Ones to watch: The emerging stars of 2025 set to be Hollywood’s next big thing
Meet the next generation of talented actors and actresses that have been sweeping through this year’s awards season
At the tender age of 25, Mikey Madison has already won Hollywood’s most inimitable accolade: an Oscar. Having beat Demi Moore and Cynthia Erivo at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday night, the Anora star joined an elite rank of actors and actresses who have added the golden gong to their trophy cabinet before the age of 30, including the likes of Jodie Foster, Angelina Jolie, Audrey Hepburn and Adrien Brody (who scooped his second Oscar, 22 years after his first, this month).
However, the world of film isn’t governed by age, but talent. While awards season – spanning January to March every year, and comprised of a series of glitzy ceremonies including the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards and international film festivals – often celebrates cinema’s biggest names, it also does a good job of highlighting the emerging talent on a starry trajectory to become one of the greats.
So who should you have your eye on now? Meet 2025’s class of talented actors and actresses set for stardom.
David Jonsson
Image: Gucci
Award wins:
- BAFTAs – Rising Star Award
- Newport Beach Film Festival – Breakout Artist
Nominations:
- Saturn Awards – Best Supporting Actor
Winning BAFTA’s Rising Star Award is certainly not to be sniffed at – and suggests London-born David Jonsson is destined for success if the careers of former winners Tom Holland and Kristen Stewart are anything to go by. Jonsson started his career on the West End, before roles in the acclaimed BBC Two series Industry and film Rye Lane, which earned him a British Independent Film Award in 2023.
Tatler, Evening Standard and GQ all listed him as one to watch before he starred in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Romulus in 2024, which won Best Horror Film at this year’s Golden Globes and perhaps tipped him to win the public-voted Rising Star Award at the BAFTAs last month. Speaking at the London ceremony, he said: “I’ve got to be honest, this isn’t why I do it. I’m just an east London boy. I didn’t really see a space for me in this industry. But this award is about people and as long as we can keep telling stories about people I think there’s got to be a space for me.” Rumoured to be starring as the lead in Frank Ocean‘s directorial debut, for which filming in Mexico City is supposedly already underway, Jonsson is definitely one to watch.
Jessica Gunning
Image: Alamy
Award wins:
- SAG Awards – Best Actress (limited series)
- Golden Globes – Best Supporting Actress (TV)
- Critics’ Choice Awards – Best Supporting Actress (limited series)
- Independent Spirit Awards – Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted Series
Nominations:
- Satellite Awards – Best Actress in a Miniseries
Jessica Gunning’s rush of accolades at the 2025 awards season has been long overdue. Having first graced our screens decades ago in TV series White Heat, What Remains and The Outlaws, it was Richard Gadd’s Netflix sensation, Baby Reindeer, that has required Gunning to order a larger trophy cabinet. Playing the uniquely complex character of Martha Scott, Gunning – who initially had to work multiple jobs to support her acting career – massively contributed to Baby Reindeer’s success, which has had more than 80 million views to date and is among the most-watched shows in Netflix’s history.
The series’ 11 Emmy nominations hinted that awards season was going to be big for the Baby Reindeer cast, but no amount of red carpet appearances, Jimmy Kimmel talk shows and Hollywood interviews could have prepared the 38-year-old actress from West Yorkshire to expect a clean sweep of Best Actress awards at the world’s biggest ceremonies. Speaking at the SAG Awards last month, she said: “In the mornings I used to go into work and look at a powerpoint presentation, there was a positive thinking vision board. There were all the things I wanted to do and all the people I wanted to meet and work with.
“Cate Blanchett, Jodie Foster and Kathy Bates were on that vision board […] and to be listed among them today and also alongside Lily [Gladstone] and Cristin [Milioti], who also gave performances that absolutely knocked my socks off, really means more to me than I can ever express. Thank you to everybody involved in Baby Reindeer for changing my life.”
