hollywood rebels In time for awards season, Belstaff presents Hollywood’s most iconic rebels. Belstaff has always embraced the spirit of adventure, which these acclaimed actors and actresses represent both on and off the big screen. From Marlon Brando to Angelina Jolie, we celebrate those who have forged their own path in film and have changed attitudes – and fashion – forever. For more Hollywood Rebel inspiration visit VanityFair.com to check out our partnership with Vanity Fair.
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Marlon Brando as gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One
1– Marlon Brando
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ith one line, one shot, one glorious close-up, 29-year-old Marlon Brando changed the culture forever. It’s The Wild One, it’s 1953, and in a tiny Californian café, a cheeky, perky, bobby-soxer sidles up to Brando and asks, ‘What are you rebelling against?’ A half-smile plays momentarily about his lips. ‘Whaddaya got?’ comes the reply. And so an icon is born, and an attitude is incarnated in a man and an actor remembered for leathers and denim, a rakishly tilted biker’s cap, and a fulminating desire to defy convention at every turn. From The Wild One to Waterfront, Last Tango to Apocalypse Now, he rebels, therefore he is.
2– angelina jolie Angelina Jolie wears a Belstaff Tourist Parka (now Georgina Parka) in The Tourist
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he could have settled for stardom, the blockbuster paydays and the plethora of Sexiest Woman Alive accolades she’s earned by being in possession of the most famous cheekbones and lips in the business, but Angelina Jolie burned all that up. Seventeen conspicuous tattoos and a string of excoriating performances later (see Gia, Girl Interrupted or A Mighty Heart), Jolie turned the tables on tradition entirely and, strictly on her own terms, became an award-winning independent filmmaker (see Unbroken). As you do.
3– Leonardo DiCaprio Leonardo DiCaprio wears a Belstaff Aviator Blouson as Howard Hughes in The Aviator
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he film is The Wolf of Wall Street. The scene is the Quaalude overdose. And in those three inspired minutes of extreme physical acting (body on the floor, down the stairs, into the Lamborghini) DiCaprio capitalises on the prowess he displayed in The Aviator and The Departed, and proves, once and for all, that he is risk-taker, a rulebreaker and the pre-eminent insider’s outsider.
4– james dean James Dean plays archetypal teen rebel Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause
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wo years after Brando wowed in The Wild One, the 24-year-old Dean gave the nascent screen rebel a shot of metrosexuality. In Rebel Without a Cause, Dean was soft where Brando had swaggered. He wore a red blouson jacket where Brando wore black leathers. And where Brando spoiled for confrontation, Dean’s most quotable line, immortalised by his death and beyond, became ‘I don’t want any trouble!’
Brad Pitt, who wore a Belstaff Panther Jacket in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has always refused to be typecast
5– brad pitt
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verything you need to know about Brad Pitt is in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In that film, he stood centre stage, he stared into the lens, and he said, without speaking, ‘Judge me by my looks at your peril.’ The film took his appearance apart (made him old, made him young), and reminded us that this is the restless recalcitrant actor of Fight Club, Twelve Monkeys, Kalifornia and Snatch. An actor who will not be contained. An actor for whom the word ‘handsome’ was never, ever, enough.
6– steve mcqueen
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ome stars create themselves, over time, on screen, but Steve McQueen emerged, fully formed, in 1960’s The Magnificent Seven. By then, the 30-year-old had already been a member of an Indianapolis street gang, a merchant seaman, a lumberjack, a hot-tempered marine (he went AWOL for two weeks), and a break-neck motorcycle racer. In short, he was bad-ass. Always was. Always will be.
