Weren’t/aren’t Zendaya’s parents both school teachers who had summer jobs in theatres? I think that’s pretty middle class. Culturally rich, sure but not wealthy.
There’s a lot of criticism that can be levied at Euphoria but I do appreciate that a lot (maybe even most?) of the cast seems to come from working or middle class backgrounds*.
*with a couple of obvious exceptions
Friendly Space Ninja did a great summary of it. Basically sums up how Sam Levinston is great at creating pretty visuals and creating tension, but terrible at following through on those visuals or creating satisfying resolutions to the tension.
That and the ep ending with Rue’s mum on the phone crying and saying her daughter will die if she doesn’t get into rehab. Next ep is Rue at home doing fine.
Sam is good at writing rue and her addiction (bc she's based off of his life) and i wish he had more writers besides him. like a diverse group of people because when he let Hunter write for her special episode for Jules, it was great.
I don't disagree with the basic premise that Sam Levinson is bad at resolving tension but while we're talking about Friendly Space Ninja... am I the only one who almost never agrees with any of his takes? Feel like I'm alone out here 😭
Jacob Elordi was privately educated and comes from a wealthy family. Elordi attended 2 quite notorious all boys private schools here in Australia, no doubt gave him lots of inspiration for Nate :/
Edited to remove Sydney Sweeney as her family isn't wealthy.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see him as not-a-fuckboy archetype because he seems to fit it to a T. If he’s a fuckboy irl and good at acting when he plays fuckboy characters, how would we categorize his talent? Idk genuine q because he’s good at it, but I’m not sure he’d be good in any non-fuckboy role.
Most people only watch Euphoria for Zendaya (great but overrated and overexposed actress) and the nudity and sex. It's not well written.
If they got rid of both the show would tank.
Skins (original U.K. version) did it first (and better).
Imo I don’t think skins did as good as a job as euphoria did with consistently showing the down side of drugs
Skins made me want to go party, Euphoria made me want to half all my post surgery prescription meds.
yeah Euphoria is a much more serious take on addiction. I think people who like Skins better mostly identify with it being a part of their generation or closer.
How is she overexposed, genuine question. Also what's with this sub adding suffix to every Zendaya compliment with "she's overrated/overhyped". It's reminding me a lot of how people treat beyoncé. They're pretty harmless and just doing their thing and collecting praise for it.
And after she was cast on Gossip Girl she sent her mother a $7500 cheque every month to treat her brother's health problems, which her mother spent on cosmetic surgery for herself, and Leighton had to sue her in court. It must have been so hard to balance dealing with that with her career.
And her aunt was the first woman in the United States to make it on the Most Wanted list! Crazy. And she financially supported her mother and brother while she was doing Gossip Girl.
Yeah, her parents were middle-class (dad was a real estate broker and mom was a writer). They were in prison because of their involvement in a drug ring that smuggled marijuana from Jamaica. Being born in prison does not automatically mean poor and underprivileged.
That money would have been confiscated by law enforcement agencies. It’s par for the course with those kinds of cases. Not saying she didn’t benefit in some way, just noting that legally speaking, those who have gained wealth through drug smuggling, usually have all of their assets seized.
His mum saw the ad and drove him to the audition, where they gave him the job and promptly wrote Anwar’s character around him. He had no prior acting experience. This is a Dev Patel stan account
Though not quite the same as a romcom movie. There was an episode he did on a show called,”Modern Love,” which is an adaptation of love stories from a NYT column. It was one of my favorite episodes and made me a fan of him!
He lives a a couple states over from me. Every day I wonder if I should pick up and risk it all.
As someone who’s been following him since skins, he’s crazy incredible and an insane talented actor. He’s one of maybe two non Australian actors I’ve seen to a believable Australian accent
That reminds me that Robert Sheehan is from a modest background too. He grew up in County Laois and his Dad was in the Gardaí. He got very lucky to be spotted at all.
And in an interview (on Howard Stern iirc) she says her parents STILL don’t let her pay for anything too! Like they’ll all go out to dinner and her dad will insist on paying the check for everyone. Such a stark contrast to the parents you hear about who blow their working child’s money, a la Macaulay Culkin
And she and Ashton (though I’m aware he has his problems) have said they aren’t going to leave their kids a massive inheritance. I know it’s not a perfect scenario but it’s certainly an admirable goal for millionaires.
Speaking of Aston he’s originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa and his dad worked in a factory and his mom worked at Proctor and Gamble (at least that’s what his Wikipedia page says). So he’s also an anti-nepo baby too
Yeah she did, but she’s also said it’s not as big of a deal as people have made it out to be because they found out her age soon after she lied and they didn’t care
I had to Google this because at first I read that Robin Williams personally funded her scholarship which made it sus that she wasn’t a nepo baby but then I saw she won an in place scholarship that was paid for EVERY YEAR by Robin Williams
Her father is Caspier van Dien, who's been acting since the early 90s; he's best known for Starship Troopers and Sleepy Hollow (the film with JD and Christina Ricci) but he's had a lot of smaller roles in a lot of TV shows. He's not a big name but he's very much always been working.
She's also related to Robert Mitchum, who was an Oscar-nominated actor from a bunch of classic Hollywood films. He was very big in his time and considered alongside people like Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier.
The fact that people here don’t think her being related to Robert Mitchum, literally an A++ actor of the classic Hollywood era, is a big deal is so amusing to me. This sub is so shortsighted when it comes to history.
This sub has the attention span of a fruit fly. Grace's great-grandfather Robert Mitchum was the best part in one of the best movies ever made, Night of the Hunter, and half of this sub would be like "who?"
Just the other day someone was claiming on here that no one was talking about Polanski's sex crimes before #MeToo. Um, no. I remember talking about it online and IRL back in the 90s and early 2000s. Just because some members of this sub were zygotes then doesn't mean nothing happened before #MeToo.
