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James Franco is a poster boy for pretension, especially if you read his bad poetry, which reads like lines from r/im14andthisisdeep. Franco, trying to sound profound, once said his poetry is “trying to say something in addition to what’s on the surface” — which, you know, is practically the definition of poetry as this article points out. One of the poems in the book is basically just a list of Heath Ledger’s roles. Another reads, “My father died in my Jesus year. He was sixty-three and I was thirty-three. He’d managed a few things and so have I. I drive a bus.” The line breaks aren’t always where you’d think they’d be.
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Shia LaBeouf also often tries to appear deep or intelligent in what amounts to little more than publicity stunts. Remember when he wore a paper bag on his head with the phrase “I am not famous anymore,” or the time he called his entire life “performance art”? What about when he ripped off Daniel Clowes for a short film, and then tried to turn it into a commentary on plagiarism and inspiration, literally stealing phrases from famous apologies in his own apology?
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Then there’s the time he stormed out of an interview after a fairly innocuous question about sex scenes, quoting (without attribution) soccer player Eric Cantona, who had once done the same while remarking, “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” Promoting a film called Nymphomaniac, a question on sex really did not feel like it promoted that reply, and Labeouf’s strange response felt like an attempt at appearing deep and intellectual when really he just didn’t feel like answering a question.
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Orlando Bloom raised eyebrows when he spoke to the Sunday Times about his morning routine, which included reading a “bit of Buddhism,” Buddhist chanting, drinking a mix of “brain octane oil,” and hiking while listening to Nirvana. But the real kicker came when he said, “I spend a lot of my time dreaming about roles for myself and others — for minorities and women. I’m trying to be a voice for everybody.” It kinda felt like Bloom was trying a little too hard to sound inclusive without really doing anything to back it up. Oh, and he talked about appreciating the beauty of cows.
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He also came off pretty pretentious when he spoke about keeping an even head after LOTR and Pirates of the Caribbean fame. “I had this remarkable opening chapter to my career, for which I was only semi-present. Without my Buddhist practice, I could have easily come off the rails. I’ve been changing the narrative in my head and feel that I can be the driver of my train. I can set it alight, but I can get the fire crew and put it out.”
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I’ll be the first to say it: I don’t like Brad Pitt. I liked him even less after reading his 2022 GQ profile. In it, he asks the interviewer, “Why the fuck are we here? What’s beyond? Because I gather that you believe in something beyond…. Do you feel trapped here, in this body and in this environment?” The two discuss Rilke and Rumi, high art, and the meaning of dreams. Afterward, Pitt sends the interviewer an email with the sections “Summation, Clarification, and Rumination” to expound on his interview question answers. There’s also a point where the two are sitting by a fire, and Pitt says, “I am a murderer. I’m a lover. I have the capacity for great empathy and I can devolve into pettiness.”
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Honestly, I don’t know if I can say Tilda Swinton is pretentious, as she really does seem to be that cultured and intelligent (she’s related to royalty, after all) but some of the quotes from this New Yorker interview she gave are wild, so I’ll let you decide. Her comments on working with the late director Derek Jarman in particular were overly intellectual and mythologizing — she called the experiences an “apprenticeship” and a “movement,” saying, “One is in mourning less for the individuals and more for the time, for—I would even go so far as to call it — ‘the movement.'” She also gave a long commentary on class and ruminated on the possibility of dying in a plane crash right after 9/11, saying, “Well, where else would you rather be than with other people? What else is there but other people?”
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Joaquin Phoenix often comes off as a bit pretentious in how seriously he takes his work, but one moment in particular caught fans’ attention: his Oscars speech after winning Best Actor for his role in Joker. In it, Phoenix tried to make a grand statement on world issues, but ended up going on a tangent about cows that sort of rendered the whole thing a little silly and flat. “I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the distressing issues that we are facing collectively. I think at times we feel, or we’re made to feel, that we champion different causes. But for me, I see commonality,” Phoenix said, mentioning gender inequality, racism, queer rights, Indigenous rights, and animal rights. While his words on one group always subjugating another of lesser power started nobly, they soon took a turn.
“I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world, and many of us, what we’re guilty of is an egocentric world view — the belief that we’re the center of the universe,” he began. Then he went into cows….and artificial insemination. He wrapped it up by advocating for humans to create systems of change and “guide each other towards redemption.” Which, sure, but it lacked some specificity, and he’d lost the crowd by then. While again, his intentions seemed noble, maybe don’t bring up the morality of drinking milk just seconds after talking about large-scale issues like racial inequality?
