This is a curious phenomenon that I've noticed a number of times over the years. Briefly, it goes something like this:
- Someone wants to be an artist of some sort.
- They get a big break and are part of a big success.
- It's not enough for them, or they think they are above it in some way, so they spurn it and either leave or quit.
- They never go on to do anything as famous or popular afterward.
The phenomenon could be called The Dan Stevens Effect. Wikipedia says of Stevens:
In 2010, Stevens got his biggest break when he was cast as Matthew Crawley in the ITV series Downton Abbey, created and written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes. The series went on to be a global sensation and has been nominated for several Emmy, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards since its debut. The central love story of Matthew Crawley and his distant cousin, Lady Mary Crawley, played by Michelle Dockery, was enormously popular. Determined to ruin* his career, Stevens chose to leave the series after finishing the third season and the Christmas Special in 2012. His exit caused a huge uproar with fans, who notably took to Twitter and other social media sites to express their anger at the character's death. Fellowes later explained that Stevens did not give sufficient notice for a less drastic departure.
*Okay, actually Wikipedia says "move on with."
I should explain, for those of you unfamiliar with the British prime-time soap opera costume drama, that Stevens' character had to be abruptly killed off in an automobile accident...which of course also prevented his return in the various lucrative reunion movies either released or planned. Since leaving his biggest success he has "gone on" to do such things as: play a supporting part in Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, a movie that earned a big $5.2 million at the box office; do a lot of voice-over acting; and play a robot in the German-language science fiction romance I'm Your Man.
I would have milked Downton a bit longer, personally. And not ruined the plotline for millions of fans, what about them?
Chevy Chase left Saturday Night Live after just one season. Sally Kellerman, who played "Hot Lips Houlihan" in the original movie of M*A*S*H, turned down the role in the television series, to her later regret. Neil Young felt his huge hit Harvest, the best-selling album of 1972 in the USA, was "middle of the road"—he said he was afraid of becoming John Denver—so he famously "headed for the ditch."** Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a "love-hate" relationship with his Sherlock Holmes stories, considering them to be lowbrow entertainments; when he first entertained the idea of killing the fictional character off, his own mother said, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!" He also raised his prices dramatically to discourage new commissions, hoping to "kill" Sherlock that way; but he found the magazines paid his prices anyway, helping to make him one of the highest paid writers of his day.
Arthur Conan Doyle, who considered his greatest literary
accomplishment to have been the 14th-century historical
novel The White Company. Not quite.
Then again, the reason The Hound of the Baskervilles is the best-known Sherlock Holmes story is that it was a reprise that brought the famous character back after a long absence.
Whenever I think of this idea, it brings to mind the old-timey barn-dance saying, "You gotta dance with who brung ya." Sometimes you just have to be who you are, do what you can do, and give the people what they want. Luck is fickle.
Mike
**I do have to admit I like the ditch trilogy better than Harvest. Do kids today know who Neil Young is? I wouldn't be surprised if they don't.
Book o' the Week
Jay Maisel: Light, Color, Gesture. This was suggested by Moose. I got to meet Jay Maisel once. Everybody should meet him in his books, if they haven't already. Might help; cannot hurt. Jay's is some of the most positive, hopeful, and generous picture-taking advice you'll find.
This book link is a portal to Amazon.
B&H is the place to buy
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Kevin Crosado: "I've heard of Neil Young. I bought one of his CDs from a discount bin at the local big-box store. It was defective, so I took it back for a refund. Never bothered about a replacement."
Mike replies: Well, there are more modern ways to go about getting a taste, you know. Here are a few favorites:
Change Your Mind
Pardon My Heart
L.A.
Motion Pictures
Fountainbleu
Razor Love
If you need more, I've got about 150 bootlegs in the barn.
Bill Tyler: "Having read both Conan Doyle's The White Company and all the Holmes stories, I can confidently say that the worst of Holmes is better than the best of The White Company."
Zyni Moë: "You confuse two things.
"Thing 1: person has some initial success; head grows enormously big, think this success is too little / too lowbrow for them; walks away from that success...oops.
"Thing 2: person has great success; person realises they will never need money again; walks away to do what interests them instead.
