The Nine Fast-Rising Stars Everyone Is Fighting to Cast

From Broadway stand-outs to YA streaming successes to franchise players, these nine rising screen (cover) stars are catching the attention of both audiences and the entertainment industry.

Some are just breaking out, and others are breaking bigger. After years on the Amazon juggernaut The Summer I Turned Pretty, Lola Tung is gearing up for prestige turns in anticipated features from A24 and Neon, while Whitney Peak is readying for her biggest roles to date in the latest Hunger Games movie and Miami Vice, where she joins Michael B. Jordan. Elsewhere, Tom Francis is building his onscreen bona fides after a Tony-nominated musical run, while Keyla Monterroso Mejia may be the most prolific star working in TV right now.

The 2026 class joins Next Gen alumni like Zendaya, Paul Mescal, Florence Pugh and, more recently, Black Panther newcomer David Jonsson. No matter how they got to this current moment, this talent is already in demand. As Heated Rivalry and Yellow Jackets standout Sophie Nélisse puts its, ”Career-wise, this is the busiest I’ve ever been.”

Keyla Monterroso Mejia

At a time when network sitcoms are nearly extinct and the average number of episodes in a season of the streaming comedies that do exist is in the single digits (and those seasons come with roughly the same frequency as Halley’s comet), Monterroso Mejia has managed to achieve the near impossible: ubiquity. From assisting Seth Rogen on Apple TV’s The Studio (as fictional Continental Studios executive assistant Petra) to sparring with Larry David on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (cast in his autobiographical series Young Larry) to drive-bys on everything from ABC’s Abbott Elementary to Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, she has built an enviable career out of going head-to-head with comedy greats.

It wasn’t always so easy. Having attended a performing arts high school in Pomona, California, the Baldwin Park-raised actress decided to jump right into auditioning. She says she had trouble even getting into rooms at the beginning — in fact, she mostly landed student work and short films (in one, she stars with Obsession breakout Inde Navarrette). “I tried for years and years — and then: King COVID,” she continues. Suddenly, self-tapes became the auditioning norm and the decision-makers had more time to dedicate to unknowns. Slowly, and then all at once, the industry began paying attention.

Looking back, Monterroso Mejia’s climb started in earnest with Curb. She was first asked to audition for a small part with only five lines of dialogue. A week later, she got a callback where she hopped on a Zoom with the show’s producers — and David himself. “I was like, ‘OK, dang, that’s why the show is so successful,’ ” she says. “They really care about even the smallest parts on the show.” The role morphed into a guest-starring arc that carried over Curb‘s final two seasons. Later, it was Abbott creator-star Quinta Brunson who told Rogen to check out Monterroso Mejia as he was casting his Emmy-winning Hollywood satire. While she initially auditioned for Quinn, the creative executive role that went to Chase Sui Wonders, Monterroso Mejia ended up being offered the role of Petra after that first audition. In film, she’s already shared screen time with everyone from Keke Palmer (2025’s One of Them Days) to Will Ferrell (the Prime Video comedy You’re Cordially Invited), and there are more projects on the way.

“I wrestled a lot with how much of it was luck, how much of it was talent and how much of it was work ethic — or, maybe people are just kind,” she says of her successes. But at 28, she’s come to a new realization: “Maybe I’m the common denominator.” — M.G.

WHAT HAS AND HASN’T CHANGED THE MOST IN MY LIFE ”What hasn’t changed at all has been my brother. Still very much the same, very annoying, very nice, love him. And what has changed is everything else. I’ve been so lucky to have worked consistently in the last couple of years, so what my life looked like is completely different to now.”

MY BIGGEST PINCH ME MOMENT FROM THE PAST YEAR ”Being back for The Studio, season two, is very crazy. After the very well-deserved success that season one had, to be back on set with everybody was insane.”

THE ACTOR I LOOK UP TO MOST RIGHT NOW IS ”Right now, just because I just finished watching Lanterns, is Kyle Chandler. My king can do no wrong. 10 out of 10 across the board. I was watching Kyle Chandler in awe. Just so present and alive.”