Steve McQueen, the eternal Hollywood tough guy, seen here in The Cincinnati Kid
7– dennis hopper
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here’s something of the tragic rebel about Dennis Hopper. He dies, for instance, shot down, at the end of Easy Rider. He played second fiddle to James Dean in Rebel and to Brando in Apocalypse Now. He lived in the shadows of other alpha rebels, yet never conformed. Famous for drugs, famous for art and famously tragic to the very end. Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, the defining film of Sixties counter-culture
8– robert downey jr Robert Downey Jr showed his rebellious side in Iron Man
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ou’ve got to love a guy who gets arrested in the mid-Nineties on Sunset Boulevard while carrying heroin, cocaine and a Magnum handgun and, less than two decades later, is earning $75m a year (according to Forbes) as the star of the Iron Man franchise and the most
commercially successful actor in Hollywood. And yet, the secret to Downey Jr, and his continuing allure, is that very same threat of rebellion within, and the hint, barely perceptible, that he might, at any moment, revert directly to his wild-man ways.
9– christian bale
Never afraid to show his dark side, Christian Bale played the perfect Batman in The Dark Knight, wearing a Belstaff Knight Blouson
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t was always going to take a dark, dark knight to save the Batman franchise from the dead-end of camp. It was thus hardly surprising when, in 2005, they gave the gig to the then 31-year-old Christian Bale. The actor, who went buff for American Psycho and skeletal for The Machinist, has
a kick-ass intensity like no one else out there. This same intensity spilled over, infamously, into a blistering tantrum on the Terminator Salvation set, which, ultimately, only added to his mystique. This guy, it said, he’s loco – but in the right way.
10– jason statham
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n screen, he’s a one-man killing machine. Off-screen, he’s a one-man movie industry. He makes modestly budgeted high-octane action movies (Crank cost $12m) that double and triple their money at the box office. Even his biggest franchises (see The Expendables) are financed independently. He can snap necks with the best of them, but Jason Statham has proved, fundamentally, that he doesn’t need the system.
Hard-man Jason Statham wore a Belstaff Racemaster Jacket in The Expendables
11– jack nicholson A
torrid and destabilising personal life (his sister was actually, unbeknownst to him for years, his mother), a string of high-profile dalliances (everyone from Candice Bergen to Kate Moss), and a reputation for hell-raising antics (smashing up a Merc with a golf club), would seem to make Nicholson the definitive über-rebel. Yet it’s the iconic roles that really matter. Frank Costello in The Departed. Joker in Batman. RP McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. No explanation required.
Hollywood wild man Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider
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ord perfect, pitch perfect, persona complete. That was Will Smith in Ali, an Oscar-nominated turn as the greatest American boxer, and a role that made everyone look twice at him. No more squeaky clean. No more Fresh Prince. It was all change. His roles since have skewered comic-book blockbusters (Hancock), reimagined zombie flicks (I am Legend) and turned the weepie on its head (Seven Pounds). When he can, when he wants, he blazes.
Will Smith wears a Trialmaster Legend in I Am Legend
13– george clooney
George Clooney sports a Belstaff Dodge Jacket in Leatherheads
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stablishment scourge and part-time smoothie, Clooney repeatedly parlays his heavyweight credentials (Ocean’s Eleven star, double Oscar winner) into pitiless attacks on the establishment – Three Kings and Syriana pilloried
Middle Eastern politics, The Ides of March eviscerated the US election circuit, while Good Night and Good Luck skewered media impartiality. Making Clooney, in essence, the current-affairs rebel.
14– jeremy renner
Outsider action hero Jeremy Renner wears a Belstaff H Racer Jacket in The Bourne Legacy
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or anyone else it might have been a career-wrecker, but Jeremy Renner seemed more than happy to launch his own film career with a scandalous role as the perverted and psychotic cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer (in 2002’s
biopic Dahmer). The role was garish, but suggested a hairtrigger intensity in the actor that’s been evident in his best performances since, including The Hurt Locker and the spy franchise revamp The Bourne Legacy.
