W MAGAZINE’s 2025 Best Performances Portfolio, part of their annual Best Performances issue on stands February 11th, celebrates 34 incredible actors at the forefront of cinema. Curated by W’s editor-at-large, Lynn Hirschberg, the Best Performances Portfolio features profiles with Adria Arjona, Andrew Garfield, Danielle Deadwyler, Drew Starkey, Fernanda Torres, Harris Dickinson, Josh O’Connor, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Karla Sofía Gascón, Lily Collias, Maisy Stella, Mikey Madison, Natasha Lyonne, Nicholas Galitzine, Nicholas Hoult, Pamela Anderson, Ryan Destiny, and Willa Fitzgerald photographed by and Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, and styled by W Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Sara Moonves.
Adria Arjona
On her celebrity crush: “This is a weird one, but I love Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Jim Parsons! I love how tender he is, how smart and unaware he can be at times. It’s really endearing. I also had a really big crush on Dr. House [from the show House]. I was attracted to both of their brilliance.”
Andrew Garfield
His favorite reality show: “Right now, The Traitors. The British version. I love the American version, but the British version, with Claudia Winkleman, is the greatest. I don’t know if there’s a better television show that’s ever been made. My guilty pleasure is Too Hot to Handle on Netflix. Fuck, it’s really good. A bunch of hot men and women think they’re going on a Love Island–type show. They’re all horny and hot, and then they find out they can only win the prize money if they don’t fuck each other. The competition is run by this Alexa kind of robot, and she tells them, “You’ve all been selected because you are terrified of intimacy. You will be here for a week, and if you do anything physically that is not born out of a true emotional connection, you will be fined.” And an amazing thing happens: These people start to reveal their traumas, and suddenly they’re softening and they’re vulnerable. It’s a very beautiful thing.”
His pet peeve: “ Lateness. Especially for specific things like theater. I will kill a bitch. I will cut somebody. You don’t do that unless there’s an emergency. I struggle with disrespect for other people’s time.”
Danielle Deadwyler
On her go-to karaoke song: ““You Oughta Know,” by Alanis Morissette. Anything where you can yell. That makes sense to me.”
On whether or not she believes in ghosts: “I wholeheartedly believe in spirits and in the work and protection of ancestors. I see them all the time. The language of the spirits is multitudinous, gestural, and symbolic. It’s a gift in our everyday lives, if we listen.”
Drew Starkey
On his favorite Halloween costume: “I love Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday. It’s close to my birthday, and I don’t like birthday parties—but Halloween you have very mature, serious adults who, for one day, get to be idiots. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be an alien, but I didn’t know what that looked like. I borrowed a mask from a friend and wore a long purple robe that I couldn’t walk in. The robe was too big, and I couldn’t see out of the mask, but I didn’t take it off. I was totally engulfed in the illusion that I was an alien.”
His favorite reality show: “I’m a die-hard Jersey Shore girl. Snooki, DJ Pauly D. It’s my favorite. I’ll go back and watch the OG seasons. But Jersey Shore was such a formative time. I think it came out the summer of my sophomore year of high school. It’s the best.”
Fernanda Torres
The first movie she saw: “Donkey Skin, with Catherine Deneuve. The next one was 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a great child’s movie. When I had my kid, it was the first film I showed him. You have the monkeys, the spaceship.”
Her pet peeve: “People who talk about their lives on the Internet. Falling in love, and then they fight, and then they have to explain themselves, and then they fight someone else and they have to tell about it. It’s a sickness nowadays.”
Harris Dickinson
On whether he has lied about something to get a part: “All the time. For my first job ever, I told them I could drive, and I couldn’t. When I got the job, I quickly went and got my license. The same with horse riding. I said, “Oh yeah, yeah. I grew up riding horses.” And then you just learn. Actors are like that—we’re pretenders.”
His favorite reality show: “At the moment, it’s Love Is Blind. There’s a wild one that isn’t on anymore called Wife Swap. I went back and watched it recently. You think about how precarious they were, to put two people from wildly different circumstances together and expect them to get on with it, with kids. Some of those early episodes, they’re amazing. There’s a whole slew of them on YouTube.”
Josh O’Connor
On his first acting job: “It was an episode of a TV show called Inspector Lewis, and the direction was very simple: I had to say one line, kiss a girl on the cheek, and look anywhere but the camera. I did 20 takes. It was some Shakespearean line, and I went, “Line, line, line” and looked straight down the barrel every time. It was a disaster. They didn’t cut me, which is a miracle.”
