The value of gun-toting film stars

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OLD habits may well die hard. In 2000 Bruce Willis—true to his characters perhaps—argued that restricting firearms would leave “bad guys” as the only people with guns. Mr Willis puts his acting where his mouth is. Since then the American actor has appeared in 53 films, handling guns on-screen in 28 of them.

But gun-toting may bring actors more than just moral satisfaction. The number of different guns an actor has handled in films is strongly correlated with Ulmer scores, which measure an actor’s bankability—or ability to draw financing—on a scale from 0 to 300. This trend holds even when controlling for the total number of acting credits. Denzel Washington seems to hold a different gun in each movie in which he stars.

Nonetheless, this relationship is far from iron-clad. Christian Slater, who has starred in movies with no-nonsense titles like “Assassin’s Bullet” and “Bullet to the Head”, commands an Ulmer score of just 124, despite the 40 unique types of gun he has handled in his acting career. Tom Hanks has earned a meteoric score of 281, the highest in our sample of 72 actors, without the use of much weaponry—wielding just 23 in his illustrious career. A lot of bang does not always translate into more buck.