Faces of 2025

Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee & The Housemaid

Seyfried excels at characters caught between innocence and manipulation, from her breakout role in Mean Girls to her Oscar-nominated turn in Mank. She flexes her range in two recent performances, playing the visionary Shaker leader in Mona Fastvold’s musical drama and a troubled modern-day housewife in Paul Feig’s twisty thriller.

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme

Hot off his Oscar-nominated turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, Chalamet trades poetic introspection for competitive swagger in Josh Safdie’s celebration of unapologetic American ambition. As the ascendant table-tennis champion Marty Mauser, Chalamet proves he can sell charismatic hustlers just as convincingly as sensitive artists. 

 Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

As the militant radical Perfidia Beverly Hills, Taylor is the commanding presence at the center of Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterwork. Triple threat Taylor (she’s also an accomplished dancer and recording artist) nails Perfidia’s layers of complexity, uniting violence, seduction, guilt and tenderness in a single powerhouse performance. 

Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another

PTA had been searching for his Willa for years before alighting on Infiniti, a young talent with no film credits to her name. Playing the willful daughter of radical activists, she draws on reservoirs of feeling, crafting a nuanced portrait that’s equal parts steel and soul.

Michael B. Jordan, Sinners

Anchoring the most-nominated film in Academy Awards history, Jordan delivers not one but two knockout performances as twin brothers in Ryan Coogler’s supernatural thriller. Pulling off the dual roles required technical virtuosity and total discipline, upping the challenge from his previous Coogler collaborations Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther.

Colman Domingo, Euphoria

After winning back-to-back Oscar nominations in 2024 and 2025 for Rustin and Sing Sing, Domingo is preparing for another epic year. In 2026, he’ll return to screens in several buzzy projects, including the third season of Euphoria, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic and Steven Spielberg’s UFO drama Disclosure Day.

Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

After keeping it light in comedies like Bridesmaids and Neighbors, Byrne’s return to the dark side in Mary Bronstein’s blistering drama packs a wallop. Playing a working mother besieged on all fronts, the Aussie actor delivers a raw interpretation of the emotional and psychological toll of caregiving.

Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value

With Sentimental Value, Trier returns to his native city to expand on the earlier character studies of his coming-of-age Oslo trilogy. Detailing the cross-generational dysfunction within a family of artists, the film observes how the creative urge both isolates and connects those afflicted with it—and the collateral damage for those caught in the middle. 

Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value

Norwegian star Reinsve, who won Best Actress at Cannes for her breakout role in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, reunites with the director to play an accomplished actor navigating a fraught relationship with her filmmaker father. Reinsve inhabits each facet of Nora’s life—artist, sister, daughter—with exquisite delicacy and precision.

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value

Even among Sentimental Value’s cast of luminaries, Lilleaas’ sensitive portrayal of Agnes, the family diplomat, stands out. Agnes doesn’t share her father and sister’s will for the spotlight, but in Lilleaas’ watchful, intuitive interpretation, the ensemble’s unsung peacemaker is nothing less than heroic.

Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

The veteran Swedish actor—and patriarch to the celebrated acting clan—drew acclaim for his work with boundary-pusher Lars von Trier, but Skarsgård’s more mainstream projects (The Pirates of the Caribbean, Mamma Mia!, Dune) elevated him to a household name. He returns to his Scandi roots to play Gustav Borg, a self-absorbed director hoping to make amends after a lifetime of prioritizing art over relationships.

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value

Following collaborations with Sofia Coppola, Mike Mills and James Mangold, former child actor Fanning joins Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value as Rachel, an American movie star who becomes unwittingly ensnared in her director’s long-simmering family drama. Her Rachel is savvy and self-aware, an outsider who recognizes the comfort that cinema’s surrogate families can offer—as well as its limitations.

Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon

Five-time Oscar nominee Hawke has long since transcended his Gen X poster boy roots, consistently selecting projects that expand his creative reach. His longtime interest in real-life artists—evident in Wildcat, Born to Be Blue, Maudie and Blaze—continues in Blue Moon, which reconvenes his long-term working relationship with Richard Linklater to imagine the final hurrah of Broadway legend Lorenz Hart.

Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue

Kate Hudson was due for a high-profile comeback, and with Song Sung Blue she has it. Playing one-half of a real-life Neil Diamond tribute act, she lends her considerable charm (and impressive pipes) to a movie with more heft than the rom-com meringues she’s famous for, injecting heart into the life-affirming story about climbing out of a personal abyss.

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet

In Hamnet, Buckley taps a primal vein as Agnes, a child of nature and mother of three who loves and suffers with body and soul. The Irish actress, who previously won raves for her work in The Lost Daughter, will reteam with Maggie Gyllenhaal for the forthcoming monster movie The Bride!, in which she plays the title role. 

Paul Mescal, Hamnet

Mescal is a consistently magnetic screen presence, whether playing a lovestruck teenager, a feckless father, a Roman gladiator or William Shakespeare himself. In Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, he converts the literary legend into a man of flesh and feeling whose grief ultimately expresses itself—where else?—on the page.

Chloé Zhao, Hamnet

For her fifth feature, Oscar-winning director Zhao returns to the intimate character studies that defined her acclaimed films The Rider and Nomadland. Exploring the consoling, connective power of nature and art, the film observes how individuals respond to grief, suggesting the possibility that loss might one day become creation.

Miley Cyrus, AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH & Miley Cyrus: Something Beautiful

Cyrus’ single “Dream as One” anchors the Avatar: Fire and Ash soundtrack, but she penetrates filmmaking in other ways too. For her directing debut, Something Beautiful, a companion piece to her album of the same name, Cyrus enlists pedigreed collaborators—including Mandy director Panos Cosmatos, who stepped in to produce.

Laura Dern, Jay Kelly & Is This Thing On?

Dern has grown up onscreen, evolving from child actor and David Lynch muse to minted Hollywood insider. Her roles in Jay Kelly and Is This Thing On? confront the compromises and regrets of late middle age, marking a reunion with director Noah Baumbach—she won an Oscar for her work in Marriage Story—and her debut collaboration with Bradley Cooper. 

Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly

Adam Sandler has come a long way since the days of prank calls and puerile man-children. We’ve known he could excel at drama since PTA’s Punch-Drunk Love—a development more recently confirmed by the Safdies’ Uncut Gems—but in his supporting turn as the loyal manager in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Sandler adds new shades of nuance to his ever-expanding dramatic repertoire.

Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme

For his first major solo feature, Safdie approaches longtime themes—the adrenaline of the grind, the psychic toll of ambition, the Jewish New York experience—from a new angle. Trading the contemporary realism he and brother Benny perfected in previous features Daddy Longlegs and Uncut Gems for a capitalist character study set in the 1950s, Safdie’s film enters the realm of American epic.

— Caroline McCloskey