"Since Star Wars, that film's success led to bigger budgets, more hardware, that the great movies like the ones I did, which were studio movies, are now independent movies. They range from half a million to several million, and a lot of those have very interesting roles"
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Star Wars is the asteroid in Dunaway's story: not just a blockbuster, but the moment Hollywood decided spectacle could be the business model, not the occasional windfall. Her point lands because she speaks from the vanishing middle of the industry, when a studio picture could still be an adult drama with star power, sharp writing, and psychological risk - the kind of films that built (and were built by) actors like her. She isn't dunking on sci-fi so much as naming the structural pivot: money and attention got rerouted toward "hardware" - effects, franchisable worlds, opening-weekend scale.
The subtext is personal, almost elegiac. Dunaway's stardom was forged in an era when studios financed auteur-driven stories that treated actors as the primary technology. When she says "the great movies like the ones I did...are now independent movies", she's marking a cultural demotion: serious, character-led films didn't disappear, they were pushed to the margins, forced to survive on smaller budgets and prestige economics.
There's also a sly assertion of relevance. In the same breath that she mourns the industry's shift, she notes that indies "have very interesting roles". Translation: the work she values - complex women, moral ambiguity, danger - is still available, just not where Hollywood's money used to be. It's an actor's diagnosis of an ecosystem: the center got louder and shinier, while the best parts migrated to the edges, where creativity is cheaper and, sometimes, freer.
The subtext is personal, almost elegiac. Dunaway's stardom was forged in an era when studios financed auteur-driven stories that treated actors as the primary technology. When she says "the great movies like the ones I did...are now independent movies", she's marking a cultural demotion: serious, character-led films didn't disappear, they were pushed to the margins, forced to survive on smaller budgets and prestige economics.
There's also a sly assertion of relevance. In the same breath that she mourns the industry's shift, she notes that indies "have very interesting roles". Translation: the work she values - complex women, moral ambiguity, danger - is still available, just not where Hollywood's money used to be. It's an actor's diagnosis of an ecosystem: the center got louder and shinier, while the best parts migrated to the edges, where creativity is cheaper and, sometimes, freer.
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| Topic | Movie |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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