson’s War (25)
