In Germany, they have great difficulty with anything that smacks of cultism or messianic leadership. You can't talk about leadership in its charismatic forms.
Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him.
People often think that you get the most of everything from having your face on the screen but its really, like musicians, when you hit the road. It's also where the most fun is, the adrenaline of it every night, giving this incredibly well rehearsed charismatic version of yourself every night and people hopefully loving you.
When we find ourselves in groups or with charismatic individuals, we might do things we wouldn't ordinarily do.
Bill Veeck was a charismatic and somewhat eccentric owner-fan during the post-WWII years.
Most people think of leaders as being these outgoing, very visible, and charismatic people, which I find to be a very narrow perception. The key challenge for managers today is to get beyond the surface of your colleagues. You might just find that you have introverts embedded within your organization who are natural-born leaders.
We are all seduced by charismatic people, whether it's in your office or in the bus or in the train. There are people who just, like, come through the door, and everybody turns around and looks at them and feels drawn to them.
People who study the way religions develop have shown that if you have a charismatic teacher, and you don't have an institution develop around that teacher within about a generation to transmit succession within the group, the movement just dies.
I met Jack Nicholson when I was about 10 at a party of my uncle's, and it wasn't so much that I knew his films because I was small, but he wore sunglasses inside at night and I thought that must mean he was very important and was suitably star struck by his charismatic presence.