Kristen Bell Became A Mega-Star Without Anyone Noticing

By Joel Keller @joelkeller
Published Nov. 22, 2017, 3:30 p.m. ET

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With yesterday’s news that The Good Place got an early third season pickup, a notion hit me like a lightning bolt: Somehow, without us noticing, Kristen Bell has become a mega-star.

Does that sentence read weird to you? It does to me. Don’t get me wrong: I like Kristen Bell a lot. There aren’t a lot of actors out there who are equally known for the comedic, dramatic, and musical skills, and it seems like her public persona isn’t far off from her private one. But if you take a close look, here’s what she’s done over the last few years:

Starred in two hit movie franchises (Frozen and Bad Moms).

Not only that, but Frozen is the highest-grossing animated movie of all-time. One thing I didn’t realize — mainly because I was kid-less when the movie came out in 2013 — is that Bell carries the movie. Yes, Idina Menzel belted out “Let It Go,” and got so famous John Travolta mangled her name during the Oscars. But Bell was the one who carries the comedic load, and was likely the only one allowed to improvise (how many Disney films have lines like “foot size doesn’t matter” and “That was like some crazy trust exercise”?). Now she and Menzel seem to be getting in the mode to record Frozen 2.

She starred in two successful shows that are loved by TV geeks. 

While I wasn’t a big Veronica Mars watcher, I get why the TV geek set loved it: it was funny, it had a good continuing story, and there was just enough intrigue to keep people watching. Mike Schur’s The Good Place is similar, and it lets Bell lean into phrases like “someone royally forked up.”

Speaking of Veronica Mars, do you think Rob Thomas would have been able to raise the money for the movie via Kickstarter if he didn’t have Bell’s participation? She was the driving force behind the campaign, and the hilarious pitch video they created for it helped things along.

She appeared on national TV as Thomas Magnum. 

She donned Tom Selleck’s signature early ’80s curly wig, porn ‘stache and Hawaiian shirt from Magnum, P.I. and went on the Halloween episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Not only that, she also helped guest host Dave Grohl (dressed as David Letterman) mash up “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” with “Enter Sandman.”

She’s not an asshole. 

2017 has given us more than enough examples of celebrities that are assholes, or at least engage in assholish behavior. But Bell, along with husband Dax Shepard, have done a really solid job of showing that they’re regular folks — as regular as two famous actors can be, at least — who aren’t taking anything seriously. Bell expressed mock disgust when her daughter asked her to dress up as Elsa for Halloween instead of her own Frozen character, Anna:

Then, when Hurricane Irma stranded her at a hotel in Orlando (she was shooting a movie in the city), she not only entertained seniors who were evacuated from a nursing home to the hotel, but then went to middle schools acting as shelters and entertained the people who had left their homes behind. Here she is singing “For the First Time in Forever” at one of those shelters:

So, yes, Kristen Bell is a mega-star. No, we don’t know how that happened. But, unless we find out something bad later, it seems like this couldn’t have happened to a better person. Sometimes things work out in Hollywood, don’t they?

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

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