MY MOST-PLAYED ARTIST THIS YEAR WILL BE ”This is music-related, but not. I have been addicted to Crime Junkies and everything under their banner. I went from Crime Junkies to Park Predators. But since I have picked up listening to that specific genre of podcast, I have not listened to music as much. I probably listen to music maybe 5 percent of my time, and the rest is Crime Junkies. It’s taken over my life.”

Keyla Monterroso Mejia was photographed Oct. 7 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Viviano trench; Yvonne Leon earrings; L’ Dezen earrings; Viltier earrings.

Hair: Mel Dominguez. Makeup: Bryan Mendez.

Whitney Peak

Peak’s acting career didn’t have the smoothest start. The star, who was born and raised in Uganda until her family moved to Canada when she was 10, signed to a fake agency just as she was starting out as a child actor. She was sent on auditions that were later revealed to be a scam. The early setback didn’t stop her, however.

In fact, at 23, Peak has a résumé that would be impressive for someone twice her age, having led HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot for two seasons — “All the fashion, all the locations, all the access; it was a movie, honestly!” — and starred in both Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series and Disney’s Hocus Pocus 2. She credits acting with helping her break out of her shell, acknowledging that auditioning didn’t always come easy. “I would just absolutely be shaking uncontrollably, my whole body, and I was just really shy,” says Peak. “I would choke up and start crying; it was actually a mess.”

She’s about to enter her biggest arena yet as one of the stars of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, a role that she almost didn’t put herself up for. Peak’s character (Lenore Dove Baird) called for some singing, which nearly scared her off — she assumed a voice like Rachel Zegler’s (who starred in 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) would be expected. To her great relief, Broadway-caliber belting was not required.

Once Peak is done with the world tour she’s currently on to promote Hunger Games, she has another blockbuster waiting for her back home. Yes, she’ll be joining Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler in Miami Vice ’85, which has already started shooting. The buzzy project will also reunite Peak with director Joseph Kosinski, with whom she worked on a short film for Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle fragrance in 2023. (As a brand ambassador for the fashion house, she admits she’s become a “nerd” about “different collections and different designers” as well.)

It’s a lot of big, commercial projects for a self-described “indie girl,” but Peak isn’t complaining. “I’ve read some really great scripts, but nothing hits quite like being on a huge-scale movie and getting to work with every actor you’ve ever admired ever,” she says, referring to a Hunger Games cast that includes Glenn Close, Elle Fanning and Jennifer Lawrence. “And I’m just excited to work, so whatever that looks like is good for me.”

Looking ahead, she has a list of directors with whom she dreams of working, including Joachim Trier, Janicza Bravo, Savanah Leaf, Eva Victor and Raven Jackson. More recently, she’s added Primetime and You Can See Everything‘s Lance Oppenheim to said list. But Peak is working on herself, too. “Just kind of building my arsenal,” she says, “and making sure that I’m equipped to do whatever I do want to do next.” — K.C.

MY FAVORITE MUSICAL ARTIST IS ”Nina Simone. I didn’t know who she was until I was maybe 14. The first time I heard a Nina Simone song, I was in a hair and makeup trailer on one of the first jobs I ever did. Tati Gabrielle, who was on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, was in the makeup trailer, and I don’t even know if she remembers this, but she was playing music and she played Nina Simone, and I was like, ’Who is this?’ Then I went down like a deep rabbit hole.”

MY MOST IMPACTFUL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN ”I feel like it’s always the last one, because you’re just always learning on every single job. You take the tools that you got from the last one and then bring it to the next one. So, probably The Hunger Games. That was incredible, no complaints.”

THE ACTOR I LOOK UP TO MOST RIGHT NOW IS ”I love Viola Davis, always. Everything she does is incredible, and I want her on my screen all the time.”

AN ACTOR MY AGE I ADMIRE IS “Florence Pugh. She’s done so much. God, I’ve gotta get to work.“

Whitney Peak was photographed Oct. 16 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Full look: Chanel.

Hair: Ursula Stephen. Makeup: Tasha Reiko Brown.