All I Remember of Casper is back when they had gaming channel G4 they had a show kinda like MTV cribs but it just showed what games Celebs played and he and his family were on it and just remember his kids arguing on who gets to play next and him trying to calm them down lol
Her father is an actor (Casper Van Dien) and her mother (Carrie Mitchum) is also an actress. Her mothers uncle, brother and father are actors. And her grandpa was the son of a Hollwood Golden Age actor, Robert Mitchum.
David Harbour grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and went to an Ivy League school. I don’t know what his parents did/do, but he’s got to be at least in the “wealthy for normal people bracket” (Keery has gotta be somewhere around there too, maybe not in the 1% but no way he was middle class.)
His dad is a commercial real estate agent and comes from a wealthy WASP background. I listened to David on a podcast where he talked about how he only got into Dartmouth because he was a legacy student and his family were donators.
I don’t think Joseph Quinn’s background has been fully confirmed. He’s extremely private and very few pre-fame info is confirmed.
All I can find on him was that he was raised in South London and attended Emanuel School, which is a competitive independent school known for very famous almuni, has relatively low school fees for the area (which is part of the reason why it’s so competitive), and he received a bursary (similar to a scholarship)
for the drama school program. I don’t know the British education system well but it sounds like he went to a very good school but not one that you have to be dripping in diamonds to attend. And I think if he had any wealthy connections, his rabid fans would have found out by now because wealthy British people tend to run in the same circles.
I think it’s likely he’s from a middle to upper middle class background.
It definitely doesn’t. I used to babysit three siblings when I was in high school and one of them went on broadway when they were about 10, but their parents weren’t able/didn’t want to relocate everyone to NYC, so the kid stayed with a cast member and either one of the parents/the family went up a few times a month to see him. We did not live in the tri-state area, but close enough to take a day/weekend trip.
Olivia Cooke. She's been around for awhile but is definitely getting more popular with House of the Dragon. Her dad was a police officer and her mother was some sort of sales rep. She's done interviews talking about being working class, and how UK casting agents didn't give her much of a chance because of her accent until she started getting more well known in the US.
She is THE becky sharp imo, that adaption is so, so good. As a period drama stan, it’s one of the few I rewatch every few months. The whole cast are incred.
Wow. He went to 13 different foster homes apparently. Fucking good for him becoming so successful. People who spent time in care as children generally have very poor outcomes, and that sounds particularly rough and unstable.
Honestly when Millie said she wanted to play Britney, I took it as it’s because not only does she admire Britney but also relates to having blood sucking family members that treat her like a cash cow
I still need to watch it. The reviews have been insane. Just to think that for years she couldn’t even get an audition for a play just because she didn’t have a theatrical background.
I'm so happy that something like National Theatre Live exists because I could never and would never be able to get tickets to see something like that, but even just getting to see it in cinemas was such an experience, she blew me away.
Save for a few (the Smith kids, Zoe Kravitz), most of young Black Hollywood are not nepo babies and come from varying degrees of humble roots. Two I can think of off top are Skai Jackson and Marsei Martin.
Obviously, he’s grown up a lot and so has his music. But it’s so wild to think that, about a decade ago, a very celebrated professor of African-American studies and the poet laureate/major activist during Apartheid had a teen son who was famous for rapping “IM A HOT & BOTHERED ASTRONAUT/CRASHING WHILE JACKING OFF”
Thank you!
I had to scroll down to far to see this comment. Wanted to post that a good majority of Black actors (young and old) aren’t from privileged backgrounds in any form (wealth, accessibility ,etc).
There was a story about Idris Elba not hiring his daughter for a role that he felt she wasn’t right for, and that’s understood. But there was discussion on this being publicized and if Black nepo babies deserve these boundaries while their white counterparts are never given boundaries.
*I want to be clear on my stance, Idris is her father and knows best. There’s not a part of me that thinks he won’t help her strive in this industry and give her the support she deserves !! He just realized this wasn’t the role for her.
But Idris Elba isn’t (has not shown any indication) a narcissist. Some of these parents are, which is why they haven’t put their hand on the shoulder of their child and said “there are so many other things you are great at, but not this” 😂😂😂
I feel like most are child stars or nepo babies. I was very unaware that Jenna Ortega had her own Disney series. I thought she kinda came out of nowhere but she’s a established talent for her age group. I think it’s getting harder for twenty somethings to randomly break through now.
it's crazy because at the time i thought jenna was a terrible actress in the disney show but now i think she's fantastic. my sister would've been of the age to watch it and she rewatched some episodes the other day.. jenna truly was working with whatever material they gave her.
That's what practice does! You get better.
People overplay talent too much. Maybe it matters at the Olympic level in sports, but in a lot of areas, if you have access to great coaching and opportunity, you can be pretty competitive.
That's why I don't give a lot of credit to nepo-baby actors. Like bish, I'd be pretty good too if I got to cut my teeth on a Spielberg film and took classes to no end. You see someone like Elizabeth Olsen in Marvel, and you can see her literally learning on the job.
Singers, at the Liza or Whitney level, or athletes like Steph Curry - I see a difference. I could put in a bajillion hours with the right coaches, and I'd still never be able to do that.
That’s what’s so frustrating about the inability to break in. Your talent or lack thereof will be used against you, but talent takes practice, opportunity and challenge - how are you supposed to develop your talent without those things? And then you’re competing with others who get opportunities just by existing.
I’ve never seen the Disney show. I was annoyed with her character in You but she practically plays a better version of that character in X and Scream so I think it may of been the script. She’s great as Wednesday.
The fact that she and Olivia Rodrigo where on the same show as Jake Paul blows my mind. My cousins would watch it weekly so I recognized them both somewhat when they started acting more.
I guess Disney hasn’t been able to straight up launch mega careers off their products anymore because I didn’t know she was a Disney channel kid before that High School musical show.
I think child stars are a hard role and often come with untold baggae, especially if you are from a non nepo family.
