Stars of awards season frontrunners and streaming obsessions, these 12 rising talents have found their footing as Hollywood, at large, charts a new course.
They have broken out on premium cable (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri and Yellowjackets Jasmin Savoy Brown) and in the specialty theatrical space (Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Stephanie Hsu). For some, like Elvis‘ Austin Butler, this moment has been over a decade in the making, while stars like The Fabelmans‘ Gabrielle LaBelle found themsleves fronting studio film as one of the their professional credits. Up next, they are working with top directors and joining some of Hollywood’s biggest tentpoles. Or, they are behind their own star vehicles, like Meg Stalter and her A24 pilot.
This year’s class join a list that, in the past, has included Marvel faces Florence Pugh and Jonathan Majors, Atlanta’s LaKeith Stanfield, and recent Oscar winner Ariana DeBose. Says Butler, “I just always tried to keep my sights on what I wanted to do.”
Darren Barnet
Never Have I Ever marked a full-circle moment for Barnet, who worked several odd jobs before landing onscreen, one of which was a long stint building lights for film sets. “There’s probably at least a 40 percent chance that one of the lights that we use on set I built with my own hands,” says the Los Angeles native of shooting the Mindy Kaling Netflix show, which will soon end with its fourth season.
Barnet began acting in earnest in college, eventually landing small parts on series like Agents of SHIELD, but post-Never Have I Ever, he is looking at a schedule full of splashy projects, including the Jake Gyllenhaal-led Road House remake and video game adaptation Gran Turismo.
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Leonardo DiCaprio.”
THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER I MOST IDENTIFIED WITH GROWING UP “Spider-Man.”
BEST ADVICE I HAVE RECEIVED ABOUT WORKING IN ENTERTAINMENT “To find the color of your rainbow and follow it.”
AND IT CAME FROM “Jim Carrey. He randomly popped up next to me, [at a party]. And I swear it was one of those moments when the music seemed to just fade away. He took the time to talk to me for like, 5 to 10 minutes, and he goes, ‘Just find your color of the rainbow, man, and always follow it.’ And then he smiled at me and got up and, I’m not lying, danced into the crowd. At that time, in my early 20s, I was like, ‘Man that is some Jim Carrey ass advice.’ I feel like the older I’ve gotten and the more I’ve been through, that advice rings more clear to me.”
Jasmin Savoy Brown
“I remember when I was younger reading some quote that said, ‘It takes 10 years to become an overnight success’ — I didn’t really understand it until this year,” says Brown, who this past spring alone starred alongside Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis in Yellowjackets as well as the Scream reboot. Prior to this year, Brown’s credits were a string of recurring roles in series like For the People and The Leftovers.
Of Scream, which proved massively popular with $140 million in grosses at the worldwide box office, Brown says, “I’m really proud of Melissa [Barrera], Jenna [Ortega], Mason [Gooding], and I for stepping into such a white space — a historically white franchise and also horror being a white space, in general — and bringing our own brand of fun and humor to it while also respecting everyone that came before us.”
Up next is the second season of the Showtime breakout and another Scream movie. While Broadway is on the bucket list, Brown also is hoping for some lighter fare in her future. “I would really love to do a pure comedy where there’s no blood, no death, no screaming, no crying,” she laughs.
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Carey Mulligan and Viola Davis. If I worked with them at the same time, I might have to retire.”
THE ALBUM I AM OBSESSED WITH RIGHT NOW “Salt by Angie McMahon. It came out a couple of years ago but it’ll forever be my favorite album.”
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “A singer.”
Austin Butler
The chasm between teen actor and Oscar hopeful can be an impossible leap, but Butler has stuck the landing. After making the Nickelodeon and Disney rounds, the actor began to make appearances on the call sheets for the likes of Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino.
As a teenager, Butler was introduced to the films of James Dean (“I watched East of Eden five days in a row,” he says.”) Dean was the gateway to performers like Dennis Hopper and Montgomery Cliff, along with the Robert De Niro-Martin Scorsese team-ups of the 70s. “At a young age, watching all those films, I knew the type of work that I was most drawn to, but I didn’t have the opportunity. And to be honest, I didn’t have the skill,” explains the Orange County native.
Baz Luhrman’s Elvis is Butler’s full entry into the echelon of all-encompassing roles that he long pined after. Butler, whose upcoming credits include Apple TV+ WWII series Masters of the Air and the Dune sequel, says, “I just always tried to keep my sights on what I wanted to do.”
