Introducing your soon-to-be favorites: ELLE’s Hollywood Rising Class of 2025: Mia Threapleton, Taylor Zakhar Perez, Sarah Pidgeon, Young Mazino, Geraldine Viswanathan, Louisa Jacobson, Luna Blaise.
From industry legacies to breakout talents discovered through social media, theater camp, or even a family band, these 14 young stars share one undeniable trait: raw, magnetic talent paired with unstoppable ambition.
They are poised to dominate screens big and small this year, with roles in everything from THE LAST OF US and THE GILDED AGE to a Wes Anderson indie and the next JURASSIC WORLD installment. They will embody icons like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and Sammy Davis Jr., and that’s just the beginning.
MIA THREAPLETON
On landing her role in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme: “I was a bit nervous initially [to meet Anderson], but then he opened the door and was wearing pink socks and slippers, and I wasn’t nervous anymore.” When Threapleton first watched Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, she was 12 years old. “I remember thinking, ‘I want to do that, with that person.’” She locked it away and thought to herself, “Keep it quiet, just watch that film again and again and think about how much you really want to do it.” Now here she is, doing it.
On choosing not to have social media: “People say, ‘Oh, well done,’ to not having it, but I’ve never had it, so I don’t really know what the ‘Well done’ is for. I don’t want it. I don’t want to worry about dropping my phone out of a tree if I’m climbing one because I’m trying to take a photo of something.”
On body image and an early lesson from her mother, Kate Winslet: I tell her that I recall Winslet saying in an interview that she wanted to try to raise her children to be less body-conscious, after experiencing extensive body-shaming and harassment at the height of her Titanic fame. Threapleton says she recognizes that from her upbringing, remembering a time when she had felt self-conscious about her shoulders while swimming: “My mom said, ‘No, this is strong. So many people would love to be able to swim the length of the pool the way you do—think of it as a positive thing.’”
On being raised away from the entertainment industry despite having a famous parent: “I really could count on one hand—both hands possibly—the amount of times that I went to set as a kid. My mother really strived to keep that world separate from our home life. That’s something that she really wanted,” Threapleton explains. “She would say, ‘All of their experiences will be theirs and theirs alone’—which is exactly what has happened.”
TAYLOR ZAKHAR PEREZ
On resisting Hollywood’s desire to typecast: “Hollywood loves to put people in a box,” he says. “If you do one thing successfully, then they want you just to do it over, and over, and over again. And so I’ve been really conscious with my team of making choices that keep me evolving rather than getting typecast.”
On the global response to Red, White & Royal Blue: The frenzy began well before the movie premiered; after Zakhar Perez was cast as Alex, fans began stitching together clips of his and Galitzine’s past roles to form a love story. “I travel around the world quite often…and I have never been stopped more than I was for that film,” he says. “People lined up outside of a hotel in Paris to get a picture, because they loved Alex Claremont-Diaz so much. That speaks volumes about what these two characters mean to those who watch it.”
On telling stories that matter to his communities: He notes that the story was especially impactful among the Latin and queer communities. “I’m very particular about projects I do, because I want to do films and TV that have something [to say]. Being able to do a romantic comedy that fit that bill was really special,” he says. “People in their 60s and 70s tell me…they wish they had this kind of movie when they were younger. So this isn’t a project I take for granted.”
SARAH PIDGEON
On empathizing with even the most flawed characters: “Every character I’ve played, I’m always ‘Team Fill-in-the-Blank.’ Even if they’re extremely flawed, there’s a way to justify what they did,” Pidgeon says. “I did judge Diana a bit for being in this relationship [with her bandmate] and finding it so difficult to advocate for herself. It’s like, ‘Just get out, leave him,’ but it’s so much more complicated than that. She’s in a different time, and she’s extremely dependent on him. He introduced her to music, he helped her write all of her first songs, and now she’s starting to have a lot of agency as a songwriter by herself.”
On her theatrical roots and dream roles: But her heart still resides in the glow of the footlights. She’d love to do a Chekhov play or a one-woman show. And as far as movies go, “I’d also be down to do a real period piece,” she says, adding jokingly, “I think it’d be fun to, I don’t know, carry buckets of milk around a pasture.”
YOUNG MAZINO
On breaking barriers as an Asian American actor: “I know as an Asian American actor, there’s only so much opportunity,” says Mazino, who was raised in Maryland by Korean immigrant parents. “Not to say that there’s a glass ceiling, but I am definitely limit-testing, and I don’t want to settle for whatever Hollywood perceives me as right now.”
On the personal inspiration behind his The Last of Us character: Mazino didn’t have to look far to find inspiration. In the script, Jesse came across as selfless and sacrificial. Mazino knew someone like that: his father, who had come to the U.S. when he was 16, became a computer engineer and a church deacon, and worked hard to support his wife and three children. “My dad has a deep sense of community, and he’s so reliable—he’s just a rock,” Mazino says. “Jesse embodies that.”
