Charles Melton, Teyana Taylor Among Variety's 10 Actors to Watch for 2023
Since 1998, Variety has honored rising stars on its 10 Actors to Watch report, heralding artists who are experiencing major breakthroughs. The alumni group includes more than 35 Oscar winners and nominees, including Mahershala Ali, Adam Driver, Viola Davis, Lupita Nyong’o and Brie Larson.
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Nicholas Galitzine – ‘Red, White & Royal Blue,’ ‘Mary and George’
Galitzine had the rare fortune of appearing in two buzzy projects within the same month: he stole hearts as a closeted prince in Prime Video’s “Red, White & Royal Blue” and then turned that role on its head to parody toxic masculinity in comedy “Bottoms.” Due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Galitzine couldn’t promote the films, but the London-born-and-raised actor was aware of their impact. “Watching the reaction from the sidelines has been so heartwarming and encouraging,” he says. “I think they’re both really important movies, particularly to the queer community, and I’m so happy to be a part of both of them.”
Galitzine, who will return to royalty as the first duke of Buckingham in the upcoming miniseries “Mary & George,” excelled at sports, and “the idea of getting up and performing for someone else was a million worlds away.” But several injuries put a stop to sports and Galitzine drifted toward new friends. “Actors are this motley crew of outsiders and weirdos and eccentrics and Bohemians, and I just kind of fell in love with that community,” he says. “I think I started to kind of evolve as an emotional, artistic young man. I think it was always in there, I just never felt I had any validity to explore that. It felt like something I was encroaching on, not something I would be welcomed to examine. But I received a lot of encouragement from my close friends who were actors.”
Those friends urged him to try out for “Guys and Dolls” and he agreed, largely because it was a chance for him to step outside his all-boys school group. It was also interest in a girl spurred him to check out the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he had his own “Sliding Doors” moment. “I was outside the audition hall on the phone to my dad saying, ‘What am I doing here? I’m not an actor, this is ridiculous.’ But he convinced me to go in.” It was there that Galitzine booked his first film, “The Beat Beneath My Feet,” opposite Luke Perry.
Galitzine sang in that film, the 2021 musical film “Cinderella” and a viral karaoke scene in “Royal Blue.” He will again carry a tune opposite Anne Hathaway in “The Idea of You,” playing the lead singer of a boy band.
— Jenelle Riley
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Influences: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams
Archie Madekwe – ‘Gran Turismo,’ ‘Saltburn’
Madekwe landed his first starring role in a feature film — the racing biopic “Gran Turismo” — but could not promote the movie due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
In the Neill Blomkamp movie he stars as gamer-turned-racer Jann Mardenborough and worked closely with the director.
He came to appreciate the grueling experience of shooting the car racing scenes. “Nothing can prepare you for going 180 miles an hour in a car every single day,” Madekwe says. “It was so hard, but it was so worth it because you really feel the intensity.”
Before he could start filming those scenes, however, there was one thing he was missing: a driver’s license.
Madekwe recalls a two-week period in which he was shooting “Saltburn” by day and taking driving lessons by night.
The actor believes it is important to bring stories like that of Mardenborough, who is biracial, to the big screen, citing a lack of diversity in Hollywood: “It’s such a film of aspiration and of dream fulfillment — I think [it’s] really important for young people of color to see themselves in a character like that.”
The actor can also currently be seen In Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” as an entirely different character — the sneering, performative Farleigh, an Oxford student who longs to fit in with his affluent relatives. Fennell “creates a space that is full of trust and freedom and playfulness.”
Madekwe has various projects in the works: “I’m producing a couple of things that I feel really excited about and I’ve been really enjoying finding stories — especially stories that I haven’t seen somebody that looks like myself in before.”
Suffice to say, Madekwe is certainly going places — now that he has a driver’s license.
— Jaden Thompson
Reps: Agency: UTA, Curtis Brown (U.K.)
