Constructing persona: Mediatisation, performativity, quality, and branding in australian film actors’ migration to hollywood

Abstract

Through a public persona analysis of particular Australian film stars this chapter explores how their professional and fictional identities have inhabited Hollywood film and its associated culture of promotion. It interrogates how these formations of character, persona and brand are linked with the internal exigencies of contemporary Hollywood itself and how these kinds of figures emerged from the production process of acting/promotion within Australia and allowed them to move successfully into various international tropes of film acting and quality. Through a study of the various success stories of Australian actors in American film and television, the chapter investigates the four elements of persona construction: collective identity/construction, relationship to publics, the mediatisation of their identities into celebrity public figures, and their performativity identities. The fifth element of persona construction involves understanding the intentional value that is part of the strategic building of a professional persona.