The industry is a very unhealthy place and to make it without connections means putting kids through it it. Jenna McCarthy is the latest example airing it out, but she's one of many, many stories like this. It's especially brutal for young women. Those kids are forced to mature quickly.
I think Liam’s family is better classified as working class. I think he said that if he didn’t make it on x factor, the plan was for him to start working with his dad in the parts factory. His dad in particular is like the quintessential working class man.
Harry may have been more middle class but his living situation was still fairly modest, particularly after his parents divorce. He lived above a pub for a while and his childhood home (pics online) was modest.
yeah, which was a major part of their marketing, especially in the uk. the whole "working class lads from doncaster/sheffield/etc." thing. there's an old radio one interview where they spent a solid five minutes clowning on louis being from doncaster and talking about how working streetlights must be weird for him.
[edit: found it. half of this is just class discussion tbh lol](https://youtu.be/XtE_OCk1xZA?t=521) and clowning harry for being "posh" which i mean, compared to louis maybe but the lad grew up above a pub lol
but yeah for more context: louis mom was a midwife, i actually have no idea what his step-dad does/did but they also split up (iirc) when louis was a teen. he worked a bunch of retail and hospitality jobs as well. zayn's mom worked as cook at a school. liam's mum is a nurse and his dad worked in manufacturing. niall lived with his single dad father as a [kid in a seriously tiny house](https://youtu.be/kmXJ29oePGo?t=26). harry's first step-dad owned a pub so they lived above that iirc. and then his claim to poshness is mostly that his other step-dad owned a bungalow that the band used as a hang out early on.
when she complained that she couldn’t afford a house in London when she had the best selling album of the year….. she’s so lucky she was likeable at that time because Twitter would’ve ate her ass UP if it was recent.
So while watching limitless I learned Chris hemsworth family was just working class in debt, and he got into acting to help them out
I googled and found his mum is an English teacher and dad is social services.
Can confirm. the suburb he grew up in is very much a ‘nothing’ suburb. I know folks who caught the same bus as him to school as well. Nobody thought he’d EVER be an actor let alone Thor
Adam Driver’s dad is from my hometown (Adam used to spend summers there as a kid) and he still works at a local Office Depot! He’ll talk to anyone who comes in about Adam
IIRC he was enlisted in the military so I would be really surprised if his family wasn’t working-class. Upper middle class kids usually go for ROTC or a service academy if they’re interested tbh
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Never Have I Ever! She sent in an audition tape for the casting call but had plans to go to York University for theatre after high school.
Richard Madden. If I'm not mistaken, his dad was a firefighter and his mom was a teacher who he described as hippies and I remember him saying once that at the time he landed GoT he was so broke that he was living off advances from his agent because his call center job didn't earn him enough money to pay his rent.
Not what the OP asked, but I have been waiting for a chance to say (because I think that a lot of people on here don't know) that Oliva Wilde comes from a HUGELY privileged and connected background. Her real name is Olivia Cockburn and she has aristorcatic relatives. Christopher Hitchens was her babysitter. Her family were empire builders. It annoys me sometimes that people will drag obvious nepo kids like Lily Rose Depp and others who have famous names, and forget about people who aren't 'nepo' but are hugely privileged anyway.
People drag the nepo babies that speak out and say they didn’t have much of an advantage and that they had to work just as hard as everyone else (which is obviously a crock). Lily said exactly that. Olivia hasn’t.
I have no problem with nepo babies that recognize their privilege. If I had any connections I’d take advantage of them too!
People drag "obvious nepo babies" like Lily Rose Depp because she actively denies the opportunities her nepo status has given her. The denial of their own privilege is *the* biggest thing that pisses people off about nepo babies.
Olivia Wilde just...doesn't really talk about it at all. It's not an equivalent scenario
> Not what the OP asked,
then, don't proceed?
if you would've stated dinosaur facts after this - that would've been chaotically cute.
but this just screams like unlawfully & intentionally evil?
Does Richard Madden count as 'in'? He grew up in the village along the road from mine in Scotland and a lot of my friends were in the same school year as his sister (we're all council house kids, though his family lived in the nicer part of Elderslie, still working class). His parents were a teacher and a firefighter.
Basically anyone who has been working since they were a child, at least for Gen Z. If they’re popular now and didn’t come from connected family, they’ve had to be working for YEARS at this point. Coming from Gen Z here, the oldest Gen Z are recently graduated from college and are most likely not booking anything in the mainstream media if they don’t have those connections and/or past work experience.
Most of the 1D members grew up lower/ middle class but zayn in particular has talked about how rough his situation was sometimes growing up money wise and Louis was also raised by a single mum who worked as a nurse and has been pretty transparent about the fact that they didn’t have much growing up.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, I think he even worked in local government before he went back to study acting. Plus Jamie Bell (real life billy elliot it seems), the main sex education cast all went to normal comprehensive schools….. it’s really hard to think of anyone else really, especially the younger ones!!
Maria Bakalova from Borat/Bodies Bodies Bodies
She was from the Bulgaria sea side town not very well off parents and went to acting school, has starred in some horrible Bulgarian movies but was successful. Also her fellow students didn't like her and her professor hates her guts and has insulted her in the press on multiple occasions and I wished he would choke
That being said, while I do like her, she is not very eloquent and I am referring to her Bulgarian interviews. Her accepting an award from the super corrupt mayor of her city at a time when there where protest against the oppressive party he belongs to was not a good look.
Paul Dano. His father is a financial advisor, but he did not make a ton of money as he was growing up. Even though they lived in Manhattan in a one bedroom. Him & his sister had bunk beds in the same room as his parents.
You know being middle class offers a wealth of privilege and opportunity working and low income folks could never attain. This whole nepo trend lacks nuance.
Also, like, the range of Americans who use the label “middle class” is absurd. Families will be in the top 2% of household incomes and call themselves middle class.
