Warren Beatty's star appeal asks the question if life imitates art or is art imitating life, especially with the parallels between the film Shampoo and his real life as a Hollywood Lothario. In Stars, Dyer discusses performance techniques and two main acting concepts: 1. acting from the inside out (the method) or from the 2. outside in (studying subjects). Beatty's acting comes out of "Method" acting. Beatty dated many of his female costars. Just like George "dated" many of his clients over the years in the film. It's hard to not see that as the article states, George is Warren. He would almost have to be for the "the method" to work.
In the article, Beatty is said to be equally famous for bedding Hollywood beauties as well as not talking about his sexual/personal life in interviews. It is his personal life the fuels his star persona. Because he didn't want to talk about his sexual prowess, it is interesting that he wrote the screenplay and stars in the film Shampoo, that is all about an up-and-comer using sex to get him ahead. It's as if Beatty is telling us how he really feels about sex, love and money, under the guise of a "film." Later in his career, when he becomes more famous for his political actions, he writes another film titled Bullworth, about a politician who hires his own assassin, but then decides he wants to live. In the meantime he explains why racism and class differences still exist. Again, Beatty uses a film to say what he won't say about his life and his thoughts in interviews.
Shampoo, feels like we're Warren Beatty's life, if he happened to be a poor hairstylist because we gather that the way Beatty thinks and feels is how George thinks and feels. When George falls in love, but loses the girl in the end, it's as if it's Beatty telling the world, "yes I'm promiscuous but that's only because I haven't found love, and when I did find it, she left." About which woman he is referring to in his real life, we don't know. If Beatty's star persona took another turn, I believe Beatty would write another semi-autobiographical film telling us how he really feels even though he has no comment in the interview.
Do some stars want to typecast themselves as a way to establish a star persona?
Do stars look for roles that are semi-autobiographical, to tell us something about their personal lives that they can't say in interviews?
How does a star change his persona?
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SUPPLEMENTAL POST #3
I think it's so interesting that you mentioned Bullworth in your post. I was also going to make a connection there, but in a completely different way, so your assertion took me completely by surprise.
I guess the more obvious parallel to make between Beatty's roles in Bullworth and Shampoo, which was what I had meant to write on, has to also do with the message that he seems to be trying to put forth in both films. In addition to, yeah probably, using the films as vehicles to express what he may not want to comment on in an interview, he also seems to advocate sex as an answer to everything.
In Shampoo, he willingly goes along with having sex with all these women, almost as a way to pacify them or make their lives better or something. In Bullworth, he claims that the best solution to ending the racial and class differences that are pulling parts of this country apart is for - brace yourself - everyone to just have sex with each other until we're all the same color.
Once again, sex is the answer.
One can't help but wonder if such a statement is actually Beatty's own personal philosophy regarding the cause of racial tension, or if the advocation of something so outrageous was merely designed to fit in with the "sex symbol" formula he had owned years before.
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