Owen Thiele

For a brief moment in between the first and second seasons of Adults, Thiele found himself getting a little maudlin. The actor was deeply attached to the FX sitcom about 20-something friends living together in Queens. It premiered in 2025 to positive reviews but was, by all accounts, rather niche. “It felt like we had this special little show that we all loved but that maybe didn’t resonate with the masses, and that was really scary,” he says. “For the first time ever, I told myself, ‘That’s life. You love something and you have to let it go.’ “

Then the renewal announcement came down from on high, and Thiele returned to himself. “I was like, never mind, screw that message, screw that moral,” he adds with a laugh. Adults‘ second season, which aired this fall, proved to be a boon not just for the hangout show genre — its viewership grew 40 percent — but also for Thiele’s career. Suddenly, he is everywhere. In addition to being the biggest breakout star of the FX series, on magazine covers and at A-list parties, he’ll be in next year’s A24 comedy Peaked and the 13 Going on 30 reboot. (And he conducted this interview from the New Zealand set of a yet-to-be-announced horror film.)

“People think I popped out of nowhere, but I’ve been working at this for 10 years,” says the 30-year-old. He grew up in L.A. and attended the prestigious Crossroads School, where he honed his creativity and knack for building relationships; most of his early work was alongside childhood friends like Cazzie David and Molly Gordon. But he was pushing his Hollywood career forward the old-fashioned way, too. “I’ve done many a self-tape that should be burned. I’ve done all sorts of bit parts. I was waiting for a role that I could sink my teeth into,” he says, adding that because of his extended entrée into stardom, he doesn’t feel the pressure to capitalize on the success of Adults the way one might expect. “I know there are ebbs and flows in a career, and there are very few things being made, and very few of them are needing roles for a Black gay man,” he continues. But he feels optimistic about the new crop of young writers who are intent on making diverse and inclusive projects, and also about his future on FX: “Hopefully I get to keep doing Adults for the rest of my life — or at least until we’re in our late 30s.” — S.R.

WHAT HAS AND HASN’T CHANGED THE MOST IN MY LIFE ”I’m never really home, because I’m in Toronto filming Adults. And I miss my parents. You guys, come on the road! Get to Toronto. Everything else is exactly the same. I’m still doing my boyfriend’s laundry.”

MY MOST IMPACTFUL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN ”Working on Theater Camp with Molly Gordon directing. I grew up with her, we were in plays together. To watch her step into those shoes and telling me what to do was really, really fulfilling.”

RANDOM SKILL I PICKED UP ON A PROJECT ”I wrestle a raccoon to the floor in Adults. That’s a skill I didn’t know I had. So if you have raccoons in your backyard, call me.”

MY FAVORITE PLACE IN LA ”It’s cheesy, but my parents’ house. I love being on their couch.”

Owen Thiele was photographed Oct. 16 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Calvin Klein jacket, shirt, jeans; Thiele’s earrings.

Hair: Coree Moreno. Makeup: Shannon Pezzetta.

Esmé Creed-Miles

Creed-Miles never wanted to be part of Hollywood. She grew up watching her mother, veteran actress Samantha Morton, put herself through the wringer in service of her vocation, and she says she learned at a very young age not to covet fame. But at 16, her mother’s agent coaxed her into auditioning for the part of a young Ruth Wilson in the 2017 thriller Dark River. “Very quickly, I had this feeling of seeing what I was doing and that I was impressing them and having an emotional impact,” says the actress, who adds: “And I really liked feeling like I was good at something.” She was offered the job that day.

From there, Creed-Miles, now 26, began building the career she never knew she wanted. Before long, she was starring opposite Joel Kinnaman in the 2019 Prime Video thriller series Hanna. “As a kid, I was always with my mom on her jobs, so I understood exactly what it meant to be on a set,” she says. “I felt like such a grown-up on Hanna, even though I wasn’t.” But it was Creed-Miles’ turn as Marianne Dashwood — a more wild, nearly feral version of the lovelorn literary stalwart — in this year’s remake of Sense and Sensibility that has the town talking. Ironically, Creed-Miles almost didn’t audition for the role, having convinced herself that a project as lofty as a Jane Austen adaptation would call for a more extroverted actress. (“I’m not the best people person, so I didn’t think I had a chance in hell,” she explains.) In the end, Creed-Miles was drawn in by the cinematic bona fides of the production: a budding auteur in director Georgia Oakley and a mandate to shoot on 35mm. “It reignited my passion for filmmaking,” she says now.

