‘Movie Stars’ are people who can launch a movie based on s tar power, charisma or looks, regardless of actual acting ability. They are the type of characters where you will see them playing a version of themselves. Notable examples of pure ‘Movie Stars’ include people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Both have ‘low to average’ acting ability, but that doesn’t stop them from launching a $100 million movie every day of the week.
‘Actors’, on the other hand, are people who succeed primarily on the basis of their acting ability and seriousness, selling a movie based on their ability to play a role rather than their personal charisma. Daniel Day Lewis and Christian Bale fall into this category.
In fact, very few actors can separate the two genres clearly, you often need a little bit of both to be truly successful, but almost everyone is stronger in one genre than the other. Sylvester Stallone is capable of some great acting, but his career is very much in the ‘movie star’ category. Adrian Brody is a phenomenal actor, but to truly become ‘A-List’, he had to take on more ‘Movie Star’ roles.
This is a role where Tom Cruise is almost alone – while Stallone is clearly a better movie star than an actor, and Brody is clearly a better actor than a movie star, Tom Cruise is equally good at both.
Tom Cruise is probably the greatest movie star of all time, having starred in some of the biggest blockbusters ever, including the Mission: Impossible series and Top Gun. If you ignore the MCU’s statistical anomaly (which artificially inflates the total gross of actors who are lower grossing because they appear as a small part of an MCU franchise), Tom Cruise is the highest-grossing actor of all time, with his films grossing a combined $11.5 billion. There’s literally no actor on earth you can trust to sell your movie more than Tom Cruise.”