Who are the biggest movie stars today?

I think it depends on what your definition of "movie star" is. If it's top box office dollars, which seems to be the criteria for most of the above posts, that's been pretty well diagnosed.

I just have a problem with Hart or McCarthy as a "movie star". Funny as hell, oh yeah, no doubt.

For me that term brings to mind Cary Grant or Aubrey Hepburn, people of that ilk. In those terms, I'd submit Clooney, DiCaprio, Pitt, maybe Downey. On the female side, Jolie, ScarJo, and though it's early, maybe Lawrence. She has come very far very fast, both in terms of the films she's in and the way she handles stardom. While she's done the big money franchise movies in X-Men and Hunger Games, she really does have legit acting chops. Go back and watch "Winter's Bone", she was great in a very unglamorous, non-franchise role. That was 2010 - she's taken off like very few I know of since.

 

Fair enough. Not a movie I would have gone to see, but I do recall that title now. But what has she done for us lately?

 

No Strings Attached and the Thor movies combined to make more than $450,000,000.

 

This shows my age, but on the female side I would add the best "living" actress: Meryl Streep. She might not have the box-office appeal of many but she certainly fits in with biggest "star."

If you went old-school couple, Streep and John Cazale. He made five movies, all nominated for best picture before dying of cancer at age 42. He finished filming The Deer Hunter shortly before his death. While not a "star" in the DiCaprio or Clooney sense, he certainly had memorable roles as Fredo Corleone in The Godfathers, Stosh in The Deer Hunter and Sal in Dog Day Afternoon.

Kind of a joke to include McCarthy and Hart (even though I do like both) in the same category of "star" as Streep and Cazale. I think you need to add Jamie Foxx, Matt Damon and Will Smith to the male category of big stars as well.

 

Totally depends on your definition of "star."

Cazale, while a superb actor, never carried a movie.

 

Didn't I say he had memorable roles, much more so than most of today's actors. Imagine what he might have done had he not died while still pretty much in prime acting age.

 

He would have had several more memorable supporting roles. Still never would have become a "star" not that there's any crime in that.