Combining authentic performances with captivating looks and undeniable star quality, a new generation of British and Irish acting talent has arrived. Get ready for the next Hollywood invasion.
Tut Nyuot
“How did I get into acting? I don’t even know the answer to that question,” says an effervescent Tut Nyuot on the set of his first ever magazine shoot. He’s hot off a breakout year, though acting “was more of an escape for me”, he explains. With performances in Netflix’s Steve, alongside Cillian Murphy and Jay Lycurgo, and Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk with David Jonsson and Cooper Hoffman, no wonder the 21-year-old Londoner made the latest Screen Daily Stars of Tomorrow list. When Ashley Walters – a personal hero – called him to lead his directorial debut, Animol, a sharp drama starring Brit legends Stephen Graham and Sharon Duncan-Brewster, things really started to fall into place – and the confidence kicked in. “Where I’m at now,” he says, “I never second-guess myself.”
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Viola Prettejohn
Up-and-comer Viola Prettejohn can remember her first solo cinema trip with forensic precision. “Phantom Thread. It was a really rainy day. Curzon Mayfair, upstairs screen,” she recalls eight years later. It was the movie that made her realise that filmmaking was “the ultimate goal”. So perhaps it’s no surprise that now, a fully formed cinephile (she goes to the cinema four times a week), the 22-year-old stars in what promises to be an award-season hit. In Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee, she plays Amanda Seyfried’s niece in an 18th-century-set musical about the Shaker movement. “It’s still unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Prettejohn says. “The whole thing was a dream come true.”
Mia McKenna-Bruce
“Even though it was a couple of years ago, it still feels very wild,” says Mia McKenna-Bruce, the 28-year-old Londoner who has achieved universal professional acclaim, got married and become a mother all in the past two years, since her Bafta-winning performance as Tara in Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex. Now, coming off the back of a leading role in Netflix’s new Agatha Christie murder mystery, as the effervescent Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, and royal drama The Lady, she’s deep in production for Sam Mendes’s epic quadruple biopic about The Beatles. She’ll play opposite Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr’s first wife, Maureen Starkey, and quite frankly couldn’t be happier. “We’ve got a really gorgeous story to tell,” she says of the role, which she can confirm is “very authentic” to the band. “The whole thing is magic.”
Sadie Soverall
Londoner Sadie Soverall will play a “realistic version of a manic pixie dream girl” in buzzy new romcom Finding Emily – in cinemas this spring – opposite fellow rising stars Angourie Rice and Vogue favourite Spike Fearn. “It was really interesting to play as a woman,” the 24-year-old says, though it seems compelling roles are not in short supply. She’s just booked a career-making – but top-secret – lead that, when she got the offer, left her speechless. “I was extremely shocked and didn’t believe it,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye. She can’t wait to tell her friends more, though, for now, we’ll have to make do with: “It’s crazy.”
Emma Laird
A brief but bold turn in Brady Corbet’s Oscar-nominated The Brutalist and sterling work in television crime thriller Mayor of Kingstown put 27-year-old former model Emma Laird on the map. But it’s her performance as Jimmima in Nia DaCosta’s eye-popping 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple that will cement her place among a new generation of the industry’s most wanted. DaCosta “really made it her own”, says Chesterfield-born Laird of Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic franchise. They started filming straight after wrapping 28 Years Later, with the same crew remaining in post. “I genuinely love watching women do well,” she says.