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Russel Brand has a ton of different quotes where he tries to sound deep or smart, but ends up sounding like he’s quoting something from a book he read. “The phenomena of consciousness, your very presence, the still, small voice within you and the apparently external world are all proof that God is real,” he wrote on Facebook. He’s spoken about the need for a “spiritual revolution” — even writing a book on it — the “energy centers in the body,” and how the “self” is artificial.
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His book, Revolution, was criticized by The Guardian for being “heavy going, light on politics and, in places, beyond parody.” Framing himself as an expert on spirituality, politics, identity, and truth might not be pretentious posturing if Brand had the credentials to back it up…but Brand is perhaps best known for conspiracy theories, a short marriage to Katy Perry, and his sexual assault allegations (he has pled “not guilty”). Oh, and for someone who talks so much about politics, he doesn’t even vote.
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Jim Carrey’s interview with Rüdiger Sturm is full of faux-deep tidbits like this, where he discussed the lack of self. “There is no individual here. There are only energies,” he said. “If you want to talk scientifically, break it down to a cluster of tetrahedrons that somehow believe they are a thing.” He continued, “But they’re ideas — just ideas. Jim Carrey was an idea my parents gave me. Irish-Scottish-French was an idea I was given. Canadian was an idea that I was given. I had a hockey team and a religion and all of these things that cobble together into this kind of Frankenstein monster, this representation. It’s like an avatar. These are all the things I am. You are not an actor, or a lawyer. No one is a lawyer. There are lawyers, law is practiced, but no one is a lawyer.”
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Maybe he’s just a New Age sort of guy — but he also seems to act above those who aren’t as “enlightened.” While attending a NYFW Icons party, he slammed the whole event with a very “better than this” attitude, saying, “I wanted to find the most meaningless thing that I could come to and join, and here I am.” Speaking about the theme, he said, “Celebrating icons? That is just the absolute, lowest-aiming possibility that we could come up with.” He continued, “I don’t believe in personalities. I believe that peace lies beyond personality, beyond invention and disguise, beyond the red ‘S’ that you wear on your chest that makes bullets bounce off. I believe we are a field of energy dancing for itself. And I don’t care.”
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Donald Glover once compared himself to Jesus, after saying that there was nothing he’s bad at. “Probably just people. People don’t like to be studied, or bested. I’m fine with it. I don’t really like people that much. People accept me now because I have power, but they still think, ‘Oh, he thinks he’s the golden flower of the Black community, thinks he’s so different.’ But I am, though!”
He then said, “I feel like Jesus. I do feel chosen. My struggle is to use my humanity to create a classic work — but I don’t know if humanity is worth it, or if we’re going to make it. I don’t know if there’s much time left.” While Glover is undeniably talented, the Jesus comparison went a bit far — past pretension and straight into a God complex.
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This is a small one, but it really irks me. Speaking to THE EDIT by Net-a-Porter, Kate Winslet once said she quit therapy because she was smarter than her therapist. “I tried therapy once and thought, ‘Oh God, I could outsmart you, goodbye.’ So I won’t bother with that again,” she told the interviewer.
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In another smaller moment, Jennifer Garner once tried to make herself look smart and Conan look dumb by correcting him on his own show…only for Conan to prove that he was right all along.
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Cole Sprouse has cultivated an…interesting persona over the years, and he’s certainly had his r/im14andthisisdeep cringe-worthy moments. I will never forget him being super weird on Tumblr, going viral, then calling the entire thing a “social experiment” in a very pretentious post.
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A more recent moment came when he appeared on the podcast Call Her Daddy last year. Fans were quick to cringe at his cigarette smoking inside, as well as the way he held the cigarette, tweeting things like, “he gives me the ick” and “It’s giving rich white kid pretending to be a tortured artist.” His ruminations on relationships didn’t much help, though really, it was the general vibe that irked people more.
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And finally, we’ll end with my favorite…the time that Woody Allen was super pretentious while interviewing Twiggy and tried to make her look dumb. Twiggy — then a teenager — successfully flipped the script and exposed Allen for not being able to answer the same question he’d posed her. To which I say: ICON! (Yes, the same kind Jim Carrey hates.)
