The 2018 Vanity Fair Hollywood Portfolio: 12 Extraordinary Stars, One Momentous Year
A super-stellar lineup, including Oprah Winfrey, Robert De Niro, Nicole Kidman, and Reese Witherspoon—plus, one special cameo—took advantage of their downtime during the shoot of a historic V.F. cover.
Cover photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
by James Wolcott
Styled by Jessica Diehl
In the quarter-century since Vanity Fair launched the Hollywood Issue, show business has changed in fundamental ways, as have magazines. But a star-studded, foldout cover remains a surefire thrill. This year’s portfolio goes inside the cover’s creation, which took place in L.A. and New York as Annie Leibovitz photographed 12 of film and TV’s most iconic actors—with a non-actor corralled for the shoot for his last V.F. hurrah.
The films and TV shows represented by the actors in this year’s Hollywood Portfolio—which for the first time offers a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot—took the #MeToo movement in stride, offering strong women in leading roles, as well as strong men supporting them. Here we have Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman summoning the women’s battle cry of Big Little Lies alongside Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the indispensable sidekick to The Post heroine Katharine Graham. There’s also Claire Foy and Gal Gadot, embodiments of their formidable characters, the Queen and Wonder Woman, and one possible future female president in the mix. Movies have always thrived on relevance, and this year’s cover stars don’t hesitate to make a statement about the times we’re living in and the changes that need to happen.
OPRAH WINFREY, actor, producer, philanthropist.
15 films, including A Wrinkle in Time (2018); one Academy Award.
Oprah enrings the earth. Television host, author, producer, magazine publisher, powerhouse actress (The Color Purple, Beloved, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Selma, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks), influencer without equal, and the first black woman to win the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award, Winfrey is more than the sum of her accomplishments—she’s a gravitational field that doesn’t press down but lifts up. Everything she does is dedicated to betterment without being didactic or, worse, corny. Will Oprah’s next act be a presidential bid?