Already, the film has sent her on her first global press tour and scored her her first major nomination — outstanding supporting performance — at the upcoming Gotham Awards. Still, she insists none of it has changed her outlook on fame: “It’s pretty unfair that women are expected to have this whole persona outside of their professional work, but men whose careers I’ve really obsessed over, like Daniel Day-Lewis or Joaquin Phoenix, are allowed to have very mysterious or even nonexistent public personas,” she says. “I just love the idea of showing up to be a weirdo in a movie and disappearing again.” — S.R.

MY FIRST AUDITION WAS… ”I’ve been doing this since I was six, so I have no clue. I did a Harmony Korine film as a kid and I think I had dinner with him and my mom, so maybe that was an audition of sorts.”

THE ACTOR I LOOK UP TO MOST RIGHT NOW IS ”I’ll shout out Kristen Stewart, because I’ve worked with her a few times now and she’s an amazing filmmaker and always has really important things to say.”

RANDOM SKILL I PICKED UP ON A PROJECT ”I’m not a horse girl, but I did learn horseback riding for Sense and Sensibility. They’re so gentle and kind, and it’s very liberating to be on a horse.”

MY FAVORITE PLACE IN LA ”Honey Hi for brunch. They do this amazing bacon breakfast bowl and some really good gluten-free pancakes.”

Esmé Creed-Miles was photographed Oct. 7 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Tom Ford shirt, tights.

Hair: Cervando. Makeup: Kate Lee.

Stephen Kalyn

Like many young actors this year, Kalyn plays a hockey player on a buzzy television show. Unlike most actors playing hockey players, Kalyn actually grew up playing the sport. “Everyone is very comfortable in their skates now,” he says of his fellow actors, though it was clear his expertise made him the de facto captain of the Off Campus training sessions season one. Now, he jokes: “They’re all going to be ready to play beer league soon.”

This year has been a game-changer for Kalyn, who’d been building a résumé of recurring roles (on Essex County, Cruel Intentions, Gen V) before he landed the role of Dean Di Laurentis in Prime Video’s red-hot hockey romance. For the show’s upcoming season, set to premiere in April, the 28-year-old’s character (alongside Mika Abdalla’s Allie Hayes) will be at the center of the story, as his co-stars Belmont Cameli’s and Ella Bright’s characters were season one. “To watch them go through it was such a great learning lesson for me,” says the actor, who’s already seen his profile soar, as evidenced by his nearly 4 million new followers on Instagram. Once the first season dropped — reaching 36 million global viewers over its first 12 days — Kalyn’s phone began ringing in ways it never had before. In short order, he booked ad campaigns, brand partnerships and new Hollywood projects, including The Housemaid’s Secret, a follow-up to the 2025 film that has him starring alongside Sydney Sweeney, Kirsten Dunst and Paul Anthony Kelly. Having seen the first installment twice in the theater — once with his fiancée, once with his mom — he was admittedly nervous when he first got to set. But he’s since settled in, he says: “I’ve found my fitting in this story now.” — N.F.

MY FIRST AUDITION WAS… ”One of my first auditions would’ve been for a Pizza Pop commercial. I really thought I nailed it, and turns out I didn’t. I didn’t get a call back. I got a Tim Hortons commercial in Canada. They flew me to Mexico. I remember doing it, and I thought: Once this comes out, I’m going to be huge. I’m going to be the face of Canada. It’s going to be unbelievable. That didn’t happen.”

RANDOM SKILL I PICKED UP ON A PROJECT ”I should have known how to do it, but I had to learn how to properly chop onions. There’s a technique to it. It’s not as simple as you think it is. This is for The Housemaid [2], the director came over and he’s like, ’You know how to cut onions, right?’ And I’m like, ’Yeah. Of course I do. Totally. Just one second.’ I went around the corner, I went on TikTok and I quickly found how to cut onions. When you see it on the big screen, you’re going to think, ‘That guy’s a really good onion cutter.’”

MY MOST IMPACTFUL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN ”As much as I would love to talk about a lot of them, it would’ve been doing season two of Off Campus. There are so many things and emotions and feelings that I had to discover.”

THE ACTOR I LOOK UP TO MOST RIGHT NOW IS ”I always grew up loving Jim Carey. But then, as time went on, I’d say Leo DiCaprio.”