Influences: Arthur Jafa, Steve McQueen, Ruben ?stlund
Charles Melton – ‘May December’
Although he did not start pursuing acting until he was 20, Melton recalls feeling inspired by the craft as a kid seeing movies in theaters. “I always found bits and pieces of myself in certain characters that I would watch and just wanted to know how I could do that,” he says.
Melton portrayed Reggie Mantle in the CW teen drama “Riverdale” for six seasons — an experience that served as his acting school. Shooting 22 episodes in the span of 10 months taught Melton the work ethic he applied to filming Todd Haynes’ “May December” in 23 days with no rehearsal time.
“Every minute counted while filming ‘May December.’ There’s just this adrenaline in such a condensed, compact amount of time for filming a movie,” Melton says.
Inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau’s affair with a student that she wed, “May December” centers on Melton’s Joe, who began an affair with Julianne Moore’s Gracie while he was in seventh grade and ends up marrying her. Natalie Portman stars as Elizabeth, an actor who will be playing Gracie in an upcoming film.
“Having the opportunity to play a 36-year-old dad — who at such a young age was given an immense responsibility in navigating through life as this adaptive adult child to survive — and coming into his own discovery and awakening was really inspiring for me to embark on,” Melton says.
Calling “May December” the greatest experience of his career to date, Melton says the film has informed the types of roles he wants to take on in the future. “I’m drawn to characters that have this more-than-meets-the-eye complexity, some sort of tragedy or whatnot. Those are the kinds of stories I want to be part of, that I’m passionate about,” he says.
— Caroline Brew
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Influences: Heath Ledger, Tony Leung, Andy Reid, his mom and dad
Cara Jade Myers – ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
In 2019, Myers was felt her acting career wasn’t taking off — but she was making progress as a writer, having completed several writers’ labs. “I figured in 2020 I would quit acting and focus on writing,” she reveals. But she began auditioning for “Killers of the Flower Moon” and soon found herself auditioning for Martin Scorsese (she admits she took a photo of their Zoom session because “If I don’t book this role, nobody’s going to believe me”) and before long, she was sharing scenes with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone.
As Anna Brown, the wild child sister of Gladstone’s Mollie Burkhart, Myers steals her scenes as a woman who uses alcohol to cope with a series of murders that befall her family and the Osage people after the tribe comes into sudden wealth. Myers had already read David Grann’s book that the Apple TV+ movie is based upon prior to hearing about the audition and admits it “pissed me off.” She adds, “It’s just such a terrible piece of history that no one has taught. I’m glad the movie is actually getting the story out there.”
A member of the Wichita tribe, she says she came to acting later in life, around the age of 22. “I always enjoyed telling stories and living in different worlds, but I didn’t know how to go about acting,” she reveals. “And you know, you didn’t see people like me represented on TV, so you just figure there are no roles out there for you.” Her husband encouraged her to take an acting class, which required her to drive four hours a day to Phoenix and back, several times a week. The pair then decided to make the move to L.A. “I kind of went in hardcore,” she admits. “I was young and dumb and maybe I didn’t think things through. And you know, we made it work.”
— Jenelle Riley
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Influences: The women in her life; Tantoo Cardinal
Myha’la – ‘Leave the World Behind,’ ‘Dumb Money’
For Myha’la, there was never a question of whether she would pursue performing: “There was no, ‘How are you going to make a living? ‘How are you going to do this?’” reveals the actor, who goes by the singular name. “It was just, ‘I’m going to do what I love.’”
Myha’la started off in musical theater, which she studied at Carnegie Mellon, playing Nabulungi in a tour of “The Book of Mormon” in 2017. After graduating, she auditioned for both theater and film and television. It was not long before she booked the lead role as Harper on HBO’s financial drama “Industry.”
“That was the game changer for sure,” she says. “That really made me feel at home in this medium.”
Since then, Myha’la has starred in films like Gen Z comedy-horror “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and this year’s comedy-drama “Dumb Money,” as well as an episode in the latest season of “Black Mirror.” In her latest project “Leave the World Behind,” she stars alongside Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali.
“I was very ready to take notes and use this opportunity as a masterclass to watch these pros who’ve been at it for much longer than I have,” she says. “Everyone really embraced me and treated me as an equal, which helped me believe that in myself and then rise to the occasion.”