"People driven by money find (2) very hard to understand, as do people who do not understand that enough money means you can choose what you do.
"Neil Young is perhaps example of (2): long time ago he made enough money to do whatever he wanted to...so that is what he did. Recently sold half the rights to his back catalogue for probably $150 million: he has been very rich for a very long time.
"Perhaps Robert Plant is another good example: presumably very rich man makes occasional highly-regarded records which sell...some copies, but Led Zeppelin reunion and probably hundreds of millions of dollars...not so much.
"Charlie Watts is example of someone choosing not to do (2): at any point since say 12 May 1972 [the day Exile on Main Street was released —Ed.] he could have quit the band he played with and done whatever he wanted to for the rest of his life. But he chose not to, probably because he enjoyed playing with that band: certainly not because he needed the money.
"From my generation same for any of the stars of the Harry Potter films (although Daniel Radcliffe has gone on to do interesting perhaps-not-profitable things sometimes, not needing the money)."
Mike replies: You make excellent points, and your analysis may be right—it does feel like my thinking on this is somewhat confused. However I would say that what is more interesting to me is people misunderstanding the nature of their success, or success itself. I recently did a quirky little post about Calvin and Hobbes—Bill Watterson is an example of someone who had enough money and retired at the top of his game and near the peak of his popularity. I have no problem with that (or with his contemporary Gary Larson, who wrote and drew "The Far Side," who did the same). Nor do I have any problem with Yusuf Islam, who used to be Cat Stevens, who walked away from a successful career as a folk singer and pop star because he wanted to live a more committed religious life. And you can speculate that Dan Stevens wanted something different too—that perhaps he preferred to pursue a number of small, interesting, quirky roles in a variety of productions at a lower level, and he considered a standard ITV costume drama to be a potboiler and beneath him. Perhaps he shouldn't have accepted the role in the first place then. Just consider a.) how difficult it is for an actor to land a lead role in a TV series, and b.) how rare it is for a TV series to be a big hit. It's likely or certainly possible that D.S. will never achieve anything near that level again. It doesn't look to me like he has done so since. I'm speculating too, but I don't think he understood what he had.
It could also be that what I am objecting to is a deep level of self-centeredness on his part—his insistence on disrupting the entire series right in the middle of its run for his own ego, or his own personal reasons whatever they were. With zero regard for the creator/writer and his creation, the cast and crew, and the audience. Of course Jessica Brown Findlay did the same thing, and other creative people do similar things all the time.
If Arthur Conan Doyle had retired the Holmes series because a.) it was too difficult to keep coming up with plots, b.) he was getting burned out, c.) he didn't want the series to grow stale and repetitive, or, as you say, d.) he had made enough money and didn't need any more, I don't think I would remark on his case. The interesting feature to me is rather that it looks like he just didn't grasp the rarity of what he had accomplished—he was still locked into old standard ideas about plays and historical fiction being more "serious" and more prestigious, and hence more worthy of him, and magazine stories about a detective being frivolous and lowbrow. When in fact he had created one of the iconic literary characters of his century. But then, I am not very respectful of assertions of cultural prestige and status and hierarchy—for me, Bob Marley is the equal of Mozart, for instance.
I just think some people seriously misjudge their actual talents and the true nature of their accomplishments, that's all.
If you would like to write a reply to this I will post it below!
Zyni replies: "Sorry I did not read your note on my comment earlier. In summary: you are right, what you describe does happen. I can give example from my own field. I have a very dear friend who was (is) a gifted physicist. He could also have been a gifted mathematician perhaps, but he had not trained as one and that is a thing you must train to be. Well, he decided when picking his Ph.D. that he would do a very mathematical bit of physics which he really was not equipped to do, but he would do it because it was 'purer.' And of course he struggled, got depressed, gave up, left physics and deprived everyone of (I believe) his great gifts.
"He did this all because he misunderstood his talents or anyway what he could achieve from where he was.
"This is a tragedy I believe (he does not now rate himself so highly: I am allowed to!), and also ate some significant amount of funding of course. So certainly you are correct in your analysis: this happens. But I believe something else also can happen which looks similar on surface but is not the same, and is admirable where the first thing is not. (Now I must go and apologise to my friend for using him as an example...it's OK, I did ask first.)"