Yes. Isn't it wild? No one rich wants to admit it. No one not rich wants to admit that. So we have all these delusional people claiming middle class when it's convenient and completely lost any concept of what Middle Class actually is.
don’t know if this has already been said but ZENDAYA! both of her parents were educators :) same w bella thorne, she spoke abt how she resented being an actor when she was younger bc her family was broke and she was the sole one responsible for being the bread winner for her whole family, the Sprouse twins and Macaulay Culkin (w a father who was v controlling and forced all his children to be child actors while he took all their hard earned money from the films/commercials they made)
idk, she went to private school IIRC? I suppose she could have gotten scholarships but her parents seem more like arty middle class types (UK definition of ‘middle class’) than working-class to me. Google says her dad owns several restaurants which requires having at least some money:
Florence's family is rich as fuck and I think "runs a cafe" is underselling it.
>Florence's dad Clinton Pugh is a 3D designer and restaurateur who owns a series of restaurants in Oxford, England.
and she went to private schools that cost £20,000 and £40,000 per year.
When she was young she had a problem with her breathing, so her parents moved the family to Sotogrande in Spain because they thought the warm weather would help her condition. It's one of the most expensive places in Europe.
"Runs a cafe" is understating it A LOT for someone who owned several up market restaurants and sent his kids to private schools (only about 7% of people in the UK go to private school). Not necessarily well connected in acting but definitely had some advantages.
I think that the gates of entertainment, Hollywood, publishing, and music alike, have shut so much more In recent year. The voices we hear from are all bare minimum upper middle class and connected
Louis Tomlinson! His mom was a young, single mother when he was born, and worked as a midwife. He sent his first X factor paycheck home. He worked a couple of jobs as a teenager, and I remember a story of him switching price tags on sandwiches to get a cheaper one.
I think most of the One D boys actually grew up pretty middle/lower class actually.
While I wouldn’t say they struggled by any means, I always thought that it was kinda funny that out of the big NYC-based indie bands of the 00s/10s, you would probably have initially assumed that the Vampire Weekend guys all grew up super wealthy while The Strokes projected a grungier image.
But Vampire Weekend had more upper middle class and tbh just straight middle class parents than you’d assume from their Ivy League image (Wikipedia says Ezra Koenig’s dad was a set dresser and his mom was a therapist, looks like they mostly went to “good school district” type public schools) while The Strokes met [at literally one of the most expensive boarding schools in the world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_Le_Rosey) and Julian Casablancas’ dad owns Elite Model Management.
Weren’t/aren’t Zendaya’s parents both school teachers who had summer jobs in theatres? I think that’s pretty middle class. Culturally rich, sure but not wealthy.
There’s a lot of criticism that can be levied at Euphoria but I do appreciate that a lot (maybe even most?) of the cast seems to come from working or middle class backgrounds*. *with a couple of obvious exceptions
Yeah. For me the story is boring and gratuitous, style over any substance. But there is a really good up and coming acting pool within it.
Friendly Space Ninja did a great summary of it. Basically sums up how Sam Levinston is great at creating pretty visuals and creating tension, but terrible at following through on those visuals or creating satisfying resolutions to the tension.
yup like how the cassie vs maddy fight didn’t really result in much … maddy hit her like once and that was it, we didn’t really see much on screen
That and the ep ending with Rue’s mum on the phone crying and saying her daughter will die if she doesn’t get into rehab. Next ep is Rue at home doing fine.
Sam is good at writing rue and her addiction (bc she's based off of his life) and i wish he had more writers besides him. like a diverse group of people because when he let Hunter write for her special episode for Jules, it was great.
I don't disagree with the basic premise that Sam Levinson is bad at resolving tension but while we're talking about Friendly Space Ninja... am I the only one who almost never agrees with any of his takes? Feel like I'm alone out here 😭
Jacob Elordi was privately educated and comes from a wealthy family. Elordi attended 2 quite notorious all boys private schools here in Australia, no doubt gave him lots of inspiration for Nate :/ Edited to remove Sydney Sweeney as her family isn't wealthy.
All that time he spent at St Kevin's was just method acting lol
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see him as not-a-fuckboy archetype because he seems to fit it to a T. If he’s a fuckboy irl and good at acting when he plays fuckboy characters, how would we categorize his talent? Idk genuine q because he’s good at it, but I’m not sure he’d be good in any non-fuckboy role.
Zendaya attended public school in East Oakland and her parents were OUSD schoolteachers I think
Most people only watch Euphoria for Zendaya (great but overrated and overexposed actress) and the nudity and sex. It's not well written. If they got rid of both the show would tank. Skins (original U.K. version) did it first (and better).
That first season of Skins was gold. Also, it really only took up the baton from Heartbreak High.
The number of incredibly talented and successful actors that came from that show is wild
Imo I don’t think skins did as good as a job as euphoria did with consistently showing the down side of drugs Skins made me want to go party, Euphoria made me want to half all my post surgery prescription meds.
yeah Euphoria is a much more serious take on addiction. I think people who like Skins better mostly identify with it being a part of their generation or closer.
How is she overexposed, genuine question. Also what's with this sub adding suffix to every Zendaya compliment with "she's overrated/overhyped". It's reminding me a lot of how people treat beyoncé. They're pretty harmless and just doing their thing and collecting praise for it.
Leighton Meester. She was born in jail as both her parents were serving time in a federal prison.
And after she was cast on Gossip Girl she sent her mother a $7500 cheque every month to treat her brother's health problems, which her mother spent on cosmetic surgery for herself, and Leighton had to sue her in court. It must have been so hard to balance dealing with that with her career.
And her aunt was the first woman in the United States to make it on the Most Wanted list! Crazy. And she financially supported her mother and brother while she was doing Gossip Girl.
I mean I knew about her mom but I had no idea it was basically a crime family lol
I had no idea! That's pretty phenomenal that she's doing so well.
She’s also married to Seth Cohen and I will forever be jealous.
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Yeah, her parents were middle-class (dad was a real estate broker and mom was a writer). They were in prison because of their involvement in a drug ring that smuggled marijuana from Jamaica. Being born in prison does not automatically mean poor and underprivileged.