Stephen Kalyn was photographed Oct. 16 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Todd Snyder suit; David Yurman jewelry; Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses; stylist’s tank, belt.

Grooming: Candice Birns.

Sophie Nélisse

”Career-wise, this is the busiest I’ve ever been,” says the Yellowjackets star. “It’s the first time I’ve not stopped for 10 months straight.” Nélisse got her start at age 11, with the French-language Canadian film Monsieur Lazhar. Now 26, Nélisse worked steadily through her teenage years and into her 20s, ultimately landing a lead role on the Showtime drama about a high school soccer team stranded in the woods after a plane crash.

But as Yellowjackets prepares to close out its four-season run, Nélisse has found herself in an enviable position with a slew of new projects on the horizon, including a starring role in Netflix’s adaptation of the Carley Fortune novel This Summer Will Be Different. It’s a 180 from Yellowjackets, she says, having quite literally gone from crying with dirt under her nails one day to flying to Prince Edward Island, where she immediately went into fittings, got hair extensions and a fake tan.

But the lion’s share of the heat surrounding Nélisse lately stems from a two-episode arc in last winter’s hockey juggernaut Heated Rivalry. Her character, superstar actress Rose Landry, dates Hudson Williams’ Shane Hollander and, in one of the show’s most memorable scenes, helps him come to terms with the fact that he’s gay. Nélisse is set to return for the show’s highly anticipated second season, which is filming in Toronto. She’s still making sense of the series’ outsize success — and her place within it.

“When articles come out and they say ‘star of Heated Rivalry,’ I’m like, ‘I have one scene!'” she jokes. The irony, she reveals, is that she didn’t prepare particularly hard for said scene, even if she’s immensely proud to be a part of it. It certainly wasn’t the “weeks of just sobbing and the most gut-wrenching scenes” she did on Yellowjackets. Instead, she recalls: “I came in, learned my lines and I was like, ‘All right, let’s do this!’ I didn’t think about it twice.” — N.F.

WHAT‘S CHANGED THE MOST IN MY LIFE IN THE PAST YEAR ”Wrapping up Yellowjackets. It had been this stability for the last almost 10 years of my life. Knowing that I was coming back and knowing there was going to be more than one season and also knowing that I was going to be reunited every year with these actors — that really felt like the end of an era and sort of closing a chapter of my life.”

MY MOST-PLAYED ARTIST THIS YEAR WILL BE “Noah Kahan. I’m dying to see him at a concert.”

THE ACTOR I LOOK UP TO MOST RIGHT NOW IS ”Kate Winslet is a big inspiration for me. Her career has been so diverse, and she’s chosen just beautiful characters.”

MY FAVORITE PLACE IN LA ”I’m so embarrassed to actually say my response. Now I need to say it. My favorite place, not to visit, but to go to would be the Erewhon hot bar, which is the most embarrassing answer ever. What can I say? I love it.”

Sophie Nélisse was photographed Oct. 27 at BOOM at The Standard, High Line, New York. Gabriela Hearst gown; Wolford underwear; Yvonne Leon rings; State Property rings.

Hair: Xavier Velasquez. Makeup: Leslie Ann Thomson.

Lola Tung

The face that launched a thousand ships? Not exactly, but Tung was at the center of the internet’s hottest debate last year when social media took sides over who her character, Belly, should end up with on the hit Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty. (Jennifer Lawrence recently admitted that when she publicly declared herself Team Jeremiah, “The level of hate that I got was bigger than any controversy I’ve ever been involved in in my life.”)

Tung, a 24-year-old New York City native and an alum of LaGuardia High School, led the show for three seasons in her professional acting debut. “I couldn’t have had a better first experience,” she says. She’ll return, alongside her co-stars Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno, for a feature film follow-up to the series, but she’s also working with Gracie Abrams and Connor Storrie in Halina Reijn’s upcoming A24 film Please and starring opposite Nicole Kidman and Nico Parker in Osgood Perkins’ horror The Young People. “Belly is such a huge part of me, so I was like, as this chapter is coming to an end, let’s dive into something super different,” she says. And although she’s not out to be the next scream queen — as an admitted “scaredy cat” — she emphasizes, “It’s really cool to be like, ‘Oh, this is how they do the blood and the grossness of it all.’ ” And when the blood and guts are washed off, Tung is busy becoming a fashion “It” girl, serving as a global ambassador for Coach and stepping out on the fashion show circuit. She’s also no stranger to the stage, having made her Broadway debut in 2024 with a limited run in Hadestown.