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “A chef.”
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Paul Thomas Anderson.”
THE SONG OR ALBUM I AM OBSESSED WITH RIGHT NOW “I’ve been filming in Cincinnati and I’ve been listening to this song every night when I drive home by Sturgill Simpson called ‘The Promise’. It’s a great driving song.”
Diego Calva
On his first major Hollywood film set, Calva was flanked by 800 extras — and Brad Pitt. “It was the first day my character had entered a set, so me and my character were in the same situation. The surprised face I have [in the movie] is not acting. That is real,” says Calva, who stars opposite Pitt and Margot Robbie in Damien Chazelle’s Hollywood epic Babylon. For the role, the actor studied the 1920s time period in which the film is set, focusing on the experiences Los Angeles’ Mexican population.
Calva, whose credits include the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, established himself in his native Mexico City. After exploring opportunities behind the camera — everything from holding the boom mic to directing short films — a college professor urged him to try acting. In the future, Calva says he wants to prioritize working with Latin American talent. “When a Latin American actor has some success, people from our countries stop calling maybe thinking we went to Hollywood and aren’t going to come back,” he says, “I want to act in our movies and tell our stories.”
TV SHOWS OR FILMS I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF (BUT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH) “Close from Lukas Dhont, Everything Everywhere All at Once, [and] The Menu.“
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “A chef! Or a Pokémon master.”
Ayo Edebiri
The Bear, following a fine-dining chef who comes home to run his family’s Chicago sandwich shop after the death of his brother, was the surprise hit of the summer — and, along with the “Yes, Chef” phenomenon, brought plenty of attention for Edebiri, who plays eager young sous chef Sydney. In prep for the show, Edebiri and co-star Jeremy Allen White went through extensive cooking training via culinary school and working in restaurants as line cooks.
Before The Bear, Edebiri’s eclectic résumé included stand-up comedian, writer on shows like What We Do in the Shadows and Dickinson, and voice on the Netflix animated series Big Mouth. “I don’t really think about genres as a dictator of what I do or what I can do,” Edebiri says.
Up next, she will return to the kitchen for The Bear‘s second season, which is currently being written (“I have no notes at all. I really trust the writers,” she says of hopes for her character.) On the horizon, there are also feature comedies Theater Camp — starring alongside Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, and Patti Harrison — and Orion’s Bottoms, which follows two unpopular queer high school students that start a fight club to have sex before graduation.
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Christopher Walken or Tony Shalhoub.”
THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER I MOST IDENTIFIED WITH GROWING UP “Chucky from Rugrats, lowkey. I was an asthmatic child.”
TV SHOWS OR FILMS I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF (BUT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH) “The most recent season of Atlanta is so good; I feel like people are sleeping on it. I love Triangle of Sadness, I’ve seen it twice already and I can’t wait to see it again.”
Stephanie Hsu
In college at NYU, Hsu joined an improv group, where she met future SNL standout Bowen Yang, who eventually got her an episode of Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens, on which she was directed by none other than Daniels, who helmed her break-out in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
“The Daniels and I specifically are a very ragtag bunch and want to make deep change in this industry,” says Hsu, “In terms of how people are treated, to having better equity like along the lines of on set, making sure that people behind the scenes are celebrated in a way that is meaningful, and to make sets greener and also to make art that really is meaningful to us, and that we think that the world needs.”
Hsu, whose upcoming Disney+ series American Born Chinese and David Leitch’s Fall Guy, says she hopes to develop her own work and take risks like the ones seen in Everything Everywhere. She says, “Everyone told all of us that it wouldn’t be possible to do what we were doing, and the fact that it has blown every expectation out of the water only proves the point that it’s still possible to surprise all of us, from studio heads to an audience.”
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “A retiree, homesteading on a coastal farm.”
THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER I MOST IDENTIFIED WITH GROWING UP “All the characters in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and also — wait this is not fictional — but I loved Muggsy Bogues because he was 5’1″ in the NBA.”
MOST HOLLYWOOD THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME “Recently at the Academy Gala, I step out of my fancy black car, and there’s like paparazzi and fans outside. A lot of this is all really new for me, and it was like the first time where someone was like, ‘Stephanie!’ A fan screamed my name. Then I walked onto the red carpet, and a photographer was like, ‘Lana? Lana Condor? Could you just step on the sticker?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ But, to be fair, my mom also thinks I look like Lana Condor. She literally texted me a photo once of Lana and was like, ‘You look like this woman.’ That moment was very Hollywood — the ups and downs in literally one minute.”