Myha’la walked away from set with a clearer idea of who she wants to be not just as an actress, but as a person: “I learned that I want to be just like Julia Roberts … She really goes out of her way to make everyone feel seen and heard and respected across the board, not just cast, not just main creatives — everyone. I love that about a person. I want to have that impact on people.”
— Caroline Brew
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Influences: Bernadette Peters, Julia Roberts
Alison Oliver – ‘Saltburn’
Not long before she booked her first television role in the Hulu series “Conversations With Friends,” which explores the relationships of a young woman at Trinity College, Oliver was on the Trinity campus herself, taking a course affiliated with the historic Irish university.
Already a fan of Sally Rooney, who wrote the book the 2022 streaming series is based upon, Oliver was especially pleased to land the lead role of Frances. “If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be the first person watching it,” she says. “I had never felt so seen by a book in my life,” she says.
Rooney, she says, is “telling a story of that really weird age of transitioning from school to college, or college to adult life and just having no idea how to be or who you are or what to listen to or what to be into — or the complications of love and relationships.”
Oliver recently made her feature film debut in Emerald Fennell’s awards season contender “Saltburn,” which satirizes Eng-land’s upper class and features a heralded ensemble, including Barry Keoghan, Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike. She recalls dyeing her hair peroxide blonde and learning proper dinner table etiquette to play Venetia, the mysterious and incisive daughter of the elite Catton family.
“When developing characters, I always ask directors for playlists or mood boards if they have them because I think then the world starts arriving towards you,” she says.
Looking ahead, Oliver says she is looking to try something new: “I always want to do something very different to the last thing I did,” she says. “I love feeling not like myself…I really enjoy that part of acting, which is really escaping myself.”
— Jaden Thompson
Reps: Agency: CAA, Curtis Brown (U.K.)
Influences: Her immediate family, Sue Mythen, Eliza Hittman
Aaron Pierre – ‘Foe,’ ‘Genius: MLK/X’
Aaron Pierre hails from diverse south London, where he started out wanting to be a track star, not an actor. “I wanted to be a sprinter,” he says. But he decided to pursue the craft when he was 17, joining local theater groups. “I really love this feeling of an audience arriving to be told a story and me having an opportunity to be gifted with their attention and having the opportunity to try and tell this story in a way that engages them.”
He graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After a brief appearance in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” his feature breakout was Brit pic “Brother” in 2022. He followed that up with Amazon MGM Studios’ “Foe,” playing a mysterious character who disrupts the life of a couple (Saorise Ronan and Paul Mescal). “For me, that film is a deep exploration of humanity,” he says. “What happens to human relationships over time?”
He’ll also re-team with Barry Jenkins, who directed him in “The Underground Railroad,” for “The Lion King.” “I’m very grateful to have established a true deep friendship with Barry and he is my adopted big brother,” Pierre says.
Another upcoming role is one he knew would be a huge undertaking: Pierre will play Malcolm X in NatGeo’s “Genius: MLK/X.”
The series charts the evolution of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. “And honestly, I because of what he means to me because of what he means to my family and my loved ones and many people around the world, I was I was terrified about the idea of attempting to portray Malcolm X,” Pierre confesses. “Fortunately, I have my loved ones around me, and they held me, and they supported me, and they guided me through that experience.”
— Carole Horst
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Influences: My family and community, James Earl Jones, August Wilson, Denzel Washington
Dominic Sessa – ‘The Holdovers’
Dominic Sessa had never acted on film before Alexander Payne cast him as acerbic prep school student Angus Tully opposite Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in “The Holdovers.” The reason Payne chose him for the role? “My hair is what he told me,” confesses Sessa. In truth, the young thespian had lived with his boarding-school teachers for four years ahead of auditioning, bringing an authenticity to everything about the character — including his on-screen injury.
“I was a big hockey player in high school, and my freshman year, I broke my femur. So all I could do was sit in a chair and read lines — and I just never looked back.”
