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The Six-Movie Season That Turned Jude Law Into an Oscars Punchline
In 2004, six movies starring Jude Law came out in a three-month span, turning him into unfair shorthand for Hollywood’s failure to launch new stars.
It was the sour cherry atop what had been a rough several months for Law, who had appeared — in one manner or another — in six movies that opened between September 17 and December 17, 2004: the digital adventure pastiche Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the “existential comedy” I Heart Huckabees, the rom-com remake Alfie, the four-hander infidelity drama Closer, the Scorsese-directed epic biography The Aviator, and the darkly comedic children’s-book adaptation Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. The mid-aughts’ optimistic calculus of Law’s star trajectory made perfect sense until that stretch in 2004: insanely handsome, charismatic actor with two Oscar nominations (for The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain) by the age of 32. The “death of the movie star” has been chronicled again and again and again in recent years, pretty much every time Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Ryan Gosling, or any of the countless A-listers we assume can make audiences flock to theaters instead flop on opening weekend.
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