Looking ahead, Tung says she’d like to add to her already impressive list of female filmmaker collaborators, with Chloé Zhao at the top of her wish list, and hopes to write and direct herself one day — in a return to what drew her to the creative world in the first place. “I used to make music videos with my friends in elementary school, and I was always a really bossy director,” Tung recounts with a laugh. “It was always super fun for me — not fun for my friends, who were like, ‘We want a break, please!’ But I love every aspect of it, and it’s been really cool now to work with so many directors who are so collaborative and get a peek into what that world looks like.” — K.C.

MY MOST IMPACTFUL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN ”It’s funny because you learn something from every single experience that you have, obviously. But I was on Summer for the longest; that was five years of my life. Because of that, I learned so much as an actor and about myself.”

IF I COULD, I WOULD TELL MY FUTURE SELF ”I would like to tell future Lola that I love her and I hope she’s happy and I hope AI hasn’t taken over.”

THE ACTOR I LOOK UP TO MOST RIGHT NOW IS ”Renate Reinsve and Jessie Buckley. And, honestly, I think a lot of the people that I’ve worked with inspire me a lot. It’s fun because you get to watch them work up close and it’s so magical. Everyone on Summer is so fun to watch, and on Forbidden Fruits and The Young People. My friends Nico [Parker] and Lili [Reinhart] are so incredibly talented and special.”

MY MOST-PLAYED ARTIST THIS YEAR WILL BE “Probably either Lizzie McAlpine or Olivia Rodrigo. Those two albums have been on repeat for me.”

Lola Tung was photographed Oct. 27 at BOOM at The Standard, High Line, New York. Balenciaga gown, gloves; Ettika earrings.

Hair: Dana Boyer. Makeup: Misha Shahzada.

Tom Francis

When Francis was starring in Sunset Boulevard on the West End and on Broadway, he says he approached the experience like a racehorse. “It was like I had those blinders on to block everything out,” he explains. “That was the only way that I could get through it and do the job that I wanted to do.” The strategy worked, of course. He earned an Olivier Award and a Tony nomination, and his performance as Joe Gillis — which included the much-talked-about title-song sequence in which Francis left the theater every night to perform to a Steadicam on 44th Street — caught the attention of big-time directors, including Peter Berg, who was so taken that he offered Francis a role in his new film The Mosquito Bowl. The movie, which centers on a real-life group of star college football players who enlist in World War II, marks Francis’ first major screen role.

The 27-year-old grew up in Suffolk, England, and graduated from drama school during the pandemic, falling quickly into a theater career — which he says actually gave him an advantage on the high-octane, occasionally chaotic production full of combat scenes. “I’m very used to being told, ‘You have to hit your light here every time.’ ” Berg also wrote in a singing scene just for Francis. “It’s factually incorrect because my character wasn’t a singer [in real life], but I figured Broadway fans might watch this movie,” Francis explains. “You’ve got to give the people what they want.” Next, he will be seen in a recurring role on season two of Benito Skinner’s Overcompensating — after that, he will play Richard Gere’s son in the Apple TV series Off Weeks. There was a time when Francis kept lists of his dream jobs, but lately he has simplified. He just wants to work with people who push him. “Benny definitely expected more of me than I thought I could give,” he says of the quippy Prime Video comedy, which he describes as the “most joyous” job he’s ever had.

It’s been a whirlwind year of firsts, but Francis says the most exciting thing to happen to him so far was his recent appearance at the Academy Museum Gala. “It was one of those moments where I looked around the room thinking, it’s filled with the most inspiring people to me,” he says of a crowd that included Taylor Swift, adding: “I’m a Swiftie now.” — S.R.

AN ACTOR MY AGE I ADMIRE IS ”Tom Blyth and David Jonsson. I watched Wasteman, and it’s so brilliant. I’d love to try and work with those two at some point in my life.”

RANDOM SKILL I PICKED UP ON A PROJECT ”In Rent, there’s a song called ’Light My Candle’ and we had to light the candles while walking at a perfect pace. The candle would go out all the time. I got really good at lighting matches.”