Mikey Madison
Image: Dior/Getty
Award wins:
- Oscars – Best Actress
- BAFTAs – Best Actress in a Leading Role
- Independent Spirit Awards – Best Lead Performance
Nominations:
- SAG Awards – Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
- Critics' Choice Awards – Best Actress
- Golden Globes – Best Actress
Mikey Madison needs no introduction. Having won numerous awards this season for her role in Anora – in which she plays a New York sex worker who marries a Russian oligarch – Madison’s success may seem sudden, but she actually made her acting debut more than a decade ago. Having appeared in a number of short feature films, she started to gain traction in Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey before being cast as part of the Manson Family in Quentin Tarantino's period drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The latter premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and was a commercial success – and despite not having a lead role, Madison’s performance caught the eye of director Sean Baker. Baker revealed he cast Madison in Anora without an audition and wrote the character specifically for her, revealing at the Oscars Vanity Fair party on Sunday night: “Mikey's win is so important to me. It's something that I was really hoping for. I'm so happy that the industry and the academy are recognising her incredible talent.” We can’t wait to see what she does next.
Maisy Stella
Images: Shutterstock
Award wins:
- Critics' Choice Awards – Best Young Performer
- Independent Spirit Awards – Best Breakthrough Performance
Nominations:
- London Film Critics' Circle – Breakthrough Performer
Canadian-born Maisy Stella started her career as a country singer and child star, rising to fame as Daphne Conrad on the musical television series Nashville between 2012 and 2018. Now 21, she swapped Stateside music festivals and a solo singing career for the international film scene last year when she starred in Megan Park's coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass. Produced by Margot Robbie and husband Tom Ackerley’s film venture, LuckyChap Entertainment, the film earned two nominations at this year’s Critics' Choice Awards, where Stella won Best Young Performer.
Given her stellar (ahem) reception at this year’s awards, expect to see more of her across your screens in the coming years, telling Glamour last year: “My Old Ass has made me realise this is what I need to do forever.” Keep your eyes peeled for her appearance in Flowervale Street, a 2026 film directed by David Robert Mitchell starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor.
Sophie Wilde
Award wins:
- Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards – Best Lead Actress
- Cannes Film Festival – Trophée Chopard
- Critics' Choice Super Awards – Best Actress in a Horror Movie
Nominations:
- Saturn Awards – Best Supporting Actress
Undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest young talents, Sophie Wilde is still reeling from the success of 2024’s Babygirl, in which she starred alongside Hollywood royalty Nicole Kidman and British actor Harris Dickinson. Her workload isn’t showing signs of slowing down any time soon, either, having been selected as a Loewe ambassador and cast alongside Tom Cruise and Sandra Hüller in Judy, which is slated for release in 2026 and is currently filming.
Similar to other stars on this list, Wilde cut her teeth on stage, starring in the Bell Shakespeare production of Hamlet in her home city of Sydney, which earned her a Rising Star award by the Casting Guild of Australia. She got her breakout role in supernatural horror film Talk to Me, which screened at the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival and the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the US. Earning critical acclaim, Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times wrote that Talk To Me “owes much of its potency to Sophie Wilde's continually evolving lead performance” while David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said that “talented newcomer Wilde does the heaviest dramatic lifting”. What followed was a string of Australian and international accolades, and a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award last year.
Joe Locke
Award wins:
- Newport Beach Film Festival – Breakout Award
Nominations:
- Independent Spirit Awards – Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted Series
- Saturn Awards – Best Young Performer in a Television Series
Alongside fellow Heartstopper actor Kit Connor, Joe Locke attended his first Oscars this month – but we’re pretty sure it won’t be his last. Hailing from the Isle of Man, Locke is known for his breakthrough role as Charlie Spring in Netflix’s Heartstopper – a part he won out of 10,000 others during an open casting call – as well as his appearance in the Marvel TV show Agatha All Along, alongside Aubrey Plaza and Kathryn Hahn.
Both roles contributed to his winning the Breakout Award at London’s Newport Beach Film Festival last month, where he spoke about breaking into the industry without connections: “I wanted to be an actor since the day I was born but I come from a tiny island so that was never an achievable goal. I think it’s really important as an industry that we open doors for people that weren’t necessarily open before – if it wasn’t for the open call, I wouldn’t be here doing my dream job.”
