Groundbreaking directorial debuts, head-turning small screen duos, a brand new princess, major roles for one of the biggest names in pop and a hoofed mammal in the family Equidae make up THR’s picks for the year’s top rising film and TV talent from across the Atlantic.
The Oscars broke with tradition in 2022 by being somewhat light in winners from across the Atlantic, but normality looks likely to resume in 2023 — largely thanks to Martin McDonagh’s beloved Irish tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin. There are also a few other major U.K. heavyweights in the running, with Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins lurking further down pollsters’ lists.
But any notion that British and Irish success rests on the shoulders of such established names is easily quashed thanks to the rising talent that has emerged on the big and small screen over the last 12 months. From phenomenal directorial debuts — including one that has a good chance of making the Academy Awards — to several stand-out onscreen performances to one of the world’s biggest pop stars finally getting to fully test his acting skills, there are a number of fast-rising names whose work in 2022 will likely be remembered as their film or TV breakthrough.
The Hollywood Reporter has hand-picked a small selection of these talents, including Banshees‘ scene-stealing donkey, because any list from this year without her is incomplete.
Simone Ashley, Actor (Bridgerton)
The first season of Bridgerton may have already crowned a big-screen prince in Regé-Jean Page, but season two appears to have heralded the arrival of a princess. Simone Ashley was already notable in the ensemble of Netflix’s Sex Education, but it was the streamer’s steamy regency-era romance that truly saw her star soar as incoming leading lady Kate. Ashley, who unlike Jean-Page will reprise her role for season 3, also has an undisclosed role in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid coming up, while she appears to be social media’s first choice to play the lead in Gurinder Chadha’s recently announced Disney musical about an actual real-life Indian princess
Author: Alex Ritman
Published on Dec 27, 2022
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