Brian Medavoy:
Watching the Golden Globes this year, I felt something I haven’t felt in a while: relief.
Not because George Clooney showed up. Not because Julia Roberts reminded everyone what a “movie star” actually means.
But because the energy was different.
They weren’t chasing anything. They weren’t explaining themselves. They weren’t performing for approval. They walked in like time never passed.
And it hit me: Hollywood still makes room for the grown-ups.
Not always. Not automatically. But it does.
I’m writing this with my client and friend Rob Morrow because we’re both at an age where patterns become impossible to ignore. We’ve lived long enough in this business to know what’s real and what’s noise. We’ve had the highs, the quiet stretches, and those strange in-between years where you’re still talented, still hungry… but the industry isn’t quite sure where to place you.
Those are what we call — lovingly — the weird wig years.
Not because you’re wearing an actual wig.
Because sometimes your career feels like one: it fits… but it doesn’t feel like you.
Hollywood loves the word comeback. But most careers don’t work like that. Most careers are cycles:
work, build, win, lose, learn, survive, repeat.
So the real question isn’t “How do you come back?”
It’s how do you stay without losing yourself?
That’s what Clooney and Julia were radiating. Not Look at me, I’m back.
More like: I never left. I just wasn’t performing for you.
That’s the spirit of this piece: re-emergence. Not desperation. Not nostalgia. A return with clarity, ease, and a little more truth.
Rob Morrow:
The word is viability. What makes someone viable.
I recently did a benefit reading of the screenplay All The President’s Men with Ethan Hawke. In the Q&A afterwards, he talked about being “on the hustle” since he was 15. About trying to stay “relevant.”
I thought about Ethan doing one line in the movie Quiz Show, he was already an established actor. He said he admired Robert Redford so much that he just wanted to see how he worked. Ethan’s a novelist, a documentary filmmaker, a songwriter. I thought about those variables. To hear him speak, you would have no sense that he is in the midst of a beautiful mid-career surge. A re-emergence…
Creativity is a gift. Not to get too metaphysical, but it’s a portal. And keeping it open requires work.
George Clooney just made his Broadway debut. Julia Roberts paints and is very philanthropic. By the way, did you notice at the Golden Globes, the generous acknowledgement Julia gave to Eva Victor, who made an auspicious debut as director/writer/star with their poignant, plaintive film Sorry, Baby? That gesture is a currency and Julia knew it. She basically anointed the filmmaker/star.
Generosity is a by product of Maturity. Maturity is a source of power. If it’s conscious.
I have multiple projects I’m developing. Movies, TV shows, from books, original ideas. I wrote a memoir. I’m writing a novel. I write and perform music. I do plays in little theaters that few know of, or see. I do a podcast. I exercise. I meditate. These are all ends unto themselves for me. But they also translate into momentum.
Momentum is everything. It’s physics. Newton’s First Law of Motion; a body at rest stays at rest until an external force acts upon it. That is — action. Never stop taking action. Seek, engage, express.
The reason it looks as if George and Julia and Sean Penn and Steve Martin have not gone away… is because they haven’t. Maybe they weren’t in every news cycle, but they were always in motion. Always evolving.
The reason it feels like the grown ups are in the room is because they have grown up. Evolved. Matured with grace and humility. Not too long ago they were the fresh faced new kids on the block.
Do it! Whether they let you or not. Odds are someone will eventually notice.
