I Think It’s Cool When Actors in Goofy Horror Movies Like Critters 3 (1991) Go On to Become Movie Stars

There were lots of people talking about Paul Rudd last month. But not because he’s in a new movie or a new TV show or a new play or anything like that.

Paul Rudd was on many minds because we got a new Halloween movie. One that Paul Rudd is not in. However, Halloween Kills does feature a character that Paul Rudd played many years ago: The adolescent version of Tommy Doyle, the little boy that Laurie Strode babysat (and saved, or put in danger, depending on how you look at it) in the original Halloween. In this installment, Tommy Doyle is played by Anthony Michael Hall, who is certainly not Paul Rudd.

Did Paul Rudd need to be in this movie? No, not really. Did Paul Rudd owe the fans a bit of connective tissue between the various franchise timelines? Absolutely not. Would it have been cool to see him? Yes, it is always cool to see Paul Rudd. Because he is a movie star.

And this whole conversation got me thinking about other movie stars who broke in by way of goofy genre films. We all love a critically acclaimed breakthrough performance, but some movie stars have to start from the bottom and work their way up, just like the rest of us.

Actors like Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger, two native Texans who starred in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation just a couple years after playing bit parts in Dazed and Confused together. Or actors like Jennifer Anniston and Courteney Cox, who were the female leads in their own silly horror movies (Leprechaun and Masters of the Universe, respectively) before becoming Friends costars.*

But the one that stands out the most in my mind—the one that perhaps represents the biggest gap between where they were then and where they are now—is Leonardo DiCaprio in Critters 3.**

DiCaprio had acted before at that point, but he was only dabbling in TV, playing bit parts in shows like Growing Pains and Roseanne and something called The New Lassie. (Today I learned that there was a Lassie reboot in 1989. Maybe you did too.)

But he hasn’t been on a single TV show*** since 1992, one year after he broke through on the silver screen with Critters 3.

Now, I don’t have the word count here to get into the minutiae of DiCaprio’s performance in Critters 3. I mean, it’s Critters 3. But I will go ahead and hit you with today’s thesis, which I buried so far in this piece that my editor**** would probably be upset: If you can bring your A-game to a movie like this, where a ragtag band of miscreants tries to prevent alien fuzzballs from taking over an apartment complex (and then the world?), you can deliver your best work in any brand of prestige drama you choose. In other words, if you can make it there (direct-to-video genre fare), you’ll make it anywhere (everything else).

And that’s exactly what young Leonardo does. He may have only been 15 years old, but the boy was not sleepwalking through his first movie role! I don’t know if he was putting his acting chops on display exactly, but he plays both the stepson of a scummy landlord and the (young) love interest of the main protagonist. And for someone who couldn’t legally drive at the time, I think he does a pretty good job in all respects.

The wildest thing about all this is how quickly DiCaprio’s star rose from here. Just two years later, this young man was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. And then four years after that, he was the male lead in one of the biggest movies of the century (Titanic), which pretty much made him one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Which is what he still is 24 years later.

Was Critters 3 the proving ground that DiCaprio needed to showcase his undeniable acting talents? Who’s to say? But the moral of the story, reader, is to always take your assignment seriously.

* I am not going to count Johnny Depp’s role in A Nightmare on Elm Street or Kevin Bacon’s role in Friday the 13th on this list because, even though they were slumming it in theory, those films are very good and became iconic. Not exactly the same thing.

** Critters 3 is actually pretty good, but it’s still Critters 3, you know?

*** SNL doesn’t count, nerd.

**** John is still on paternity leave, so I did not make him edit this piece. In fact, he might not read it at all. I guess we’ll find out.

Critters 3 is now streaming on HBO Max, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.