Hollywood A-listers are America"s stately family Film The Guardian

America"s kingship ... Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie arrive at the 81st Academy Awards. Photograph: Dan MacMedan/WireImage

Things were seeking flattering dour here in Tarrytown, New York, behind in January. Stores were shutting left and right, people were losing their homes, nobody could find work, and out in the travel it was colder than a penguin"s flippers. Truly, this was the winter of the discontent. And afterwards Keanu came to town.

Keanu Reeves, the initial masculine movie star I ever interviewed, was in locale to have a humerous entertainment called Henry"s Crime, that he both constructed and starred in. It was shot in a musty 19th-century song gymnasium that sits right in behind of my bureau building. The song gymnasium has been used in drive-in theatre as sundry as The Good Shepherd, The Preacher"s Wife and The Purple Rose of Cairo, partly since it is photogenic and partly since it lies inside of a 25-mile radius of New York City, so movie producers don"t have to compensate the organisation additional travelling expenses. The fire lasted 3 weeks: 3 weeks of perfect tranquillity for residents of the community. Before Keanu, all was darkness. After Keanu, all was light.

Oh yes, Keanu"s revisit was a phenomenally fortifying event, essentially since he done himself so very, unequivocally available. He was in the grocery store, the preference store, the delicatessen, regularly some-more than happy to pointer an designation or have his design taken with a little prodigiously homely local. He was in the post office, station in line only similar to everyone else, as if he were not in actuality the radiant star of The Matrix, Point Break, Speed, My Own Private Idaho on vacation a pleasing but non-luminous suburb. Here was a certifiable immortal, a star of theatre and screen, a fable in his own time and a rather tasteful one, nonetheless for the 3 weeks he was here, he walked between us, violation bread with the usual man, sipping coffee with the hoi polloi, light the spirits. He additionally outlayed about $170,000 on the shoot. He done people so happy that, for a whilst there, I was disturbed that on the day he left they competence have to close the Tappan Zee Bridge, to forestall despondent locals from jumping in to that river. He done that majority of an impression.

Keanu"s revisit to Tarrytown, and the public"s greeting to that visit, drives home an critical point. Movie stars are the closest thing Americans have to royalty. Even if, as in the box of Keanu Reeves, the royals have drifted down from Canada. Movie stars are objects of veneration, indebtedness and envy, creatures that live a little distorted hades that is anchored in reality, but is not utterly in it. It is a universe that the rest of us might glimpse, but can never unequivocally be a piece of. This is essentially since we are not generally good-looking, short on talent, and in any case, not in in connections.

Movie stars, similar to accurate royals, assimilate their purpose in society. They move fever in to the lives, however briefly, and in lapse we move income in to their lives. Lots and lots and lots of money. Mostly, they move fever in to the lives by their efforts on screen, but sometimes, as in the box of Keanu Reeves, they physically have the clouds go away. They are a critical piece of every day hold up in America, and everyone knows it. When they crop up on the runner at the Oscars, it is as if Hera, Zeus and Athena have wafted down from Mount Olympus.

Veneration of movie stars, in theory, flies in the face of America"s tightly hold ideology about itself. Americans reflexively separate on their politicians, depreciate their captains of industry, flout athletes as marred prima donnas who wouldn"t have it by the initial day on the open line, gibe eremite leaders and snarl at intellectuals. They additionally have a tough time receiving stone stars seriously, generally when they open their mouths about politics. Even when a domestic figure approaches boundless status, as Barack Obama did in 2008, this aura of beatification fast vaporises, since politicians are hired to concede problems, and once it becomes strong that they can"t concede the problems – at slightest not overnight – nobody cares how cool they are.

Americans, customarily creation a illusion out of the approved impulse, will go out of their approach to show that they are still loners and mavericks, ardent heirs to the host who threw all that British tea in to Boston gulf behind in 1775. They demand that they will not obeisance to Washington, Wall Street or the media. They will not cavern in to Big Brother. They will not lay down for The Man. But as shortly as a movie star enters the room, they go all diseased in the knees and begin purgation similar to schoolchildren.

This might be since low down inside, Americans know the score. The normal American, no make a difference how dumb, no make a difference how ugly, no make a difference how bereft of charisma, indeed believes that if things had damaged right, he as well could have been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the Most Valuable Player in the Superbowl, or Muhammad Ali, or might be even Paul McCartney. But not for a notation does he ever divert the attention himself in to meditative that he could be Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. Much less Angelina Jolie. As Clint Eastwood once voiced it: "A man"s gotta know his limitations." Women, too.

Movie stars in this clarity have an astray value over politicians and athletes and stone stars. They can age gracefully, they are not approaching to do any of society"s complicated lifting, and they are roughly regularly placed in situations that they can control, situations that on all sides them in the majority tasteful light. They are just similar to Britain"s royals. They exist to have their cinema taken. They are meant to be seen and not heard. They are wholly ornamental. (This is something Prince Charles might not entirely understand.)

People infrequently contend that the Kennedy family are royalty, but that is not true. Literally half the nation – the Republicans – depreciate the Kennedys and all that they mount for. And when I contend despise, I meant despise. Some people might instruct the royals would go away. But by and large people don"t hatred them. This is not loyal of the Kennedys. To this day, when rightwingers assemble, their cars are ornate with fender stickers reminding people that Ted Kennedy once authorised a immature lady to drown at the bottom of a lake in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. That would never occur to Russell Crowe, no make a difference how most road house table office he punched out.

Movie stars suffer an additional outrageous value over luminaries in alternative fields. Political figures, no make a difference what their strange appeal, in the future go out of fashion. They destroy to move their promises to fruition. They lie. They concede their principles. They turn joyless reminders of emptied dreams, promises that were not kept. And afterwards they are forgotten.

Movie stars, by contrast, have an interest that stretches opposite celebration lines, secular lines, eremite lines, secular lines. This is partly since they are so unequivocally glamorous, but additionally since the unequivocally work they do keeps them on top of the fray. The open has roughly zero but good feelings about movie stars, since they bond us with a time and a place when we were happy. Americans are regularly happy on Oscar night; even if this year"s movies were zero special, last year"s movies were great. The stage toward the finish of the Oscars when the enormous photographs of not long ago defunct movie stars crop up on the radio shade is roughly biblical in proportion. Like the royals, movie stars exist in a kind of fairyland that they spasmodic concede the open to counterpart into, but essentially visiting. Like the royals, you cannot stop being a star once you are a movie star. The light from your star might be resigned or eclipsed but it can never be entirely extinguished. Just see at Mickey Rourke.

Like the royals, movie stars lead lives the rest of cannot suppose leading. They are rich, glamorous, powerful, live illusory homes and do not have to be concerned about their mortgages or removing their kids in to the most appropriate schools. They have unequivocally good cars, good clothes, fanciful teeth. Like the royals, they bleed an infrequently weakling greeting from typical mortals. Perhaps this is since the normal chairman knows that he has no possibility at achieving enduring fame so he"d improved suffer the association of the immortals whilst they"re there. Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain. And celluloid heroes never unequivocally die.