Though he’s just 21, “The Holdovers” gave Sessa an immediately noteworthy challenge in that he played a character close to his own age. “The funny thing about high school plays is you’re playing older people typically,” he says. “This was the first time I could talk like myself.” The former athlete says Payne helped him further acclimate to screen acting by showing him films by directors like Hal Ashby and Frank Capra.
“Alexander was really great about creating these little impromptu film lessons throughout shooting,” remembers Sessa. “Sitting next to him and him giving me these dialogues on these scenes was a dream.”
Sessa additionally credits Giamatti and Randolph for helping him bring Angus’ complexities to life. “Paul and Da’Vine were the ones who really were able to get me into those moments because they’re so good,” he says. But he says it’s pure enjoyment, as much as his co-stars or a series of great acting teachers, that makes performance feel so natural for him. “I think because I have so much fun doing it, that’s what makes it so comfortable.”
— Todd Gilchrist
Reps: Agency: CAA; Management: Untitled Entertainment
Influences: George Stevens, Fiona Shaw, Jack Black, Shakespeare
Teyana Taylor – ‘A Thousand and One’
Like Inez, the fierce and loving single mom that Taylor plays in A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One,” the actor-singer-dancer-choreographer is a doting mother and strong woman looking to prove herself as she moves her career into a new phase. “I went in with an intent and I knew what I wanted,” she says of the auditioning process. “I knew the role was mine to lose. So I had to do all that I could to get it.”
Rockwell told Taylor that her name came up early in the casting process, but the director wasn’t sure that Taylor had what it took to portray a single mom fresh out of prison who builds a new life over a decade. “Because all she knew of me was singing, dancing — I did a few comedies here and there,” she explains. “I want people to take me seriously, to know that I earned that role. Got it fair and square.”
And it’s paid off — she’s grabbed a lead performance nomination at the Gothams and a Critics Choice nomination for breakthrough performance.
And she loves acting. “I enjoy getting to just play other characters and really show my range.”
Working with a Black female director was also important to shaping the powerful drama. “There was a lot of Black girl magic happening. She’s from New York. She’s had to endure a lot of the same things that I have,” Taylor says, adding that it was key to her approach to the character that “two Black women could sit down and really create these layers for Inez, her colors, her different emotions. It was an
amazing experience.”
As for what next, she can only say, “I have some really special projects coming, some directing and acting projects coming. So just stay tuned.”
— Carole Horst
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Influences: Viola Davis, Angela Bassett, Denzel Washington, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jamie Foxx,
Spike Lee
Ji-young Yoo – ‘Smoking Tigers,’ ‘Expats’
Shelly Yo’s “Smoking Tigers” tells a familiar story to many children of immigrant parents, following Hayeong, a Korean American teenager pushed to achieve academically in order to preserve her professional future. The Colorado transplant Yoo, who plays Hayeong, says she embarked on an artistic path — dancing — long before her parents encouraged her to pursue acting. “Being a professional dancer is like being a pro athlete — there’s an early expiration date on that,” Yoo tells Variety. “So when I said I wanted to do acting, they were like, “That’s great. We know tons of famous actors who are really old.”
Yoo started on stage in Denver before her successful audition for Asian-American theater organization East West Players led to a series of challenging film and TV roles, starting with Josephine Decker’s 2022 drama “The Sky Is Everywhere,” where she received valuable guidance from co-star Jason Segel. “His advice was to be so prepared that your acting is the easiest part of your day,” she recalls. She has since led Yo’s film, plays a pivotal role opposite Nicole Kidman in the upcoming Amazon Prime series “Expats,” and will appear in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Freaky Tales.”
Yoo, who says that “not many Asian-American women are shown in the way” her character is in Boden and Fleck’s film, thrills at the chance to create vivid characterizations that both offer visibility and challenge expectations for that community. “People say, the more specific it is, the more universal it is,” she says. “It’s wonderful that we get to play characters who reflect heritages that are similar to us. But the actor, regardless of how they identify, has to create a relatability to any audience member who watches.”
— Todd Gilchrist
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