His first kiss: “At the BlueBird Ball in Gloucestershire, England. I’m sure it was terrible. The ball was kind of a disaster. I wanted to be like the popular guys, who had bits of facial hair sprouting. My older brother, who was very cool, told me, “Listen, Josh, if you shave every day between now and the ball in six weeks, you’ll encourage growth and you’ll have a beard. So I shaved every single day, but there was nothing on my face. By the time of the ball, I had a bright red bottom of my face, all scarred and gnarled. I looked crazy. And everyone kept saying, “You’ve got to kiss someone.” I said, “You’re absolutely right!” And I kissed. I don’t think we ever spoke to each other again.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
On whether she gets starstruck: “Yes. What happens is, I retreat. I get overcome sometimes. The first time I saw Meryl Streep at one of those crazy Hollywood parties, I was just goo-goo-gaga.”
Karla Sofía Gascón
On staying grounded in reality despite the recent praise and attention from her role in Emilia Perez: “Yes, they are all my friends now: Nicole, Demi, Quentin, Steven! But I am in complete balance. Nobody can move me out of my real life. I only need to get the breakfast bill in one hotel in New York to say, ‘What the fuck? One hundred dollars for two eggs!’ I return to my normal life automatically.”
Lily Collias
On her first kiss: “It was at a movie—something really loud. Maybe a Jurassic Park film. I think we had smoked a really weird joint before, and I was kind of like, I don’t know where I am. It was sloppy. Weird. And I was like, Ooh, okay, I guess this is how it goes.”
Maisy Stella
On her celebrity crushes growing up: “I had a lot of crushes. My first one that was serious, that was like feelings—was the Naked Brothers Band. Nat and Alex Wolff. I say the Naked Brothers Band plural, because I wanted both of them. I couldn’t pick. And then I was really obsessed with Alex Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place. And Selena Gomez. That one might’ve even been more serious because I had a replica of her wand, and she was my wallpaper on my iPad. I was obsessed with her.”
Mikey Madison
On learning how to pole dance for the role of Ani: “It’s so hard. I was covered in bruises. I’m a very stubborn person, and I wanted it to be impressive—even if it’s just for a short scene, because it tells you so much about her, how long she’s been working at the club.”
Her movie star crush growing up: “I loved River Phoenix. When I was getting into acting, I watched all of his films. I sought out My Own Private Idaho.”
Natasha Lyonne
On her experience with a dog psychic: “My dog, Rootbeer, has been to a dog psychic. I was curious if she was happy. And it turns out that Rootbeer was apparently my daughter who died tragically in another life. We’re so glad to be reunited. And thus I shall have no daughters in this life. So yeah, that was heavy. And kind of tragic.”
Nicholas Galitzine
His first kiss: “Under this old tree in the park near where I lived. I initiated it, and I was so nervous. I had looked up how to kiss on Google and practiced on my arm. It was really bad, but luckily she came back to the well, which I kind of needed.”
On his cinematic crushes: “Oh god, so many. The first one I can really remember is Jessica Alba. I think it was the Fantastic Four. That was a golden era of those comedy/romance movies that she was in as well.”
Nicholas Hoult
On movies that make him cry: “Moana made me cry the other day. Maybe I’m just getting sappier and sentimental, but there was a rousing moment toward the end of the movie. She’s singing and the ocean’s lifting. It was powerful. I was welling up a little bit.”
On whether he gets starstruck: “I got starstruck at the Governors Awards. As I was walking in, Sharon Stone was there. Before she turned to walk away, she goes, “You’re incredible.” And I was like, what?! I thought she meant someone else. But then she said, “You’re so good.” I had just arrived, but I said, “I’m going to go home now—my night has been made.”
Pamela Anderson
On who she had a crush on growing up: “Michael Jackson. I thought he would want to marry me. Then I met him, and he didn’t ask me to marry him! I was really disappointed.”
Ryan Destiny
On whether she gets starstruck: “Not as much anymore, but I did get starstruck over Snoop Dogg. That was embarrassing, because I really freaked out. He’s just so cool and laid-back. I said, ‘You’re Snoop Dogg.’ He was like, ‘Duh, of course.’ He just laughed at me.”
Willa Fitzgerald
Whether she’s similar to any animals: “I was an Arctic fox in one of the only acting classes I took at Yale. Choosing our animal was one of the witchier things I’ve ever dabbled in: The animal picks you. The Arctic fox just came to me. It’s a fox engineered by nature to survive in a white landscape. And yes, I killed animals for food. Not real animals—just in my mind.”
[Photo Credit: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott]
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