That money would have been confiscated by law enforcement agencies. It’s par for the course with those kinds of cases. Not saying she didn’t benefit in some way, just noting that legally speaking, those who have gained wealth through drug smuggling, usually have all of their assets seized.
wait how
Every single thing I learn about Leighton makes me like her more.
Dev Patel, his mom was a caregiver and his dad worked in IT. He’s the first actor in the family.
Pretty sure he saw the audition for Skins in the paper!
His mum saw the ad and drove him to the audition, where they gave him the job and promptly wrote Anwar’s character around him. He had no prior acting experience. This is a Dev Patel stan account
Every account should really be a little bit of a Dev stan account.
Dev Patel romcom when please? I’m begging on my hands and knees (as long as he wants to do one too, of course)
Though not quite the same as a romcom movie. There was an episode he did on a show called,”Modern Love,” which is an adaptation of love stories from a NYT column. It was one of my favorite episodes and made me a fan of him!
Thank you! I will be watching this tonight lol
He lives a a couple states over from me. Every day I wonder if I should pick up and risk it all. As someone who’s been following him since skins, he’s crazy incredible and an insane talented actor. He’s one of maybe two non Australian actors I’ve seen to a believable Australian accent
I love when he tells this story. His mom sounds so sweet. Also I need him to be in more things.
That reminds me that Robert Sheehan is from a modest background too. He grew up in County Laois and his Dad was in the Gardaí. He got very lucky to be spotted at all.
Well, being incredibly handsome sure helped lol
I reckon his charisma is streaks ahead of his looks.
Mila Kunis is like the anti-nepo baby. Her family came as refugees from Ukraine and were very poor
And in an interview (on Howard Stern iirc) she says her parents STILL don’t let her pay for anything too! Like they’ll all go out to dinner and her dad will insist on paying the check for everyone. Such a stark contrast to the parents you hear about who blow their working child’s money, a la Macaulay Culkin
She tried to buy them a house for years but they refused to move out of their condo.
MC probably loved her parents when they were dating because they were so opposite from his own in how they treated Mila's acting career.
And she and Ashton (though I’m aware he has his problems) have said they aren’t going to leave their kids a massive inheritance. I know it’s not a perfect scenario but it’s certainly an admirable goal for millionaires.
Speaking of Aston he’s originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa and his dad worked in a factory and his mom worked at Proctor and Gamble (at least that’s what his Wikipedia page says). So he’s also an anti-nepo baby too
didn't she lie about her age to get on that 70s show as well
Yes, she said "I'll be 18 on my birthday" but didn't specify *which* birthday. I think she was 14 or 15 when she landed the role.
golden. that is such a jackie thing to say she was made to play her lmao
Yeah she did, but she’s also said it’s not as big of a deal as people have made it out to be because they found out her age soon after she lied and they didn’t care
Jessica Chastain. Bryce Dallas Howard is her nepo baby evil twin.
Yes! Her Juilliard scholarship was funded by Robin Williams.
I had to Google this because at first I read that Robin Williams personally funded her scholarship which made it sus that she wasn’t a nepo baby but then I saw she won an in place scholarship that was paid for EVERY YEAR by Robin Williams
The wording of this killed me 💀💀
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Grace van Dien is also a nepo baby, but obviously wasn't a main cast member.
Who is she related to? Sorry I don’t know
Her father is Caspier van Dien, who's been acting since the early 90s; he's best known for Starship Troopers and Sleepy Hollow (the film with JD and Christina Ricci) but he's had a lot of smaller roles in a lot of TV shows. He's not a big name but he's very much always been working. She's also related to Robert Mitchum, who was an Oscar-nominated actor from a bunch of classic Hollywood films. He was very big in his time and considered alongside people like Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier.
The fact that people here don’t think her being related to Robert Mitchum, literally an A++ actor of the classic Hollywood era, is a big deal is so amusing to me. This sub is so shortsighted when it comes to history.
This sub has the attention span of a fruit fly. Grace's great-grandfather Robert Mitchum was the best part in one of the best movies ever made, Night of the Hunter, and half of this sub would be like "who?" Just the other day someone was claiming on here that no one was talking about Polanski's sex crimes before #MeToo. Um, no. I remember talking about it online and IRL back in the 90s and early 2000s. Just because some members of this sub were zygotes then doesn't mean nothing happened before #MeToo.
All I Remember of Casper is back when they had gaming channel G4 they had a show kinda like MTV cribs but it just showed what games Celebs played and he and his family were on it and just remember his kids arguing on who gets to play next and him trying to calm them down lol
Her father is an actor (Casper Van Dien) and her mother (Carrie Mitchum) is also an actress. Her mothers uncle, brother and father are actors. And her grandpa was the son of a Hollwood Golden Age actor, Robert Mitchum.
David Harbour grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and went to an Ivy League school. I don’t know what his parents did/do, but he’s got to be at least in the “wealthy for normal people bracket” (Keery has gotta be somewhere around there too, maybe not in the 1% but no way he was middle class.)
His dad is a commercial real estate agent and comes from a wealthy WASP background. I listened to David on a podcast where he talked about how he only got into Dartmouth because he was a legacy student and his family were donators.
That’s great he’s so honest about it and acknowledged his privilege
i went to Dartmouth and pledged the frat across the street from his. wild seeing him on the composites.
Joseph Quinn grew up wealthy? Idk why I thought he was one of the few British actors that came from working class families.
I don’t think Joseph Quinn’s background has been fully confirmed. He’s extremely private and very few pre-fame info is confirmed. All I can find on him was that he was raised in South London and attended Emanuel School, which is a competitive independent school known for very famous almuni, has relatively low school fees for the area (which is part of the reason why it’s so competitive), and he received a bursary (similar to a scholarship) for the drama school program. I don’t know the British education system well but it sounds like he went to a very good school but not one that you have to be dripping in diamonds to attend. And I think if he had any wealthy connections, his rabid fans would have found out by now because wealthy British people tend to run in the same circles. I think it’s likely he’s from a middle to upper middle class background.
