Edition 51: In Twenty Years
Sometimes you have to wonder who of the current young stars will have long careers; who are the stars that will still be around in twenty years or so. I would have to point out that it’s something that is impossible to predict, you can’t know what will be popular in twenty years and what won’t. Who knows whether things like TV or movies will still be a major thing, it’s even hard to predict how things will be in a year. Yet I’m going to say who of the current generation of under eighteen female celebrities will have a long career and will be still be big names in 2028. It’s mainly based on gut feeling about their talents, so it’s just my opinion and nothing more.
The hard thing about it is also that a lot of actresses and singers don’t have their breakthrough until at a later age, being a child or teen star isn’t a guarantee to being successful in the future. Someone who’s a complete nobody now can be the big thing in twenty years time, that really is something that is impossible to predict. That’s why I’m sticking to the teen stars that are the big thing right now, I’ll only name the people I’m really confident in that they will make it. From the people that are usually featured on this site I can only think of two though.
I addressed the same issue a little over a year ago, my main case back then was that Sofia Vassilieva would make it big. That hasn’t happened yet and now makes me believe even more that she’ll become a big thing one day. At the start of the last season of Medium I suspected that she would get a bigger part in the show. Looking at the end of season 3 and beginning of season 4 it really seemed to go that way but the further along they got in season 4 her role got smaller again. It might be a little setback for her career but it’s not that bad a thing.
Next year of course My Sisters Keeper will be released which will be her first major movie, even though she’s only in that movie because Dakota Fanning dropped out. Though it wouldn’t be for the first time that a change in actors is beneficial to a movie. It just is her biggest project to date though, so far it has only been TV and independent movies. I’m not saying that this will be her big breakthrough role but she continues to work with talented people and has a lot of opportunity to learn without being bothered by all the media attention. I would even say that her performance in Day Zero was one of the stronger ones in the movie, her interaction with Jon Bernthal in the movie was quite impressive.
So why will she make it? Yes she can already act at age fifteen and still has plenty of time to learn the skills of the trade. I just have a feeling about her (no, no inappropriate ones) though I’m hardly the only one. She’s been getting quite positive feedback as far as I can tell and she’s being tempted to leave Medium. I don’t think she should though, I think season five will be the last season of Medium and it’s a safe place to be. It’s not the kind of role that will stick to her the rest of the life, there are some experienced actors on that show and it also gets good guest stars at times. She can still learn a lot on that show, it doesn’t take up that much of her time that she can’t do any movies on the side.
In short she just strikes me as someone extremely talented and who isn’t rushing into things and doesn’t really care about the fame. I think she’ll slowly develop in a force to reckoned with and that in twenty years she’ll indeed be one of the big names in Hollywood.
Now to my second case for which certain people will mock me; I’m certain of it. I think that Miley Cyrus will have a long career ahead of her, I always had my doubts about her seeing the Hannah Montana character might get stuck to her forever. In recent months though I think she’ll actually manage to get rid of Hannah Montana once she leaves the show. I’m not sure whether she’ll be able to do this as far as acting is concerned but in music I am.
As far as her acting is concerned there’s still a much to do there, though right now all we have seen of her acting is thirty seconds in Big Fish and two seasons of Hannah Montana. Sitcoms aren’t exactly a good guide to whether someone is a good actor or not, that’s just something she’ll have to discover in the future. Maybe the Hannah Montana movie will be a first sign, her next movie coming out will be Bolt which is animated so not really a good indicator on whether she can really act or not.
In music it’s a different story, in the recent months leading up to her new album she has convinced me that she has a long time to go in the music business. Of course I haven’t heard the full album yet but the first songs are promising. That however is not what convinced me, it’s small things she says in interviews, things she does on stage. When you see Miley performing on stage you see someone who’s passionate about what she’s doing. She just loves to do music, with her it’s not just not a fun thing or just a way to make money like it is to a lot of the younger singers.
Miley even showed up at a small music festival in Franklin Tennessee this week and got on stage with Jeffrey Steele. You’ll have a hard time finding any multi-platinum singer getting on a stage that small. She’s just up there having fun singing Hollywood Girl, she’s just being herself and not the big star. People always say about Miley that she’s still a normal girl with a level head, despite her fame and success. Things like that just prove it though, she’s not letting the fame go to her head and isn’t torn down by negative press. Though she has stated in Billboard magazine the whole Vanity Fair thing did hurt her, she won’t let that stop her though.
Miley’s main strength in music of course is that she is involved in the entire process; no offense to her label but most artists on Hollywood Records aren’t musicians (the better known ones anyway, I won’t say anything negative about Breaking Benjamin or Evan’s Blue). They just show up at a recording studio and record the songs the label selected for them. Miley writes almost all of her songs (except for one or two covers on her albums) and also writes part of the music. There are very few people that age that can do that and actually do it. Miley has actually stated that she wants to learn at least one of every family of instruments. So far she’s at guitar, piano and drums but she doesn’t plan on stopping there. I don’t expect her to do an album where 90% of the music comes out of a computer.
Miley is just in it for the long run and people are starting to realize it. You can even tell by how she’s being announced when she goes on any talkshow, in the beginning she was always announced as the star of Hannah Montana. Now she’ s just being introduced as Miley Cyrus, people have already started to see that she isn’t Hannah Montana which is something I didn’t expect would happen so quickly. She’s also not satisfied with just doing what she is successful at, she is developing her music and constantly looking for new things. That’s the most important part for a musician to stay successful for a long period of time, not doing the same thing over and over again. That’s what makes me believe that Miley will still be around twenty years from now.
Of course there are other people which I could be discussing; AnnaSophia robb, Emily Osment and Abigail Breslin also have a good shot at being around for a while but I’m not convinced by them yet. It’s also impossible to predict what will really happen in the next twenty years, life can do funny things to people. We’ve seen people disappear from the spotlight without knowing why, even if they had a booming career. The great thing about an article like this is that no one can actually prove me wrong now. We won’t know if I’m right or not for another twenty years.
