With many of Hollywood’s old guard semi-retiring or fading from public scrutiny, Tinseltown has anointed new royalty. Meet the 10 young A-listers making waves in showbiz.
Timothée Chalamet
There is no denying the fact that Chalamet is incredibly talented; he’s the classic theatre kid who is able to act and sing. His feminine good looks, waif-ish frame, and tendency to pick sensitive roles also make him the — ahem — perfect parasocial boyfriend that female fans can obsess over. This Gen Z heartthrob needs no bulging muscles, rakish behaviour, or testosterone-fuelled antics to draw audiences to the cinema.
For Hollywood producers, Chalamet clearly has the ‘it’ factor that so many other actors lack. Call Me by Your Name catapulted him into international superstardom, and now, seven years later, he’s headlined blockbuster films such as Wonka and the Dune series. He’s also a perennial favourite on the red carpet with his androgynous good looks. What’s next for him? His take on Bob Dylan in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown will be one to look out for.
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Explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.
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Zendaya
You know she’s made it when the star goes by a mononym. From her early beginnings as a child model and backup dancer to a short-lived music career and a Disney stint, Zendaya has proven herself to be a bona fide multi-hyphenate.
Zendaya’s success story didn’t come easy. She has had to face racial biases, which she’s commented on multiple times. But with a squeaky clean, perfectly tended-to public image and strong work ethic, she has quickly soared to the heights of the A-list and built a bankable name for herself.
To get to where she currently is, she had to shed her Disney baggage and prove herself an actor capable of taking on grown-up roles. The gamble she made was the right one: an outré turn as a drug-addled teenager in the popular but controversial series Euphoria. It opened doors for her to take on meatier rolls, all without sacrificing the wholesome image carefully cultivated by the notoriously private star.
Yes, she is a thespian! One can see that from the roles she’s since taken on — an eclectic mix of characters that has allowed her to stretch her acting muscle. It doesn’t hurt that she’s heart-achingly beautiful either, with the bone structure, stature, and stage presence that makes her the darling of the red-carpet circuit and global fashion houses.
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Tennis player turned coach Tashi has taken her husband, Art, and transformed him into a champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she makes him play a “Challenger” event.
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Austin Butler
From being a Nickelodeon/Disney kid to his Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated turn as Elvis, Butler has had an amazing career trajectory.
His breakthrough came from a critically acclaimed run in the Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh in 2018, in which he starred opposite Denzel Washington. The latter was instrumental in Butler’s successful leap from child/teen actor into one with a solid Hollywood resume. Washington’s cold call to Elvis helmer Baz Luhrmann led the director to watch Butler’s heartfelt audition clip, and the rest was history.
With a penchant for working with auteur filmmakers (Luhrmann, Denis Villeneuve, Jeff Nichols, and soon, Darren Aronofsky) and the ability to electrify every scene he’s in, no matter the size of the role (see his take on Tex Watson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Austin Butler quickly took the fast-track to bona fide Hollywood A-Listerdom.
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Elvis's story is seen through the lens of his complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager. The film delves into the complex dynamic between the two spanning over 20 years.
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After a chance encounter, Kathy is drawn to Benny, the newest member of Midwestern motorcycle club. The club begins to evolve, forcing Benny to choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.
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Anya Taylor-Joy
Taylor-Joy’s ethereal, Renaissance-esque beauty is one that is easily loved by the camera, so it’s no surprise she seems to be everywhere on the small and big screen now. With a career that runs the gamut from A24 horror classic The Witch to her head-turning cameo in Dune: Part Two, to the latest blockbuster Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, she certainly knows how to pick projects that suit her best. Her headlining turn in Netflix drama The Queen’s Gambit, which was released during COVID lockdowns and became one of the streamer’s most-watched English TV series, made her a household name.
Dark, off-beat, lone-wolf characters typify the type of role she chooses, all the better to suit her atypical looks that’s magnified by her giant, expressive eyes. Her upcoming film The Gorge sees her in another action role, albeit one that is described as a ‘romantic action’ film. Does this spell a future career that’ll involve more badassery? Only time will tell.
As the world fell, young Furiosa was snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and fell into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus.
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Sydney Sweeney
Her years-long slog in Hollywood that began when she moved, at the age of 13 to Los Angeles with her family, has paid off. With name recognition, a constant stream of film and TV projects, and endorsement deals with big brands like Miu Miu and Armani Beauty, you could say that she’s made it.
The hardworking actor recognised early in her career the importance of diversifying her revenue stream. In a Hollywood Reporter interview, she notes: “If I just acted, I wouldn’t be able to afford my life in LA. I take deals because I have to.”