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Éanna Hardwicke
Cork native and former child actor Éanna Hardwicke doesn’t think of his role as legendary Irish footballer Roy Keane in Saipan (out on 26 January) as a biopic. “At some point, you have to forget that it’s a real person and you’ve just got to play a man in that situation,” says the 29-year-old. With a key break in the 2020 BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Hardwicke’s leading-man status is now fully realised. Saipan – with its stellar reviews – follows the fabled tale of Keane’s very public rift with manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) in the lead-up to the 2002 World Cup that dominated headlines in Ireland and beyond. Safe to say it’s a gearshift from his stage work, where he’s currently starring opposite Nicola Coughlan in The Playboy of the Western World at the National Theatre. “It’s a brilliant tale,” he says, “full of interesting twists and turns…”
Vivian Oparah
With her generation-encapsulating performance in cult-smash romcom Rye Lane – playing Yas, an aspiring costume designer from Peckham – Vivian Oparah is at the fore of a new wave of on-screen coming-of-age stories reinvented with a distinctly London feel. “To be part of the canon of Black romcoms feels super special,” she says of the film, which still has people stopping her in the street to gush. Now reuniting with director Raine Allen-Miller, the Londoner turns her attention to the genre once more in The Roots Manoeuvre, playing a young woman reclaiming stolen artefacts from a fictional Museum of Britain. The film just wrapped production in Jamaica. “The budget is bigger!” says the 29-year-old, excitedly. “Everything is bigger!”
Izuka Hoyle
If Scottish actor Izuka Hoyle needs motivation, it’s not an arthouse film or a gritty drama she gravitates towards watching. Her fascination? “I’m obsessed with sports documentaries,” she says, grinning, before reeling off The Last Dance, Cheer and Icarus as some of her favourites. It’s not that out of the ordinary, considering the machine-like discipline she exhibits in her own job. Take the 28-year-old’s leading role in forthcoming television thriller Prisoner, in which she plays an inmate transport officer who is handcuffed to a trained killer (Tahar Rahim). There’s a big stunt sequence in every episode and her kickboxing hobby helped her prepare. Then there’s her Scottish Bafta-winning role as French chef Camille in 2021’s tense restaurant-set film Boiling Point, which required rigorous dialect training for the part. Can she remember any French? “Can I fuck!”
Thaddea Graham
The name on Hollywood’s lips right now? Thaddea Graham, who in the past year alone has starred alongside Nicole Kidman, George Clooney and Julia Roberts, while cementing herself as one of Luca Guadagnino’s favourite new talents. But, as the 28-year-old Northern Irish actor notes, it was working on Apple TV+’s dark Irish comedy Bad Sisters that showed her “what it was to take up space” – noting in particular show creator and star Sharon Horgan’s support. “Being on set with such incredible women was really empowering. They give you the confidence to use your voice and they want to hear it,” she says.
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Jay Lycurgo
If 27-year-old Jay Lycurgo wasn’t an actor, he’d “probably be a builder” or work in alternative education, like his dad. “I was really down for that being my path,” he says of the latter. After all, it was his father’s job that gave him the greatest source material for his role as the troubled student, Shy, in last year’s Steve, in which Cillian Murphy leads as the beleaguered headteacher of an all-boys reform school, with Shy his mentally unwell pupil. “I think we can all take something from it,” he says of the film that won him the best supporting performance gong at the 2025 British Independent Film Awards. “It’s just a universal topic, really. Everyone’s struggling with their mental health.” Now he reunites with Murphy again for the new Peaky Blinders film out in March. “It’s just great to see [Cillian] in the full Tommy Shelby outfit!”
Mia Tharia
“It’s really exciting to be a young actor on set,” says 20-year-old Mia Tharia who, come this summer, will be a name to know following her performance in Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian sci-fi novel. “You’re able to soak up all of this information and learn in a really practical way,” she says. No doubt she was helped in the endeavour by starring alongside the likes of Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams. “I’ve gotten to work with people I would’ve never imagined I’d be able to,” she says, smiling.
Photographs by Brett Lloyd. Styling by Jessica Gerardi. Cover look: Tut wears vintage denim jacket, jeans and bandana, The Vintage Showroom. White-gold ring and white-gold and diamond ring, Tiffany & Co. Viola wears wool sweater, crepe bralette, and silk skirt, Prada. Gold earrings and gold rings, Tiffany & Co. Hair: Yumi Nakada-Dingle. Make-Up: Florrie White. Nails: Ami Streets. Tailor: Megan O’connor. Set Design: Daisy Azis.