In 1963, Clive Barnes, a London correspondent for the New York Times, profiled ‘Britain's new actors – rougher, tougher, angrier’, identifying a “‘new wave” of naturalistic players [who] are anti-heroes – on stage and off’ who were undermining the ‘old-school-tie traditions of London's theatrical Establishment’. A ‘new type of Englishman’, rebellious and anti-authoritarian, had emerged, achieving international prominence. The object of Barnes's attention was a group of working-class male actors – Alan Bates, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Terence Stamp – which, at the time and subsequently, actively promoted themselves as a new, uninhibited and irreverent generation. Harris contended that they embodied ‘a fine madness. We weren't afraid to be different. So we were always dangerous; dangerous to meet in the street, in a restaurant, and dangerous to see on stage or in a film’, which, characteristically, conflates on- and off-screen image.

Although at root the product of the 1944 Education Act that provided universal secondary education which afforded working-class children the opportunities denied to their parents’ generation, these actors were shaped by and helped shape two separate but interconnected cultural myths: ‘in the 1950s it was the aggressive ambition of the Angry Young Man; in the 1960s it was Swinging London’. In cinematic terms, it was the British New Wave (1959–63) films that depicted the Angry Young Man, extending the reach of that myth into the early 1960s. By contrast, Swinging London (1963–7) was a more diffuse phenomenon that traded on lifestyle rather than particular cinematic representations. Caine, and especially Stamp, became iconic Swinging London figures, featured in David Bailey's Box of Pin-Ups (May 1965), which incorporated male actors into a wider grouping of pop stars, fashion designers, models and photographers that formed a new classless meritocracy.Although the New Wave films depicted the north and Swinging London the metropolis, both emphasised changing social structures, new opportunities and the rise of the young working class that was not prepared to accept its allotted place.

This chapter analyses in what ways this generation of male stars – there were pronounced differences as well as commonalities – represented these transformations and how they changed perceptions of screen acting, masculinity and stardom. My approach to stardom follows Paul McDonald's lead by emphasising its industrial context, the importance of attending to business practices and stars’ value as capital assets that can be marketed and monetised.