Moses Ingram
Barely two years after the release of her first Hollywood project, Netflix hit The Queen’s Gambit, Ingram has earned an Emmy nod, starred alongside top-tier talent and has a Star Wars role under her belt with the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi. “I feel like I’ve collected Infinity Stones,” says Ingram of the actors she has worked with. “Denzel [Washington], Frances McDormand, Ewan McGregor, the list goes on. It’s been amazing to learn so much from pros on set.”
When Ingram graduated from Baltimore School for the Arts, she couldn’t afford to enroll in a university full time. So she went to community college and worked odd jobs. “I would order the books that my friends were reading in school, and I would try to teach myself,” she recalls. On weekends, she’d go to auditions in New York City and enter performing arts competitions. She heard about the Yale School of Drama from a friend she met at one of those competitions (none other than Jonathan Majors), who encouraged her to apply. Not long after graduating, she got an audition for Queen’s Gambit.
“I remember I walked into the audition and I had this Dr. Seuss book called All the Places You’ll Go. I bought it for myself as a graduation present and I was using it as a folder,” she says. She’d intended to swap it out before she got there, but forgot. At the time, she was embarrassed. “But, I guess it was fitting, ultimately.”
Next up is a turn in the Apple TV+ adaptation of Lady in the Lake, which just wrapped filming in her hometown of Baltimore. Says Ingram, “It pulled me in so many directions as an actor — but also as a woman, in a really beautiful way.”
MOST HOLLYWOOD THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME “An airport ambush in Chicago. People knew what plane I was on, and what gate, and were just there waiting. They were able to tell who I was when I walked out, which is crazy.”
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “I’d like to think a chiropractor.”
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “I think Sophie Okonedo would be fun.”
Gabriel LaBelle
Being cast in The Fabelmans meant LaBelle would not only star in a Steven Spielberg film but that he’d be playing the real-life Spielberg. “It’s a very scary thing,” says LaBelle. “You don’t want to mess up and have everyone, including Steven, hate you for it.” Luckily, the actor has received raves since the film’s Toronto International Film Festival debut, where the movie earned a standing ovation and frontrunner status in this year’s best picture race.
Filming the movie, LaBelle acted opposite awards season regulars Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who play his onscreen mother and father. After an attempt to field advice, Dano simply told him: “You don’t need any advice.” LaBelle explains, “They really let me figure it out for myself.”
The Canadian actor also recently appeared in the Showtime series American Gigolo, but as for what’s next, The Fabelmans has changed LaBelle’s perception of what’s possible in his career: “Working with [Spielberg] is probably the most educational and rewarding experience I’ve ever had.”
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Judd Apatow and Tilda Swinton. Separate or together, whatever works best.”
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “Extremely lost and confused.”
THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER I MOST IDENTIFIED WITH GROWING UP “From 11 to 15, I definitely felt like Seth from Superbad.”
Daryl McCormack
The actor grew up in the Midland region of Ireland — “best known for good farming,” he explains — with very few television channels and a handful of DVDs that he would watch on repeat. “Panic Room, the David Fincher movie, The Elephant Man, and Midnight Express,” he says, listing off his then favorites. He laughs: “They’re always relatively bleak, as well.” When McCormack’s paternal grandfather, who runs a theater company in the U.S., took him to a local staging of A Raisin in the Sun, his interest in performance was kick-started, leading him to drama school in Dublin. A West End debut in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore was followed by a role in the final seasons of Peaky Blinders, but it was during the throes of the pandemic that McCormack broke big.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a two-hander that sees McCormack starring as an empathetic sex worker, holding his own opposite Oscar winner Emma Thompson. A Sundance premiere was swapped for a virtual debut when the film festival had an eleventh-hour cancellation; nonetheless, the movie received raves and a pick-up from Searchlight Pictures, boosting his stateside status. “It managed my expectations and allowed me to really enjoy the moment and the process alongside all those jobs,” says McCormack of coming up in an industry that continues to grapple with the aftermath of COVID-19. “I never really want to get ahead of myself or be thinking about how something’s gonna be received whilst I’m in the process of making something.” The actor recently debuted Apple series Bad Sisters, and will appear opposite Richard E. Grant in thriller The Tutor and Ruth Wilson in Showtime series The Woman in the Wall.
THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER I MOST IDENTIFIED WITH GROWING UP “Mowgli from The Jungle Book.”
MOST HOLLYWOOD THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME “I live a very un-Hollywood lifestyle. I think meeting Emma for the first time and going for a walk with her in the park was surreal, but not super Hollywood. We were in mucky boots, walking through a muddy park and just talking.”
Amber Midthunder
Prey, in which Midthunder stars as a skilled Comanche warrior, became the most-watched premiere in Hulu’s history. But as a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, Midthunder’s highest priority on the Predator prequel has been emphasizing the authenticity and Indigenous representation of the film. “Every time you’re representing a culture or people, you bear a responsibility to do it well. That effort was definitely there,” notes the New Mexico native.
On-set, she was a part of an all-Indigenous cast for the first time in her career. “I had not had a work experience that was like that, ever,” says Midthunder, whose previous credits include FX series Legion. “It really gave me a different sense of home and comfort in shooting a movie.” Going forward, Midthunder is excited for the future of Native representation in Hollywood.
More recently, Midthunder landed the role of Princess Yue in Netflix’s highly anticipated live-actioner Avatar: The Last Airbender. “I was a huge fan as a kid,” she says of the popular Nickelodeon animated show. “I loved it, I watched it, I was obsessed with it. I thought I was a waterbender.”
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Jennifer Lawrence.”
THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER I MOST IDENTIFIED WITH GROWING UP “Buttercup from the Powerpuff Girls.”
THE ALBUM I AM OBSESSED WITH RIGHT NOW “Midnights. I’m a Taylor Swift fan for life. It’s truly in my blood.”
Jenna Ortega
Ortega, 20, made her mark on Hollywood as a child actor — appearing in Stuck in the Middle and Jane the Virgin — but now she’s well on her way to more mature roles, including two successful franchises. She’s among the fresh generation of teens hunted by Ghostface in the new Scream installments and she’s the title character of The Addams Family reboot Wednesday.
“With someone like Wednesday, people are very protective of her, myself included,” she says, noting that the character’s screentime in the Netflix series gave her room to create dimension “without straying too far from the psychopath we all know and love.”
She felt similar pressure filming the opening scene of Scream. “It was a major callback to Drew Barrymore’s scene in the original,” says Ortega. “It was my first go at a slasher like that, and I understand how respected the franchise is, so I felt pressure to do it right. Fortunately, being stabbed several times, I think the displayed emotion has the freedom to be subjective.”
As for what’s next, Ortega says she’s a fan of “obscure surrealist films” and would enjoy taking on one of those. Or, she adds, “a bit more drama would be nice.”
Meg Stalter
“I was the kid in high school that never got any of the good parts,” says Stalter, who, since her scene-stealing performance on the Emmy-winning series Hacks, has landed some pretty great parts. She will lead Hannah Pearl Utt’s dark comedy Cora Bora and make appearances in Please Don’t Destroy’s Judd Apatow-produced Universal comedy and Chelsea Peretti’s directorial debut, First Time Female Director. Says Stalter of her busy year, “I’ve always wanted to act, so it’s really crazy to not be in any movies, ever, and then be able to do four movies.”
Stalter recently also found herself in the position of developing an original pilot with A24. Church Girls, which she also stars in, is based on her own life and follows a 20-year-old closeted lesbian who is very involved in her church, trying to prove she’s straight. Stalter, who broke out while posting character-based sketches online during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, calls Church Girls “one of the most earnest things I’ve written.”
“There’s so many times where you grew up in church and then you feel like, ‘Wait, I don’t fit in with all these rules.’ You’re like, ‘Maybe I’m not allowed to have God anymore,’” she continues. “It makes me really upset that queer people feel like they can’t have that because people in church say that they can’t.” After her experience on Church Girls, Stalter is considering more time behind the camera: “I really love to write for myself and for the people I think are funny and talented.”
THE ALBUM I AM OBSESSED WITH RIGHT NOW “The new Taylor Swift. I feel like there’s like drugs in it or something.“
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “Aidy Bryant.”
TV SHOW OR FILM I CAN”T GET ENOUGH OF (BUT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH) “I feel really bad that it’s a reality show but Love Is Blind is so good.”
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