From Edgerton To Kinnaman, Your Guide To Hollywood’s Many Joels

Edgerton has actually been bouncing around for awhile, but Red Sparrow is easily his biggest role to date. He stars as Nate Nash, a CIA agent who mixes it up with Jennifer Lawrence‘s Russian sex-spy. In the same way that J-Law is not playing Marvel’s Black Widow, Edgerton is not playing Hawkeye in the movie, though he looks and sounds exactly like Jeremy Renner. It’s weird!

He previously starred in The Great Gatsby, 2011’s The Thing and surprisingly was Owen Lars (Luke’s Uncle) in Star Wars: Episode III. Surprisingly because I’ve seen that movie a dozen times and apparently blacked out whenever he was on screen. Also, you wouldn’t recognize him because he was under pounds of makeup, but he played the Orc Cop in Netflix’s Bright. I’m not even joking when I say that right up until I started writing this list, I thought that role was played by Jai Courtney (see below).

Where to stream Bright

Joel Kinnaman is actually on the verge of breaking out of his Joel-hole with his recent, ab-errific turn in Netflix’s Altered Carbon. But before that, the Swedish actor was probably best known — and I say “best known” while fully understanding that you may have vaguely remembered a tall white man hanging around in some scenes — for his roles on The Killing and House of Cards. He also starred in Suicide Squad with Jai Courtney, which frankly was a really big problem for me.

Where to stream Altered Carbon

This is partially unfair to Jai Courtney because he’s worked hard to escape his inherent Joel-ness, and is also not actually named Joel. But boy, I’ll tell you, starring in Jack Reacher (an off-brand Mission: Impossible), the Divergent series (an off-brand Hunger Games), A Good Day To Die Hard (an off-brand Die Hard sequel), and Termintor: Genisys (as Kyle Reese, the most generic dude in the history of the Terminator franchise) did not help things. No sir, Mr. Courtney, they did not.

Still, Jai-oel has made significant strides towards not looking like a blur in recent years: first as Captain Boomerang, one of the few redeemable parts of Suicide Squad; and a pretty hilarious role as Amy Poehler’s boyfriend on Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. He did not, however, star as the Orc Cop in Bright, and that’s totally my bad.

Where to stream Suicide Squad

Jeremy Renner, like most of the guys on this list, has a name that starts with “J” which is probably part of the problem — but as the elder statesman (he was born three years earlier than Joel Edgerton, though I dare you to try and prove they’re not twins), he has had more of an opportunity to cement himself as the defining cinematic Joel working today.

Renner has consistently been “that other guy who is also there.” He was also there in two Mission: Impossible movies, though they seem to have forgotten about him for the new one. He was also there in The Bourne Legacy, a movie so forgettable the title character didn’t bother to show up. And most importantly he was also there in several Avengers movies, including the one where he spent most of the time brain-wiped, the one where he left to go live on a farm, and the Captain America movie where he came back from his farm, which was huge for the character but nobody cared because Spider-Man showed up.

What’s crazy about this is that Renner has been nominated for multiple Academy Awards for The Hurt Locker and The Town, as well as starring in Oscar nominated movies like The Arrival and American Hustle. Yet after this weekend people are still going to ask him what it was like working with Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow.

Where to stream The Hurt Locker

This is going to sound like a joke, but I accidentally pasted “Garrett Joel Hedlund” into Google and it gave me search results for Joel Edgerton. Seriously, try it yourself.

Anyway, Hollywood has been trying to make Garrett Hedlund a thing for years now in failed blockbusters like Tron: Legacy and Pan. He’s moved on to more indie fare like Mudbound and Steven Soderbergh’s experimental TV series Mosaic, which is nice, but on a personal level, I frequently mix him up with Charlie Hunnam (see below). He, and Hunnam, are part of Hollywood’s Blonde Joels, the Joels who aren’t beefy interchangeable brunette dudes; they’re ripped, blonde dudes.

Different, and yet somehow the same, just like how his name starts with “G,” which is basically a “J,” which is what “Joel” starts with.

Where to stream Mudbound

Charlie Hunnam, like Jai Courtney, has made a significant effort to break with his Joel-ness — except he went in the wrong direction. Hunnam was in multiple projects including Queer as Folk and Undeclared before breaking out as the star of Sons of Anarchy. He turned down the lead role in the Fifty Shades trilogy which, despite turning out to be the great comedies of our time, was a strong, non-Joel like choice.

He followed this up, though, with some classic Joel moves: starring as the most boring part of Pacific Rim; getting overshadowed by Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston in Crimson Peak; and then inexplicably deciding his comeback was King Arthur: Legend of The Sword.

Still, it’s not all Joel all the way down for Charlie Hunnam. Critics liked him in The Lost City of Z, and he looks far more like Brad Pitt than any of the other Joels, which has got to be pretty great for him. Plus, he’s starring in Red Sparrow this weekend with Jennifer Lawrence, which is huge. Or was he in Bright? Anyway, I can’t remember.

Where to stream Sons of Anarchy