On seeking roles that challenge and fulfill him: Looking ahead, Mazino wants to keep challenging himself. “I would love to really bite into a character who requires substantial work, and find a filmmaker who would essentially trust me with that kind of role,” he says. “I’m just trying to pursue my own happiness.” Some dream collaborators include Wes Anderson, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Denis Villeneuve (perhaps even a live-action anime adaptation, he suggests). Whatever it is Mazino does next, it will surely defy expectations.
GERALDINE VISWANATHAN
On sharing the screen with Will Ferrell in You’re Cordially Invited: … In Prime Video’s rom-com You’re Cordially Invited, she played Will Ferrell’s daughter, a pairing that sparked some palpable comedic chemistry. “He made me laugh so hard,” she says. “I’ve had some really great dads.”
On navigating representation in a still-limited industry: With precious few women of color taking on leading roles in Hollywood, the space can be frustratingly limited. Viswanathan—born to an Indian father, who’s a nuclear medicine specialist, and a Swiss artist mother—is keenly aware of this, having felt her ethnicity was a barrier to getting cast in Australia. “It was an experience that has defined who I am, especially growing up as the only person of color in a small, white town,” she says. “Feeling undervalued inspired me to act because I love to do it—not because anybody is asking me to do it. When you approach life that way, it becomes more magnetic.”
LOUISA JACOBSON
On childhood performances for an audience that included her mother Meryl Streep: “We would charge for tickets and have an audience,” she remembers, laughing. “It was so cool to be a kid and have the rapt attention of adults.” Those adults, of course, included Jacobson’s parents: the noted sculptor Don Gummer and none other than America’s favorite actress, Meryl Streep.
On trying (and resisting) a different path: Like her older sisters Mamie and Grace Gummer, Jacobson followed her mother’s lead into a life on screen and stage—participating in theater camp, plays, and musicals in middle and high school; singing in a cappella groups—but when she graduated college with a psychology degree, she took a hard left, working in retail and landing a job at an advertising agency. “I wanted to do something different than the rest of my family,” she says of those few years she spent working in an office in New York’s Financial District. “But I found myself feeling stuck—like I was keeping myself from doing what I wanted.”
On choosing acting—and facing inherited scrutiny: “[I knew] that if I chose my passion, which was acting, there would be many, many people who would feel like I didn’t deserve it,” she continues. “Grappling with that is kind of difficult, but it’s just part of what it is to be a nepo baby.”
“There are always going to be people who don’t believe in you,” she says. “What matters is how you show up in the room.” (When it comes to the ongoing cultural conversation around nepo babies, she adds, “It’s an important thing…to shine a light on in terms of who has privilege,” though she’s “not sure the public shaming aspect is conducive to much besides bringing people down.”)
On The Gilded Age and finding her voice: In 2019, Jacobson graduated from Yale and hit the jackpot: booking a lead role in HBO’s historical drama, The Gilded Age, creator Julian Fellowes’s follow-up to his treasured series Downton Abbey, set in New York City in the late 19th century. “I was really, really scared,” Jacobson says, thinking back to that first season. “It was a challenge to get through. I was used to doing theater…it was new to me to be on a set. And with such a big role, I felt a lot of pressure.”
On love, growth, and expanding her world: In real life, Jacobson is also surrounded by her fair share of coupling off: Her friends Justin Theroux and Nicole Brydon Bloom got married this March, thanks to Jacobson introducing the two (“It’s all because of me”); Streep and Martin Short are rumored to be dating (“I don’t know him super well, but he’s a great, great guy”); and it’s been a year since Jacobson announced her relationship with girlfriend Anna Blundell and publicly came out. “I’m so lucky to have had so much support,” she says now. “I feel like my life is expanding…it’s a beautiful thing.”
LUNA BLAISE
On wanting to literally step into the movies as a kid: When Luna Blaise’s parents took her to the movies as a child in Hollywood, she looked up in awe, wondering how she could inhabit the world of the characters above. “I would go down to the floor where the screen was, because I wanted to physically get inside,” she says from the backyard of her mom’s Los Angeles home, dressed in an oversize cardigan, her hair pulled back in a low bun. “I always told my parents, ‘I wanna be in the screen. How do I do that?’”
On joining the icon Jurassic Park franchise: “I remember watching the first Jurassic Park movie at my house,” she says. “It’s such an iconic franchise, and I’m so grateful that I get to be able to be a part of something that is so loved.”
On Jurassic World Rebirth: “It’s a whole new band of characters that nobody’s seen before,” she says. “It’s a new story and a new chapter.”
On learning by watching—and witnessing Scarlett Johansson lead: While filming the movie in Thailand, Malta, and London, Blaise took the opportunity to learn as much as she could from her co-stars. “I was just watching everyone and studying how they practice and work,” she says. “Just being in their orbit was really cool.” (And, she notes, it was nice to see a woman in a powerful leadership role: “Seeing Scarlett man the troops and be the captain of our ship was awesome.”)
[Photo Credit: Justin French for ELLE Magazine]
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