It’s a system that has operated in the same way for many years, buoyed by the baseless claim that “black movies don’t travel”, and that few will show up outside of America for non-white names who aren’t Will Smith or Denzel Washington. In effect it is movie stardom through the backdoor, scoring hits and making money despite lack of critical acclaim, or the kinds of press tours that would typically generate greater audience awareness (“They give us a lower budget, and we take that budget and make magic and break all kinds of records,” Henson told the Hollywood Reporter earlier this year.) Many don’t even reach British shores, with films such as The Perfect Guy and When the Bough Breaks bypassing cinemas entirely. Just ask Halle Berry, who has long kept her career afloat via successful B-movies like The Call and Kidnap, and who is currently developing a remake of the Eighties thriller Jagged Edge. Such optics are one of the major reasons actresses of colour so often gravitate towards B-movies – with their low budgets and relatively easy profit-making ability, they’re films with little career downside. I know what I left on film and the people connect every time. So as long as I’m doing my job, you can’t take anything away from me. They can hate a film, but they love my work or I saved it or I’m the reason the film even did what it did. But what I love about critics is they never trash me. “I can’t be mad at ,” Henson told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year, when asked about the dire notices for Proud Mary. But they’re incredible popcorn fare, brought to life by actresses rarely called upon to anchor their own films, and who therefore give their all, regardless of the hacky dialogue or threadbare plotting. “I certainly want to make content for a broader audience, but I never lost an eye for making sure I hit the bull’s-eye with a niche.”Ĭreatively-speaking, few of these B-movies are explicitly good, often relying on the same bag of tricks that have dominated this genre since Sharon Stone stabbed her lover with an ice pick in Basic Instinct. “I realised that if you make something for an audience, and it’s received well by that audience, it doesn’t really matter what other people feel about it,” Packer told the Los Angeles Times last year. But in a post- Girls Trip world, studios are beginning to wake up, no longer able to deny the money-making potential of actresses of colour previously left to languish on the cinematic fringes.įriday saw the release of Breaking In, a glossy home invasion thriller resting single-handedly on the shoulders of Gabrielle Union, an actress best known for roles in Nineties teen classics like Bring It On and 10 Things I Hate About You, but who over the past two decades has become Black Hollywood royalty. Disappointingly, they rarely receive theatrical releases in the UK. While they vary in quality, the B-movie has become one of the few genres to capitalise on black talent with vast if largely untapped fanbases, providing a safe haven for actresses eager for a quick, profitable hit. But there is one space that has proven rewarding to black actresses: the B-movie thriller. Much has been written about the death of the movie star, with franchises and superhero movies swallowing up the kind of actor-driven vehicles that once turned actors like Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks into instant box office gold.įor actresses of colour, those not named Viola or Lupita, leading roles in major studio films have become even more scarce.
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