Death Of The Working-Class Hero?

I was reading a book about Steve McQueen, and they mentioned how most of the heroes were working-class... Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, John Wayne, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen himself and others...

When was the last working-class hero in Hollywood? I'm referring to their on-screen persona, and not their upbringing.

Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies comes to mind.

Yeah John McClane is definitely the first that comes to mind.
Sadly though, in the more recent Die Hard movies he's become an invincible superhero who goes on a relentless march of victory, even taking out helicopters, fighter planes and gunships using nothing but fire hydrants and his own muscle power


More recent movies though... not sure really.
Maybe more borderline independent movies like Attack The Block, Moon, Danny Boyle's Sunshine.


There's also one or two wannabes appeared recently in Dwayne Johnson movies like Skyscraper and Rampage... but they're still OTT, or they want to be Die Hard with extra explosions and CGI.


Seems movies like Die Hard certainly have died over the years. As I said, even John McClane is now an invincible bulletproof superman.

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The first actor I thought of was Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. It seems that Denzel Washington is usually an everyman in his films.

I meant specific actors (unless one guy played all these roles!)

ah ok, misunderstood..

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These guys come to mind: Tom Hardy, J.K. Simmons, Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Adam Driver.

Taron Egerton is an outside shout. Plays working class characters in Kingsmen, Eddie the Eagle, I guess Robin Hood?? And at the beginning of his life Elton John in Rocketman. So he’s a bit of an outside shout, but the whole message of Kingsman and the “cleaning up his working class aesthetic” thing undermines it a bit.

Also John Boyega in a more literal sense in Attack the Block and Detroit, and an abstract sense in Star Wars.

Ya damn right I am.

You could be one, too, but only if you eat your Wheaties.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza