There is a known phenomena among the wealthy where they vastly over rate their classes accomplishments relative to others. So rich kid paints a picture and it should be in a gallery. Poor kid wins an art scholarship and it's due to affirmative action.

Even people like Tom Holland, his dad (Dominic) is fairly well known in the UK.

He's not mega rich or influential, but once you've got a few million in the bank and can afford to send them to acting school, and for far away auditions, that's a massive leg up on everyone else.

Just look at all the former members of the Footlights club. They're not nepo babies exactly, and most are talented in their own right, but their parents still had the money to send them to Cambridge.

I can't really blame them for it, because almost everyone wants their kid to do well in life. But it does rub your nose in it when anyone says "hard work will get you anywhere", when 99.9% of hard workers are wage slaves.

For the slightest bit of defence: it makes sense. "Nepo baby" generally refers to some kid who doesn't have the qualifications for their role but got it through their parents giving them an unfair chance.

But it makes perfect sense that if you grow up in a house with actors and writers for parents they can both teach you about the business, they'll be happy to pay for that kind of education, and they'll be super encouraging because unlike most families, to them becoming an actor or director is a perfectly reasonable goal.

It's like a child of doctors growing up to become a doctor. On one hand their parents could have just pulled some strings, on the other hand, having parents excited to teach you organic chemistry and advanced math in middle school probably helps you a lot when it comes to qualifying for med school.

I don't think all Hollywood nepo babies are like this. I'm just saying you would expect to see children of great actors become actors themselves.

Edit: so some of these responses confuse me. I say in the first paragraph that "nepo baby" generally refers to a subset of children who take on their parents job who are given unfair opportunities despite not being the most qualified for it. It might not be the strict definition but it's my modern understanding of it and it's the thing that people are actually angry about, including me. Acknowledging this at the top is meant to caveat what I'm saying for the rest of the post that I'm not talking about those people.

I agree that in a perfect world all people should get as much access as possible to any education and opportunities they want and I hope we get that.

Everything is like this in this shithole country

or they try to play it off as coming from a "humble or poor background"

This is a perfect example of why AI will succeed no matter how mind-numbingly stupid it is: it will give people the warm and fuzzies without having to do jack shit. Yes, they "prompted" the LLM. Yes, they "edited" the output, and yes it was published on the biggest fucking commercial website to exist in the history of man. All of those "achievements" pale in comparison to writing an actual book with your own creativity and words and finesse. But since most people can't expect themselves or their offspring to pull off such a difficult feat, this 'second-place' surrogate will do just fine and so we will all pay with what few resources we haven't already annihilated in order to keep the gears grinding a little longer. 🙏

Plus it is not hard to get "published" on Amazon. Literally anyone can.

"Maybe next he can try writting a book! :)" then stare into their soul

It took everything I had not to lunch into an anti-AI rant

Why did you hold back? It would be a lot better to just be honest about it.

never mind a leg up… kids in a fucking papoose at this point

she know what it means, she just doesnt want to be called out for giving nepo baby a role.

Oh they offered me, but you know I had to turn it down so that her dear son could have an equal chance at it.

I tried, but apparently it wasn’t “second screen” enough.

They said a show about poop knives won't attract viewers. Soon will be my time to shine.

Thanks for answering the obvious question that popped into everyone's mind.

My parents and grandparents taught me how to go bankrupt..

Step 1: Mortgage inherited assets to follow the latest fad.

Step 2: Make no profit but spend tons money.

Step 3: Accept government handouts right and left but still lose money.

Step 4: Go bankrupt and lose everything you inherited.

Step 5: Blame everyone else for your own stupidity. Extra emphasis on people with darker skin color.

Would you then deny that your kid has a leg up on others if you did do all that?

In her son's case it's going beyond that. She didn't just encourage him to be an actor, use her connections to get him singing and acting lessons and get him in the door for auditions.

She herself got a movie made for him. You know she didn't do rounds of interviews and decide at the end that her son was the best fit for the part. She set out to make a movie for him.

Reception Critical response On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 67% of 76 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A family affair both on screen and behind the camera, Kate Winslet's directorial debut stacks the deck for tears a little too lopsidedly, but honest performances help put this drama's heart firmly in the right place."[11] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 55 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[12]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that Goodbye June is "a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo", but criticised its "treacly soup of sentimentality" and "cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation" that feels unreal.[13]

How does this help the smaller actors, crews, effects people, etc?

By the time Chris Pratt got married, to an actress that was much more famous than him, he had already been cast in a bunch of roles, including his breakout role in Parks and Rec.

Yes, networking helps, but applying the nepotism label to all forms of networking (including meeting and marrying a celebrity) dilutes the label to near meaninglessness.

I think Groucho was cool with it, but his brother Karl had some thoughts

I mean he worked with his brother's so can't be that against it

I think there is a point to be made here - talent is the easiest part of success. You can drop by bars in any major city and hear musicians who have the talent to be a top 40 star. What is difficult is to get your "break" and toehold in the industry. I think that's what the core issue is. Their parents are right in that their kids have the talent to be mid-tier in the industry. What's infuriating is that they are not more talented than anyone else. They have an escalator into the industry whe everyone else has to fight their way up the back stairs.

Others have responded to you with part of what I wanted to bring up, but I also have another aspect to add to the rationale. These nepo babies aren't just inheriting access and opportunities, but also a wealthy and comfortable upbringing. The child of a multimillionaire actor/musician/athlete not only has the inroads of their parents' network and reputation, but also access to premium diets, exercise, doctors, schools, coaches, etc AND didn't have to worry about getting a job at Chipotle or whatever while in high school or right after, and definitely didn't have to balance that in order to help their family with bills.

It's a lot easier to get into Hollywood when your parents are already famous, but that really only gets you the auditions. Being able to work on honing your craft for 40+ hours per week without becoming homeless, going hungry, or losing sleep is a motherfucking luxury. I rarely get to practice guitar anymore because my job is so taxing both mentally and physically, so I'll probably never get better, so access to a producer still wouldn't really help me to win out over a nepo baby. They could truly be the greatest of their generation because they were able to and encouraged to perfect their skills for their craft without having to spend their time on literally anything else.

I don't think we should shit on legitimately talented people because of their relationships with other talented people. Less talented people that only got chances because of their families? Well, we have a duty to make fun of them as much as possible. I also think that we need to acknowledge when talented people get roles in large part because of their families.

I think a lot of people who trumpet the "but they're so talented!" line, don't realize just how much genuine talent is actually out there washing dishes in between doing plays in 300-seaters.

It doesn't mean these people aren't talented. But getting into the entertainment industry is notoriously difficult. Having a name that opens doors will definitely make it easier.

Nicholas Cage certainly got benefits from his family name. Helping him get in the door at interviews.

But he chose not to use his family name so the movie going public didn't associate him with his Uncle.

And he started his career with small supporting parts before working his way up to leading man.

He didn't have his famous mother write and direct a movie explicitly for him to star in.