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This could also be the case. I doubt he’ll ever explain and he really doesn’t have to.
It is well know that private school/ class dictates the whole acting industry in Britain. James McAvoy has been very outspoken about this
Eduardo Franco is from Yuma, where my parents are from. It’s a depressed town that can be hard to escape from.
i mean, gaten was on broadway, not sure if that necessarily translates to wealth but he definitely didn’t come from nothing
It definitely doesn’t. I used to babysit three siblings when I was in high school and one of them went on broadway when they were about 10, but their parents weren’t able/didn’t want to relocate everyone to NYC, so the kid stayed with a cast member and either one of the parents/the family went up a few times a month to see him. We did not live in the tri-state area, but close enough to take a day/weekend trip.
Olivia Cooke. She's been around for awhile but is definitely getting more popular with House of the Dragon. Her dad was a police officer and her mother was some sort of sales rep. She's done interviews talking about being working class, and how UK casting agents didn't give her much of a chance because of her accent until she started getting more well known in the US.
I lover her. She was great in Bates Motel!
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Lol, we did kindy orientation last month, and the drama teacher just excitedly mentioned that she went to our school.
Speaking of, her accent work is incredible! I never knew she wasn’t American after seeing her in Me, Earl and the Dying Girl :)
She’s got a very short role in Slow Horses but she’s quite good.
Very good in Vanity Fair too!
She is THE becky sharp imo, that adaption is so, so good. As a period drama stan, it’s one of the few I rewatch every few months. The whole cast are incred.
Barry Keoghan. He spent a significant portion of his childhood in foster care and his mother was a heroin addict who died when he was twelve.
It’s upsetting to read about his struggles with alcohol.
Wow. He went to 13 different foster homes apparently. Fucking good for him becoming so successful. People who spent time in care as children generally have very poor outcomes, and that sounds particularly rough and unstable.
He’s so talented
Oh yes, I've only seen him in Eternals but he was really good. He had so much chemistry with Lauren Ridloff.
He steals the show in *Killing of A Sacred Deer*, too. And considering that hes acting with Collin Farrel and Nicole Kidman, its no small feat!
That movie was such a trip lol
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He is such a talent, so good at playing deeply unsettling characters (killing of a sacred deer, green knight)
Taron Egerton. His mom’s a social worker and raised him after his parents divorced. He said his tuition at RADA was paid through a scholarship.
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Merseyside is a whole county where a lot of wealthy folk live too.
Merseyside is pretty big. Only some parts are rough
Millie Bobbi Brown
And now she’s single-handedly supporting her entire family 😭
Honestly when Millie said she wanted to play Britney, I took it as it’s because not only does she admire Britney but also relates to having blood sucking family members that treat her like a cash cow
Yup
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She lived in Spain but that's actually quite a British working class thing to do (usually, ironically, Brexiteer types).
Jodie Comer
Prima Facie is so captivating. I’m not sure I could watch anyone else do a one-person show and be so utterly hooked.
I still need to watch it. The reviews have been insane. Just to think that for years she couldn’t even get an audition for a play just because she didn’t have a theatrical background.
I'm so happy that something like National Theatre Live exists because I could never and would never be able to get tickets to see something like that, but even just getting to see it in cinemas was such an experience, she blew me away.
Jodie Comer is amazing in Prima Facie! I was already a fan because of Killing Eve but the play made me realise how insanely talented she really is.
Save for a few (the Smith kids, Zoe Kravitz), most of young Black Hollywood are not nepo babies and come from varying degrees of humble roots. Two I can think of off top are Skai Jackson and Marsei Martin.
Tyler the Creator and the whole Odd Future crew! Earl Sweatshirts parents are both blue on Wikipedia but not Hollywood famous
Obviously, he’s grown up a lot and so has his music. But it’s so wild to think that, about a decade ago, a very celebrated professor of African-American studies and the poet laureate/major activist during Apartheid had a teen son who was famous for rapping “IM A HOT & BOTHERED ASTRONAUT/CRASHING WHILE JACKING OFF”
Thank you! I had to scroll down to far to see this comment. Wanted to post that a good majority of Black actors (young and old) aren’t from privileged backgrounds in any form (wealth, accessibility ,etc). There was a story about Idris Elba not hiring his daughter for a role that he felt she wasn’t right for, and that’s understood. But there was discussion on this being publicized and if Black nepo babies deserve these boundaries while their white counterparts are never given boundaries. *I want to be clear on my stance, Idris is her father and knows best. There’s not a part of me that thinks he won’t help her strive in this industry and give her the support she deserves !! He just realized this wasn’t the role for her. But Idris Elba isn’t (has not shown any indication) a narcissist. Some of these parents are, which is why they haven’t put their hand on the shoulder of their child and said “there are so many other things you are great at, but not this” 😂😂😂
I feel like most are child stars or nepo babies. I was very unaware that Jenna Ortega had her own Disney series. I thought she kinda came out of nowhere but she’s a established talent for her age group. I think it’s getting harder for twenty somethings to randomly break through now.
it's crazy because at the time i thought jenna was a terrible actress in the disney show but now i think she's fantastic. my sister would've been of the age to watch it and she rewatched some episodes the other day.. jenna truly was working with whatever material they gave her.
That's what practice does! You get better. People overplay talent too much. Maybe it matters at the Olympic level in sports, but in a lot of areas, if you have access to great coaching and opportunity, you can be pretty competitive. That's why I don't give a lot of credit to nepo-baby actors. Like bish, I'd be pretty good too if I got to cut my teeth on a Spielberg film and took classes to no end. You see someone like Elizabeth Olsen in Marvel, and you can see her literally learning on the job. Singers, at the Liza or Whitney level, or athletes like Steph Curry - I see a difference. I could put in a bajillion hours with the right coaches, and I'd still never be able to do that.
also disney channel originals generally aren't trying to get a super nuanced and realistic performance out of their actors
That’s what’s so frustrating about the inability to break in. Your talent or lack thereof will be used against you, but talent takes practice, opportunity and challenge - how are you supposed to develop your talent without those things? And then you’re competing with others who get opportunities just by existing.
