Alden Ehrenreich did nothing wrong, but his career still paid a price. WhenSolo: A Star Wars Storyunderperformed, the actor cast to play the young Han Solo became the fall guy for Star Wars’ theatrical overexposure, and a symbol that justifiedDisney’s pivot away from recasting familiar roles and toward the digital de-aging that has become commonplace in the franchise. When uncanny valley versions of Hayden Christensen and Mark Hamill show up in the Disney + shows, it feels like a wordless acknowledgement that Solo was a mistake.
That’s an awfully unfair weight to put on a young leading man’s shoulders, but, fair or not, Ehrenreich’s career took the hit. He had been working steadily throughout the 2010s, building his resume by appearing in auteur projects like Park Chan-wook’s Stoker (2013), Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013), the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016), and Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply (2016), but after Solo’s rocky reception, he took a five year break from film. He worked some, starring in the Peacock series Brave New World in 2020. But, if you weren’t subscribing to NBC Universal’s streaming service in its first year (and who but the most hardcore fans of The Office were?), you likely hadn’t seen Ehrenreich in half a decade.
That changed this year with a string of high profile roles. First, he showed up in Cocaine Bear as Ray Liotta’s depressed widower son, Eddie. That movie isn’t great, but Ehrenreich did get the trailer’s signature line, “The bear. It [****ing] did cocaine.” It wasn’t the ideal use of his talents, but it was good to see him in a movie again. It was a good appetizer for the main course he’s served up throughout the rest of 2023.
Oppenheimer actually gave him a chance to use his talents. Christopher Nolan’s scientific drama is loaded with well-known actors playing supporting roles, from heavy hitters like Robert Downey, Jr. in the meaty role of Lewis Strauss, down to The Boys star Jack Quaid and Drake and Josh’s Josh Peck in bit parts. Plenty of actors who would be top billed on other projects, like Rami Malek, Casey Affleck, and Gary Oldman show up for one or two scenes. In that stew of supporting performances, Ehrenreich stands out as Strauss' senate aide, and gets one of the biggest laugh lines in the movie. Ehrenreich isn’t the star of either film, but both did well at the box office (though in Oppenheimer’s case, saying it “did well” is an understatement).
The real picture of what Ehrenreich’s career could look like going forward is Fair Play, a thrilling workplace/relationship drama in which Ehrenreich stars opposite Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor. The pair play a couple who both work for a high level hedge fund, whose relationship is upended when one gets the promotion the other expected. Ehrenreich gets to show a lot of skill in the role, ranging from charming, to pathetic, to menacing, and being equally believable at every extreme. It makes it easy to see Ehrenreich being a movie star in the mold of the great performers of the ’80s and ’90s, capable of playing a nice guy, a sleazeball, and everything in between.
It’s sad that Ehrenreich’s career stalled after Solo, but in writing this, I realized that he’s still quite young. At 33, he’s younger than Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell, another actor who’s currently on the bubble as a potentially great leading man. Like Powell, who recently got rave reviews for his performance in Richard Linklater’s forthcoming Hit Man, the biggest threat to Ehrenreich’s career isn’t him, it’s an industry that seems intent on preventing great young actors from becoming real movie stars. Sometimes that happens because (like in Solo) they’re slotted into franchise fare where the character is the star, not the actor. In Fair Play’s case, it’s the tendency of streaming culture to render even big hits disposable. Luckily, Ehrenreich has a sizable role in one of the biggest theatrical releases of the year. I hope that gives him the bump he deserves, after doing time for a failure that wasn’t his fault.