She also understood the importance of charting the trajectory of her career by setting up her own production company and becoming a producer herself. Many of her career moves have been highly strategic — even her gamble with the universally panned Madame Web was a carefully calculated move that allowed her access to bigger and better things, such as Sony Pictures’ Anyone but You, which she stars in and produces.
She’s acknowledged as a decent actress (having nabbed two Emmy nominations), but she’s mostly been praised for her chutzpah, intelligence, business savvy, and drive — traits that have helped her cement her status as Hollywood’s crème de la crème.
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A paramedic with clairvoyant abilities is forced to confront her past. She connects with three young women destined for powerful futures...if they can all survive a deadly present.
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Glen Powell
If you now see Powell’s name everywhere and think he came out of nowhere, you’d be wrong. While there’s something to be said about the Hollywood Machine’s tendency to roll out the next ‘it guy’ or ‘it girl’ — particularly if it’s a nepo baby — every year, Powell’s one of the few who was in showbiz for many years before making it big.
Slogging away in small roles and then in teen-ish dramas like Scream Queens, Powell was clearly playing the long game as he honed his skills and cultivated the right relationships to make it in the business. Dubbed ‘the Capybara’, the intensely likeable man’s biggest asset is his charm, which has helped him nab leading roles over the recent years.
Powell hit his stride as the hunky male lead in this year’s romantic comedy Hit Man, which he also co-wrote. The box office success of Twisters further reinforces his bankability as a top-name actor. Will he be the next Tom Cruise? Or, eventually, join the crop of handsome but middling actors populating Hollywood?
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Gary Johnson breaks protocol to help a desperate woman trying to flee an abusive boyfriend. He finds himself becoming one of his false personas and turning into a criminal himself.
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Florence Pugh
The last five years have been extremely kind to Florence Pugh. Applauded for her range and talent, Pugh has racked up a filmography featuring a well-rounded list of critically acclaimed indie darlings, box-office successes, and tentpole franchise films, including Oppenheimer and Dune: Part Two.
On top of that, Pugh’s adventurous sense of fashion keeps the tongues wagging even if the remarks made aren’t always the most flattering. (But hey, any publicity is good publicity, especially in a business with as short an attention span as Hollywood.)
She’s also participating in the recent romcom resurgence. Her latest film, We Live in Time (starring Andrew Garfield), is already garnering early rave reviews, and some critics are saying that it’ll sideswipe the Blake Lively-fronted It Ends With Us at the awards season next year.
Paul Mescal
The Irish actor first came into the international limelight with a BAFTA-winning and Emmy Award-nominated turn in the acclaimed series Normal People, co-starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. Mescal’s acting prowess is showcased well in the diverse projects he’s taken on, from the stunning character study Aftersun, where he turns in a heartbreaking and Academy Award-nominated performance as a depressed young father, to a much-lauded turn as Stanley Kowalski in a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, which garnered him a Laurence Olivier Award.
Where his acting style is concerned, comparisons with Marlon Brando are rife — thanks to the Kowalski role and his tendency to melt into the characters he plays. Unlike Brando, however, Mescal has yet to take on box-office-dominating projects. His next anticipated release is Gladiator II, whose success will be crucial in cementing his status as an A-lister capable of anchoring a blockbuster. But indie fans need not fear; he will be headlining Richard Linklater’s ambitious 20-year film project adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along.
Jenna Ortega
With memorable turns in the Scream franchise, a scene-stealing role in Ti West’s X, and the comedy horror film Studio 666, Ortega has earned her status as the Gen Z ‘scream queen’. This is further reinforced by her headlining role in Wednesday, the spooky and pop-culture-savvy TV spin-off of The Addams Family.
Her latest film project, the much-anticipated sequel to the 1988 fantasy-horror comedy classic Beetlejuice, has her starring opposite Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz’s chip-off-the-old-block teenage daughter. If Ortega carries on with these roles, rather than branching out as she’s attempted before into other more ‘normal’ dramatic roles, she’d be well on her way to securing her niche as the go-to actor for horror or deadpan comedy.
Jacob Elordi
For a period of time in 2023, the chronically online crowd were fawning over the newest ‘babygirl’. That babygirl is, well, not a girl — it’s Jacob Elordi. The internet crowned him an ‘unproblematic fave’ as he defies ‘toxic masculinity’ stereotypes by exhibiting impeccable manners and swanning about the world with tiny designer handbags. From his breakout role as a tall, hot dude in The Kissing Booth and its sequels to a tall, hot aristocratic dude in Saltburn and a tall, hot (see where we’re going with this?) violent sociopath in Euphoria, Elordi is inhabiting a very obvious niche in young Hollywood.
As of now, the seriously charismatic Australian remains much in demand with directors (and fashion houses). He has eschewed superhero and blockbuster films in favour of indie projects that flaunt his thespian range. Catch him next opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in the queer-forward film On Swift Horses.
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