"He grows up to become Magneto and is played by Michael Fassbender, the lean Irish actor who the buzzmeisters say will become a big star from this film. Heaven help him. He was so good in Fish Tank, Inglourious Basterds, and Jane Eyre (2011); must he play Magneto to become a star? For that matter, Raven/Mystique is played by Jennifer Lawrence, just nominated for a best actress Oscar. Now she's a blue shape-shifter with scales. The price of stardom."
—Roger Ebert, reviewing X-Men: First Class and commentating on the trope
"These days, so many [young actors] are stars before they even make their first film and you know when you look at them on the screen that they are looking in a mirror, absolutely in a mirror, and it's a beginning of a lifelong romance. And their hand is underneath the mirror out of shot, because that's what they want, to be rich and famous immediately, which is terribly sad and extremely dangerous. The most dangerous thing that a young actor or actress can do is believe their own publicity, because shelf life, 10 years? He'll start 20 or 22 or, three or four, if you haven't got it. If you've got it, the right instincts, the right imagination, the right powers of invention, if you have some foundations of experience and versatility, that's fine, you will go on, you will last, but if you haven't, and the majority has not got these qualities, and you always play the same part, basically, or slight variations, and that's all you can do, you'll be through in 10 years or even five, when the public will eventually say, 'Well, they're always doing the same thing.' And the moment that happens, it's the beginning of the end. You start at the top of the ladders, only one way to go."