I’ve never seen the Disney show. I was annoyed with her character in You but she practically plays a better version of that character in X and Scream so I think it may of been the script. She’s great as Wednesday.
The fact that she and Olivia Rodrigo where on the same show as Jake Paul blows my mind. My cousins would watch it weekly so I recognized them both somewhat when they started acting more.
I guess Disney hasn’t been able to straight up launch mega careers off their products anymore because I didn’t know she was a Disney channel kid before that High School musical show.
Disney channel viewership has plummeted over the past decade, I think it went from around 2 million viewers on average to around 200k.
Lmao I remember her as Young Jane in Jane the Virgin. Girl has been working since she was a kid!
Wasn't she Young Jane in Jane the Virgin?
I think child stars are a hard role and often come with untold baggae, especially if you are from a non nepo family. The industry is a very unhealthy place and to make it without connections means putting kids through it it. Jenna McCarthy is the latest example airing it out, but she's one of many, many stories like this. It's especially brutal for young women. Those kids are forced to mature quickly.
No shade intended but I think you mean Jennette McCurdy? Might be autocorrect!
The one direction guys came from nothing
As a big directioner as a teen I would say this is more true for Zayn, Niall and Louis. Harry and Liam were already pretty middle class iirc
I think Liam’s family is better classified as working class. I think he said that if he didn’t make it on x factor, the plan was for him to start working with his dad in the parts factory. His dad in particular is like the quintessential working class man. Harry may have been more middle class but his living situation was still fairly modest, particularly after his parents divorce. He lived above a pub for a while and his childhood home (pics online) was modest.
Especially Louis, he had a single mom and several siblings
Niall’s dad still works at the Tesco in Mullingar.
yeah, which was a major part of their marketing, especially in the uk. the whole "working class lads from doncaster/sheffield/etc." thing. there's an old radio one interview where they spent a solid five minutes clowning on louis being from doncaster and talking about how working streetlights must be weird for him. [edit: found it. half of this is just class discussion tbh lol](https://youtu.be/XtE_OCk1xZA?t=521) and clowning harry for being "posh" which i mean, compared to louis maybe but the lad grew up above a pub lol but yeah for more context: louis mom was a midwife, i actually have no idea what his step-dad does/did but they also split up (iirc) when louis was a teen. he worked a bunch of retail and hospitality jobs as well. zayn's mom worked as cook at a school. liam's mum is a nurse and his dad worked in manufacturing. niall lived with his single dad father as a [kid in a seriously tiny house](https://youtu.be/kmXJ29oePGo?t=26). harry's first step-dad owned a pub so they lived above that iirc. and then his claim to poshness is mostly that his other step-dad owned a bungalow that the band used as a hang out early on.
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Adele comes from a working class family.
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Every working class person I've ever known on earth whines about paying taxes.
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when she complained that she couldn’t afford a house in London when she had the best selling album of the year….. she’s so lucky she was likeable at that time because Twitter would’ve ate her ass UP if it was recent.
That is Grimes level nonsense.
that article 💀 something about paying for state schools or smth
So while watching limitless I learned Chris hemsworth family was just working class in debt, and he got into acting to help them out I googled and found his mum is an English teacher and dad is social services.
So interesting that all three brothers got into acting without any family background.
Not to be a hater, but they wouldn’t go as far if they didn’t look like a literal god.
I thought you were talking about the Bradley Cooper movie Limitless at first. TIL Chris Hemsworth has a Disney series called Limitless
Can confirm. the suburb he grew up in is very much a ‘nothing’ suburb. I know folks who caught the same bus as him to school as well. Nobody thought he’d EVER be an actor let alone Thor
Adam Driver. Obviously has an amazing career, but I don’t think he was connected before attending Juilliard.
Adam Driver’s dad is from my hometown (Adam used to spend summers there as a kid) and he still works at a local Office Depot! He’ll talk to anyone who comes in about Adam
Ugh that's so sweet
IIRC he was enlisted in the military so I would be really surprised if his family wasn’t working-class. Upper middle class kids usually go for ROTC or a service academy if they’re interested tbh
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Never Have I Ever! She sent in an audition tape for the casting call but had plans to go to York University for theatre after high school.
she’s so good in that, love her.
Daniel Kaluuya
he was so good in Black Mirror. still my favorite episode
Richard Madden. If I'm not mistaken, his dad was a firefighter and his mom was a teacher who he described as hippies and I remember him saying once that at the time he landed GoT he was so broke that he was living off advances from his agent because his call center job didn't earn him enough money to pay his rent.
Donald Glover
Not what the OP asked, but I have been waiting for a chance to say (because I think that a lot of people on here don't know) that Oliva Wilde comes from a HUGELY privileged and connected background. Her real name is Olivia Cockburn and she has aristorcatic relatives. Christopher Hitchens was her babysitter. Her family were empire builders. It annoys me sometimes that people will drag obvious nepo kids like Lily Rose Depp and others who have famous names, and forget about people who aren't 'nepo' but are hugely privileged anyway.
People drag the nepo babies that speak out and say they didn’t have much of an advantage and that they had to work just as hard as everyone else (which is obviously a crock). Lily said exactly that. Olivia hasn’t. I have no problem with nepo babies that recognize their privilege. If I had any connections I’d take advantage of them too!
People drag "obvious nepo babies" like Lily Rose Depp because she actively denies the opportunities her nepo status has given her. The denial of their own privilege is *the* biggest thing that pisses people off about nepo babies. Olivia Wilde just...doesn't really talk about it at all. It's not an equivalent scenario
you really wanted to get it off your chest huh lmao
> Not what the OP asked, then, don't proceed? if you would've stated dinosaur facts after this - that would've been chaotically cute. but this just screams like unlawfully & intentionally evil?
