In the year that marks the 35th anniversary of one of the seminal summer movies in American film history, Hollywood’s approach to the casting of its movie heroes seems, well, a little un-American.

In 1977, Star Wars brought to life a different kind of American hero. Granted, it was set in “a galaxy far, far away”, but Harrison Ford was a space cowboy, the natural fusion of the heroes of the Wild West who had dominated the motion pictures of the 1930s and 1940s and the antihero who emerged in the 1950s and had become an almost iconic character by the early 1970s.

This summer and next, there will be more movie heroes, many in costume. However, the three most revered American comic-book heroes of recent vintage will be less Yankee than audiences are used to: Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman will be played by British actors.

In previous incarnations, they were played by Americans. Christopher Reeve and then Brandon Routh were Superman; Toby Maguire was Spider-Man; and several American actors, including Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney got to dress up in tights for versions of Batman. Now Welshman Christian Bale is taking on Batman for a third time (in The Dark Knight Rises), while American-born, British-bred Andrew Garfield is slinging webs in The Amazing Spider-Man. England’s Henry Cavill recently wrapped production in Vancouver as Superman in 2013’s Man of Steel.

Heroes, antiheroes, and pretty boys

If the male American movie star is fading from screens, he has had a good run. In the early years of the talking picture, the American Dream—Hollywood version—was mostly pursued by unpretentious young men from the back roads of the U.S. Henry Fonda came to California from Nebraska, Gary Cooper from Montana, Jimmy Stewart from rural Pennsylvania, and Clark Gable from rural Ohio. John Wayne’s family had moved from Iowa to California when he was a boy. The newly minted studios recognized, in the years during and immediately following the Great Depression, that heroes were needed, and those actors and films like The Plainsman, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Grapes of Wrath helped to restore the idea that American individualism and valour were alive and well.

By the early 1970s, they had been replaced by another group of young American actors working in a different kind of film and from more diverse backgrounds. Like 1950s stars Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Dean, they were mostly followers of Method acting and teachers Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. They were taught to leave themselves behind to become the character. The talents of Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro again helped to shape the way the world looked at American movies. The films were darker and the images less heroic, but the movies were no less popular.

Today, those actors are mostly playing secondary roles when they work at all, and a third wave of American male dramatic actors are nearing their best-before date. George Clooney is 51, and Tom Cruise turns 50 this year. Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt will hit the half-century mark next year, and Robert Downey Jr. the year after that.

Because studios have targeted audiences between the ages of 18 and 34 throughout much of the history of American films and have, for the most part, used male actors within that age group as box-office bait, the question becomes: who will take their place? (American women still dominate the A list when it comes to taking female roles in American movies. Led by actors who established themselves early as either child stars or teenagers—such as Kirsten Dunst, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, and Natalie Portman—they would appear to be good bets when it comes to dramatic leads.)

The influence of cinematic imperialism

Adding to the confusion is the increased importance of foreign box office for American movies. As recently as the beginning of the new millennium, American studios expected to make most of their money in the North American market. European audiences usually watched homegrown films. Now a cinematic imperialism has led to many American movies making more money in foreign theatres than they do domestically.

However, that imperialism doesn’t seem to include American actors. The British are coming, and the Australians aren’t far behind. And although they have been working in Hollywood films for many years, they have usually complemented American actors. Michael Caine, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, and Laurence Olivier seldom played Americans.

They knew their place, and so, too, did anyone listening to their accents. Now a new actor has emerged, one who can easily move, with the help of dialect coaches, from his own accent to an American one. It’s reminiscent, in a way, of the alien “pod people” who occupied human bodies in the 1956 cult hit Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its 1978 remake.

Last year, Warrior director Gavin O’ Connor told reporters that when he went looking for American actors in their thirties to play the lead roles of mixed-martial-arts fighters, he had little luck. So he hired British and Australian actors, and acclaimed dialect coach Don Wadsworth taught them how to sound like residents of Pittsburgh.

“I promise you, I went through all the Americans. I did. They were very particular qualities that I was looking for for these guys, and I couldn’t find them here. So I don’t know what it says about it. I don’t mean to denigrate anybody, but there’s something going on in our culture today. There are a lot of American ‘dolly’ actors, and it works in some ways, but for the movies I’m making, I’ve had a hard time. Even in [his 2008 film] Pride and Glory I went to Ireland. I got Colin [Farrell] from there.”

For Warrior, O’Connor chose Englishman Tom Hardy—who has gone on to play the villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises—and paired him with Australian Joel Edgerton, who stayed stateside to take on another American role, that of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

The play's the thing

So what happened? Well, for one thing, the Method hasn’t really caught on in the 21st century. Instead, the best of the young British and Australian actors are coming from stagecraft schools, including Britain’s hallowed Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). British producer Andrea Calderwood told the BBC in a 2010 interview that craft and technique are the key things American filmmakers are looking for when it comes to acting.

“Genuinely, it’s about an acting craft…British actors have a particular level of training…a particular level of technique that they have that American producers and directors are delighted to find.”

Who are these foreigners who have their own version of the American dream? Any list would probably include Hardy, Farrell, and Edgerton, as well as Bale, Cavill, and Garfield. Canadian Ryan Gosling would likely be included, as would British-born but NIDA–trained Sam Worthington—the lead actor in the megahit Avatar—Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe, Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, and X-Men: First Class’s Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.

Who speaks for the American actor? Not, it would appear, his union. According to Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) spokesperson Pamela Greenwalt, the union has “no policy” when it comes to foreign actors working on U.S. films. She says it encourages a “diverse landscape”.

If SAG-AFTRA is not concerned, it could be because some American actors still have box-office clout. Cruise, Depp, and Will Smith can still “open” a movie, and there are other Americans, like The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Channing Tatum, who seem destined to draw audiences to megaplexes for a while. However, both box-office leadership and critical acclaim could very well come to be dominated by foreigners by the end of the decade.

Keep 'em laughing

There is some hope for American film actors. They are still the kings of comedy, which will always win its share of the box office. Most comedy actors have traditionally come out of standup or American television. And unlike dramas, American comedies depend on the American box office, because comedy has never translated particularly well outside of the U.S.

British director Kirk Jones, who made his debut with the comedy Waking Ned Devine and directed the recent romantic comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting, says that he prefers working on American comedies because he likes the approach of American actors. “I think television is strong here, and TV comedies are particularly good. I think the Brits are more highly trained and disciplined, but I find comedians here to be stronger in many ways and I enjoy working with American actors. I find them very relaxed on-set.”

Relaxed for the moment, perhaps, but will the industry begin to panic once it becomes clear that the “America first” approach taken by most U.S. politicians has been abandoned by Hollywood? It wouldn’t be too surprising if, by the end of this decade, most of the people who are helping to sell tickets to U.S. films were trained elsewhere.

If that does occur, will politicians wonder if American movies, which throughout their history have been a form of propaganda, are somehow tainted? Could the “diverse landscape” be seen as less diverse if there are no Americans in lead roles?

Taylor Kitsch, the B.C. actor who may eventually be among the foreign actors on the box-office top 10, makes the point that Americans are unaware of the pod people in their midst. “I love the fact that Christian Bale has an Oscar,” he said recently, “and when he made his acceptance speech, suddenly everyone learned that he is British.”

Or as Brooke Adams’s character says in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: “I keep seeing these people, all recognizing each other. Something is passing between them all, some secret. It’s a conspiracy, I know it.”