Buffy The Vampire Slayer

It’s time, fading starlets, to take that awful leap

Fame, that cruel mistress, sooner or later puts the bite on almost every celebrity, writes David Dale.

A long-running television series is said to "jump the shark" when it uses gimmicks to recover a lost audience, even though everyone knows the show’s time is up. People can jump the shark, too. Hollywood seems to feel it has just happened to Julia Roberts. And the fins are in the water for Nicole Kidman.

The scary thing is that Roberts predicted her doom six years ago. In the movie Notting Hill, she played an American actress who tries to persuade a bunch of Londoners she has an unhappy life. She complains the media mock her when a relationship breaks up, she had two "rather painful" operations to achieve her charismatic appearance, and "one day, not long from now, my looks will go, they will discover I can’t act, and I will become some sad middle-aged woman who looks a bit like someone who was famous for a while".

And that’s the story of Ocean’s 12, newly released on DVD. There she plays the wife of the con man Danny Ocean. She looks washed-out and unwell.

The shark-jumping moment comes when her character impersonates the actress Roberts - whom she resembles - as part of an attempted robbery. It’s so pathetic it almost succeeds in being funny. But doing the scene signals that, in Hollywood’s mind, Roberts has reached a career point best described as sheer desperation. As we watch we feel sorry for her. The critics didn’t.

Of course, Roberts will make more movies. But now that she has jumped, it’s unlikely she’ll ever again be the drawcard she was in Notting Hill.

The concept was introduced by the US TV writer Jon Hein in 1997. On his website (www.jumptheshark.com) Hein says: "It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favourite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on ... it’s all downhill."

He got the idea from the 1970s series Happy Days. Faced with falling ratings, the writers had the rocker Fonzie put on water skis and ride over a shark (wearing his trademark leather jacket). Instead of bringing back the viewers, it told them the show was dying. Happy Days disappeared a few months later, and the phrase became synonymous with "soon to be cancelled".

Other JTS moments on TV were when Lois Lane slept with Superman in Lois and Clark (it took eight years, and a show called Desperate Housewives, for Teri Hatcher to recover); when Chandler married Monica in Friends and when Willow became a lesbian in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You could say that a classic Australian case was when they let off a bomb in the deli and killed half the characters in Number 96. And when Shaun Micallef became Sigrid Thornton’s love interest in SeaChange. And when the lesbian Dr Charlotte became pregnant in All Saints.

As for people, the Hollywood consensus was that Demi Moore made the jump when she had her breasts enlarged so she could be convincing in the movie Strip Tease in 1996. Her ex-husband Bruce Willis completed his leap when he appeared as a kindly killer in The Whole Ten Yards, the sequel to The Whole Nine Yards. Willis confirms his JTS status in Ocean’s 12, doing one of his standard cameo appearances and playing Willis, who mistakes Mrs Ocean for Roberts. He is now making Die Hard 4.

Arnold Schwarzenegger made the jump in the unnecessary Terminator 3, when he left you wondering why a robot with artificial skin would have wrinkles. Ben Affleck jumped twice the same year (2003) - by wearing a seriously stupid red leather suit in Daredevil (being a blind superhero does not excuse the choice) and by appearing with his then sweetheart, Jennifer Lopez, in Gigli. Sylvester Stallone jumped at Rocky V (1990). Gwyneth Paltrow jumped when she put on the fat suit in Shallow Hal (2001).

Now the key question: has it happened to Kidman? There is evidence to suggest Hollywood is starting to perceive her as a jumper. The poster for her movie The Interpreter features Sean Penn as the central image. Only a corner of Kidman’s blonde head is visible. In her previous movie, The Stepford Wives, her face was the entire poster. Do the producers of The Interpreter think her image is now a turn-off?

And Kidman is the butt of a cruel joke in Be Cool, the latest comeback of the chronic jumper John Travolta. Playing a producer trying to persuade a would-be actor not to punch him, Travolta says: "I’ve got you an audition for a Nicole Kidman picture." Later we glimpse this very bad actor next to Kidman in the poster for a film called Samoan Rendezvous. She seems to have become symbolic of actresses who make foolish script choices.

Clearly Kidman is aware of this. Last weekend the US movie website IMDB quoted her as saying she could tell halfway through making The Stepford Wives it would be a flop. "It went completely awry," she said. "I just don’t think they took the time to get the script right."

Such belated frankness looks like the result of urgent advice from a publicist. It might keep Kidman’s feet away from the jaws of death - for a while. But once the Zeitgeist has passed the tipping point, there’s no going back.