15– kristen stewart
Never afraid of playing an outsider, Kristen Stewart wears a Belstaff Bella Jacket (now Phoenix Blouson) in Twilight: Breaking Dawn
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former child actor who held her own opposite Jodie Foster in Panic Room, Kristen Stewart brought a tremulous air of discomfort and defiance to her role, in 2008, as the vampire lover Bella Swan in the biggest teen franchise of that decade. Like Dean in Rebel, she was the hipster outcast who here swapped humdrum human company for a vibrant gang of blood-suckers and shapeshifters. And, crucially, also like Dean, she’s a lover, not a fighter, but will bite if she must.
Tom Cruise wears a Belstaff Hero Jacket in dystopian sci-fi film, War of the Worlds
16– tom cruise
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poverty-stricken childhood, an inscrutable work ethic and one of the most charismatic grins in Tinseltown has produced a megastar who, even at 51, simply refuses to play it safe and retreat into the comfort of the mainstream. Both of Tom Cruise’s recent sci-fi blockbusters, Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow, were challenging narratives with dark thematic hearts that suggested the appetites of someone straining at the limits of his chosen medium. Someone, ultimately, who is refusing the safe path.
17– mickey rourke M
ickey Rourke could’ve been a contender. In fact, he was, briefly, and as a teenage Florida flyweight, racked up a record of 27 wins and only three defeats. Then came acting. And though his roles were often era-defining (Nine ½ Weeks, Angel Heart), Rourke consistently seemed to convey an impatience with his craft, and the sense that he’d rather simply return to the ring. Which he did, effectively, and to Oscar-nominated effect, in 2008’s The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke plays The Motorcycle Boy in Francis Ford Coppola’s film of teen gang wars, Rumble Fish
18– shia labeouf
Non-confirmist actor and provocateur Shia LaBeouf wears a Belstaff Mutt Jacket in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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hia LaBeouf is the real deal. Actor, provocateur, performance artist, essayist, pop promo-maker and full-time controversialist, the 28-year-old former Disney star has been arrested multiple times, been in a car wreck, been kicked out of a Broadway theatre and even worn a paper bag to his own premiere. He’s struggled, so far, to find a suitably scandalous movie resumé to match his off-screen antics (though Charlie Countryman and Nymphomaniac came close). But they will come. It’s only a matter of time. He’s the real deal.
19– naomi watts
Naomi Watts wears a Belstaff Tripmaster jacket (now Roadmaster) in David Cronenberg’s gritty Eastern Promises
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aomi Watts doesn’t do the also-ran, the girlfriend, the partner, her indoors. She set the scene in her breakout role, in Mulholland Drive, when she played an actress, the ditzy Betty, who suddenly, inexplicably, turns the tables on sleaze-ball veteran Jimmy Katz (Chat Everett) in the audition of the century. Since then, she’s eighty-sixed the orthodox, playing grief in 21 Grams, horror in Funny Games and steely determination in Eastern Promises. Her MO is volatility. She will not be contained.
Images courtesy of Rex, Alamy, Capital Pictures and Landmark Media
Selma Blair wears a Belstaff Racemaster Lady (now styled as the Sammy Miller) to play comic-book action heroine Liz Sherman in Hellboy
20– selma blair
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he did same-sex kissing (in 1999’s Cruel Intentions) before it was de rigueur. She made comic-book blockbusters (the Hellboy franchise) before they were ubiquitous. She did sexually ‘difficult’ material (2001’s Storytelling) a decade before Shame. And she made a raunchy all-girl comedy (The Sweetest Thing) nine years before Bridesmaids. Selma Blair, doing her own thing since the last millennium – what’s not to like?
21– sean penn
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e’s gone from punching paparazzi (in 1987, while dating Madonna) to kicking the conservative political establishment (he champions the poor, and was buddies with Hugo Chavez). And yet, remarkably, Sean Penn’s movies have remained of the highest calibre. What Just Happened, Milk and Tree of Life all seem to reflect an actor who is driven by issues and ideas, and who, even in his mid-fifties, refuses to take the easy money and run.
Never one to retire to the mainstream, Sean Penn is an actor, activist and true Hollywood rebel
Kevin Maher is film critic for The Times
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