Patrick: "Whenever I think of people who got too big for their britches and made a poor career decision, I think of McLean Stevenson leaving M*A*S*H. From his IMDB entry—'After leaving "M*A*S*H," Stevenson headlined in a series of failed TV shows.'"
Sean: "I’ve never watched a single episode of Downton, but I have seen Dan Stevens in many things, and he’s usually the most watchable actor in the scene. I last saw him play an AI companion in the German sci-fi film Ich bin dein Mensch. Stevens really brought the character to life. I'll get me coat."
Jim Arthur (partial comment): "Here’s a great quote from the ditch where Neil Young is talking to Rolling Stone in 1975. It seems he wasn’t all that concerned with returning to fame or popularity. 'Nobody expected Time Fades Away and I'm not sorry I put it out…I didn't need the money, I didn't need the fame. You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies, whatever. I'd rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way. If that's the price, I'll pay it. I don't give a sh*t if my audience is 100 or 100 million. It doesn't make any difference to me. I'm convinced that what sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it's coincidence.' (From the Rolling Stone website.)"
Mike replies: Neil is a "keep going" type, like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney. There are some stars who just keep at it. Most fade away, and most of those who do don't have any control over that...there's an interesting recent article at The Guardian called "'That's it? It's over? I was 30. What a brutal business': pop stars on life after the spotlight moves on" by Nick Duerden.
The ultimate comment on the fickleness of fame might be a short YouTube video from 2005. It shows Tara Reid, who was an "it girl" in Hollywood following her role in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski in 1998, getting stopped at the door of a nightclub. As she argues with the door supervisor, the then-current 2005 "it girl," and Tara's former friend, Paris Hilton, comes striding down the sidewalk arm-in-arm with her new bestie Kim Kardashian, who was relatively unknown at the time. A word to the doorman and in they go, while Tara continues to wait. The fickleness of fame in a minute and 35.
Pity we don't have a 2022 video of Paris getting stopped at the door while Kim K. and her unknown new best friend go right in.
My brush with this sort of thing happened when my son was about five. The mother of one of his school friends was dating a guy who used to be a rock star—I don't remember his name, but he had played drums for a variety of bands including Thin Lizzy. He had started a limousine service with his rock-and-roll money, but he was getting out of that and wanted to buy a Burger King franchise. Evidently one of the requirements was that prospective franchise owners had to work the counter of a Burger King for a certain number of weeks so they would know what it was like. So the four of us, in high spirits, went down to the busy local Burger King to get waited on by the former rock star, who was none too happy to be where he was—maybe it was my imagination, but I thought he had a distracted, sort of "how did it come to this?" expression on his face.
rick l: "Of the several friends of my grandchildren, they know far more of music from 50 years ago than I do of their music from 50 days ago. that, I think, is my error, not theirs."
Miguel Tejada-Flores: "I have to respectfully take issue with the idea that Dan Stevens has never really done any acting roles of note since leaving 'Downton Abbey.' In fact, he played the leading role in the stunningly complex sci-fi series, 'Legion,' which was created, written and produced by Noah Hawley, the brilliant storyteller behind all of the 'Fargo' streaming series. Stevens' character, 'David Haller,' has been mistakenly diagnosed as an extreme paranoid schizophrenic, but as the story evolves, we learn that his misdiagnosed schizophrenia actually is due to his extreme psychic powers, and that his paranoia is all too justified, as he becomes the unwitting pawn of a brilliant and evil cabal who will go to remarkable lengths to convince him he is 'crazy,' which will allow them to manipulate his powers. The series ran for three years (2017–2019) and has been justifiably critically acclaimed, as well as attaining near-cult status in serious sci-fi circles. At its heart, Stevens delivers a complex performance as he brings Hawley's disturbed protagonist to life. Some, including myself, believe that the opening hour-long pilot episode of the first season is one of the finer standalone paranoid science-fiction thrillers ever created. I'm not suggesting that his other roles and oeuvre is on that level, but Stevens' performance in 'Legion' has, I think, helped establish his reputation in the acting universe, in ways which his role in Downtown Abbey never could have."