MY MOST-PLAYED ARTIST THIS YEAR WILL BE ”Deep sleep piano. I’ve recently gotten into going to sleep with this lo-fi music in the background. So that’s running the whole of the night. But after that, I’d say Matt Corby. I’m really loving his Rainbow Valley album at the moment.”

MY FAVORITE PLACE IN LA ”It’s my friend Ray Nicholson’s house. We call it Casa Mysterio because his nickname is Ray Mysterio. His house is very calming.”

Tom Francis was photographed Oct. 16 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Dolce & Gabbana shirt, pants, tee, belt; David Yurman jewelry.

Grooming: Shannon Pezzetta.

Charlie Hall

Hall’s collegiate years at Northwestern were primarily dedicated to the basketball team. But when the 6-foot-5 L.A. native realized a future in the NBA wasn’t in the cards, he turned his focus to his other passion — entertainment. It helped that he was already a film major. As was all but inevitable growing up with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Saturday Night Live‘s Brad Hall as parents, he is a considerable talent and a major comedy fan. One of his first onscreen appearances was in a supporting role in the Amy Poehler-directed 2021 Netflix comedy Moxie, which boosted both his résumé and his confidence. “Amy would laugh occasionally at stuff I was doing,” he says, “and I remember thinking, ‘OK, if someone like Amy thinks I don’t suck, then maybe I don’t suck!’ “

The next few years saw the now 29-year-old jumping from multi-episode arcs and supporting turns in series like Mindy Kaling’s The Sex Lives of College Girls, Ryan Murphy’s Monster franchise and, most recently, Apple TV’s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, where he starred opposite Tatiana Maslany. Up next is his biggest project to date: HBO’s The White Lotus, where his castmates will include Laura Dern, Steve Coogan and Ben Kingsley. “It was a really cool moment calling my family and telling them,” he says, laughing as he catches himself: “Even though I think you’re not supposed to do that. Whatever! They can’t fire me now!” Production on the series’ fourth season, which will be set in France, has already stretched well over six months. (“I’ve certainly had enough steak frites to last a lifetime,” he jokes.)

Hall should be hopeful that the Mike White anthology becomes the same kind of springboard for him that it was for his predecessors, be it Sydney Sweeney, Sam Nivola or Patrick Schwarzenegger. Though, in Hall’s case, he’s already lined up several projects, in front of and behind the camera. “For the first couple of years, acting was in the driver’s seat only because, from a career standpoint, I had more traction as an actor than I did as a writer,” he says, and he’d still love to tackle a rom-com or a Hoosiers-esque sports movie, putting those latent basketball skills to good use. But the interest in Hall as a multihyphenate is growing now, too. In fact, he was recently tapped to write a series about a college fraternity drug ring in development at Netflix and a sci-fi high school comedy for Universal and Phil Lord and Chris Miller. — M.G.

WHAT HAS AND HASN’T CHANGED THE MOST IN MY LIFE “I have spent the last five-ish months in France shooting The White Lotus, which has been so much fun. Living in another country where they don’t speak English is quite the culture shock, but it’s been amazing. And something that hasn’t changed at all is that I am still very tall, so I still hit my head on stuff constantly, no matter where I live.“

RANDOM SKILL I PICKED UP ON A PROJECT “The first like three shows I did, all of them required me to roller skate.”

MY FIRST AUDITION WAS… “My first in-person audition was for the show Winning Time on HBO. It’s a basketball show, and I played basketball in college, so I really think they just wanted to see if I could act at all because they wouldn’t have to hire a double for the basketball stuff. I went into the room, and I did the scene, and then they said, “Okay, great. We’ll move on to the next scene.” I had no idea what they were talking about. It turned out that I had printed the script, and my printer, unbeknownst to me, was doing double-sided printing. There was another scene on the back that I had not read.”

FICTIONAL CHARACTER I IDENTIFY WITH ”Coach Taylor, Friday Night Lights.“

Charlie Hall was photographed Oct. 7 at Viceroy Santa Monica. Todd Snyder sweater; Hall’s watch.

Grooming: Catherine Furniss.

This story appeared in the Nov. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.