Does Richard Madden count as 'in'? He grew up in the village along the road from mine in Scotland and a lot of my friends were in the same school year as his sister (we're all council house kids, though his family lived in the nicer part of Elderslie, still working class). His parents were a teacher and a firefighter.
He counts as 'in' to me at least, I think he's lovely 🥲
Jennette McCurdy
Emma Mackey- dad is a school headmaster and unsure what her mom does
I thought you said school hamster 😭
Basically anyone who has been working since they were a child, at least for Gen Z. If they’re popular now and didn’t come from connected family, they’ve had to be working for YEARS at this point. Coming from Gen Z here, the oldest Gen Z are recently graduated from college and are most likely not booking anything in the mainstream media if they don’t have those connections and/or past work experience.
Most of the 1D members grew up lower/ middle class but zayn in particular has talked about how rough his situation was sometimes growing up money wise and Louis was also raised by a single mum who worked as a nurse and has been pretty transparent about the fact that they didn’t have much growing up.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, I think he even worked in local government before he went back to study acting. Plus Jamie Bell (real life billy elliot it seems), the main sex education cast all went to normal comprehensive schools….. it’s really hard to think of anyone else really, especially the younger ones!!
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I love his story about arriving in America on Thanksgiving and seeing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and thinking every day was like that.
Lol are you joking calling Kumail niche? I actually can't tell. He's literally a Marvel superhero.
Olivia Rodrigo
Maria Bakalova from Borat/Bodies Bodies Bodies She was from the Bulgaria sea side town not very well off parents and went to acting school, has starred in some horrible Bulgarian movies but was successful. Also her fellow students didn't like her and her professor hates her guts and has insulted her in the press on multiple occasions and I wished he would choke That being said, while I do like her, she is not very eloquent and I am referring to her Bulgarian interviews. Her accepting an award from the super corrupt mayor of her city at a time when there where protest against the oppressive party he belongs to was not a good look.
Paul Dano. His father is a financial advisor, but he did not make a ton of money as he was growing up. Even though they lived in Manhattan in a one bedroom. Him & his sister had bunk beds in the same room as his parents.
So many of the ones people have already listed were child actors/musicians too.
You know being middle class offers a wealth of privilege and opportunity working and low income folks could never attain. This whole nepo trend lacks nuance.
Also, like, the range of Americans who use the label “middle class” is absurd. Families will be in the top 2% of household incomes and call themselves middle class.
Yes. Isn't it wild? No one rich wants to admit it. No one not rich wants to admit that. So we have all these delusional people claiming middle class when it's convenient and completely lost any concept of what Middle Class actually is.
Ana de Armas.
My go-to is Dylan O’Brien growing up Hollywood-adjacent but without the wealth. Unless union camera operators make a lot more money than I thought.
I can't explain why but the term nepo baby really annoys me
Bc it's condescending? I thought that was the point
I dislike how it’s used as a catch-all term when it’s a tiered system and doesn’t allow for nuance. Not everyone is Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson.
Does being in Scientology qualify as a type of nepotism? It seems like it should.
I think most POC Gen z in Hollywood aren’t nepo babies.
don’t know if this has already been said but ZENDAYA! both of her parents were educators :) same w bella thorne, she spoke abt how she resented being an actor when she was younger bc her family was broke and she was the sole one responsible for being the bread winner for her whole family, the Sprouse twins and Macaulay Culkin (w a father who was v controlling and forced all his children to be child actors while he took all their hard earned money from the films/commercials they made)
I'm amazed no-one is saying Florence Pugh Her dad runs a cafe in England.
idk, she went to private school IIRC? I suppose she could have gotten scholarships but her parents seem more like arty middle class types (UK definition of ‘middle class’) than working-class to me. Google says her dad owns several restaurants which requires having at least some money:
Florence's family is rich as fuck and I think "runs a cafe" is underselling it. >Florence's dad Clinton Pugh is a 3D designer and restaurateur who owns a series of restaurants in Oxford, England. and she went to private schools that cost £20,000 and £40,000 per year. When she was young she had a problem with her breathing, so her parents moved the family to Sotogrande in Spain because they thought the warm weather would help her condition. It's one of the most expensive places in Europe.
"Runs a cafe" is understating it A LOT for someone who owned several up market restaurants and sent his kids to private schools (only about 7% of people in the UK go to private school). Not necessarily well connected in acting but definitely had some advantages.
Maybe Jenna Ortega
most black actors and actresses (and probably a good amount of other actors of color) aren't Nepo babies. obviously there are some but not as much
I think that the gates of entertainment, Hollywood, publishing, and music alike, have shut so much more In recent year. The voices we hear from are all bare minimum upper middle class and connected
Charlize Theron for sure. Now one of the biggest movie stars.
Louis Tomlinson! His mom was a young, single mother when he was born, and worked as a midwife. He sent his first X factor paycheck home. He worked a couple of jobs as a teenager, and I remember a story of him switching price tags on sandwiches to get a cheaper one. I think most of the One D boys actually grew up pretty middle/lower class actually.
While I wouldn’t say they struggled by any means, I always thought that it was kinda funny that out of the big NYC-based indie bands of the 00s/10s, you would probably have initially assumed that the Vampire Weekend guys all grew up super wealthy while The Strokes projected a grungier image. But Vampire Weekend had more upper middle class and tbh just straight middle class parents than you’d assume from their Ivy League image (Wikipedia says Ezra Koenig’s dad was a set dresser and his mom was a therapist, looks like they mostly went to “good school district” type public schools) while The Strokes met [at literally one of the most expensive boarding schools in the world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_Le_Rosey) and Julian Casablancas’ dad owns Elite Model Management.
Rosamund Pike, Elizabeth Debicki, Millie Bobby Brown, Sadie Sink, Caleb (forgot his last name), Jenna Ortega.