Welcome to the first official Young GOAT™️ Power Rankings presented by the good people of One Take Pod, Apollo Media’s official hub for all things Movies & TV. This is my top 10 list of the best, most promising young Actors/Actresses working in Hollywood right now.
Follow the crew on Twitter/Instagram/Tik Tok @1TakePod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can angrily tweet at me @LordDexHinton or comment on this article if you’re mad about this list or you can be nice and follow me on Twitter if you really like what I’m doing. I be doing a lot of other stuff you might like too. Now that our shameless plugs have all been plugged in, I’m sure you have questions. Let’s address those before we proceed.
What is a Young GOAT™️?
The Young GOATs™️ are the Hollywood stars of tomorrow. An actor/actress under the age of 30 who I think “got next”. The future Greatest of All Time candidates who will replace our Meryl Streeps and Denzel Washingtons and Viola Davises of the world. Someone we can all expect to see getting nominated for multiple Oscars and Emmys in the future and/or leading the biggest blockbuster franchises in the world.
Why are you pitting bad bitches against each other?
Cause the #analytics show that the people like lists. And I am a man of the people, analytically.
Why 30 and under?
The honest reason is because I am 26 and I refuse to accept that people only 4 years older than I am are no longer young. But 5 years older than me is absolutely washed. It’s my article and I can do what I want so we’re fighting off my quarter life crisis.
Why didn’t you include {person who is not Timothée Chalamet}?
Because I hate them and I hate you for liking them. (Or possibly because picking a Top 10 is gonna leave some people out, even if I like them a lot. Or maybe I haven’t seen enough of their work yet. Or maybe they’re older than you realized.)
Why didn’t you include Timothée Chalamet?
He’s not that guy (yet). He’s just okay. Sorry bout it.
Aight no more questions let’s get into it baby!
Also Receiving Votes: Jude Hill (Belfast) – 11 Years Old, Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Unbelievable) – 25 Years Old, Thomasin McKenzie (JoJo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho) – 21 Years Old, Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of No Nation, Annie) – 18 Years Old, Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) – 20 Years Old, Dakota and Elle Fanning – 27 and 23 Years Old.
10. Julia Butters – 12 Years Old
Julia Butters has been acting in bit parts in shows like Criminal Minds since she was 5 years old. But her career really took off when she had a main role in the ABC sitcom American Housewife, having an episode of that on in the background is how Quentin Tarantino discovered her and cast her for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where she stole the show playing alongside Hollywood giants Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as Trudi Frazer. I was sold right then that she’s got all the tools. She’s now getting the projects to show it off as well. Up next she’ll be in a new Netflix film The Gray Man from the Russo Brothers, the most expensive film Netflix has ever made. Starring alongside Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas. After that she’ll be in a Steven Spielberg film called The Fablemans, loosely based on Spielberg’s life.
She also is an absolutely adorable and fun child on Instagram. Buy some Butters stock right now!
9. Beanie Feldstein – 28 Years Old
Beanie Feldstein is the younger sister of comedy legend Jonah Hill, but she’s stepped into her own spotlight outside of her brother. She played supporting characters in Neighbors 2 and Lady Bird before catching her breakout role as Molly Davidson in Booksmart. She got a Golden Globe nomination for that one (before we stopped rocking with the Golden Globes) and it’s one of my favorite movies of the last few years so I’m all in on Beanie Feldstein. She played Monica Lewinsky in the latest edition of American Crime Story which isn’t a good show but she gave a great performance. She apparently has musical chops as well, she’s a former Broadway actress who is returning to the stage as the star of the musical revival of Funny Girl later this Spring. She will be starring in a coming of age musical movie called Merrily We Roll Along soon after that. Don’t sleep on Beanie
8. John Boyega – 29 Years Old
Everyone knows that John Boyega deserved better than he got as Finn in the new Star Wars trilogy, but even despite being short changed by the utter failure and disrespect of Rise of Skywalker, Boyega was still able to prove himself as one of the stars of tomorrow. His debut film performance in the sci-fi comedy horror Attack the Block is a bit of a hidden gem since it flopped at the box office, but well worth your time. He also showed off his more serious side in Detroit playing real-life person Melvin Dismukes in a film about the Algiers Motel Incident. He’s also been very outspoken about not only the bullshit surrounding his treatment in Star Wars but also about Black Lives Matter and other political issues in his home country of England. He’s not going anywhere any time soon either. In his next film 892 – Michael K. Williams’s last film before he died – he plays the lead, a US Veteran down on his luck who resorts to robbing a bank and taking hostages. The film itself has gotten decent reviews at Sundance but everyone has praised Boyega and Williams for their performances. After that he will be in a film called The Woman King in a supporting role along side the Living Legend Viola Davis and starring in a Netflix movie called They Cloned Tyrone alongside Jamie Foxx. Prices going up!
7. Jodie Comer – 28 Years Old
Jodie Comer has already made a name for herself on the Awards circuit, winning a Primetime Emmy Award and being nominated a 2nd time for her breakout role as Villanelle in Killing Eve. She is obviously incredible in that role, and the English actress has built an incredible reputation for herself with her mastery of different accents and languages. That show is about to release its final season very soon and so Comer is spreading her wings and heading to the big screen. She starred in the surprisingly pretty good meta videogame comedy Free Guy alongside Ryan Reynolds last summer and she was great. But those of us in the know tried to tell y’all that her stock was going way up once The Last Duel came out in October. Now that the film is on HBO Max and more people are seeing her act brilliantly alongside Matt Damon and Adam Driver it’s only up from here. She recently had to exit another upcoming Ridley Scott project due to scheduling conflicts, so it’s unclear what’s next but we know it’s gonna be really good.
6. Hailee Steinfeld – 25 Years Old
If it feels like Hailee Steinfeld has already been around forever, it’s because she has. She was nominated for an Oscar at just 13 years old for her first full-length film, 2010’s True Grit, and she hasn’t slowed down since. A couple years after True Grit she starred alongside Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo in the supremely underrated Begin Again and then in the so-so adaptation of Ender’s Game. She joined the Pitch Perfect franchise as a great new character in the sequel and then started a music career, releasing a few multi-platinum singles in the mid 2010s. I really started to see the vision when she starred in The Edge of Seventeen, one of the best coming-of-age comedies of the last few years. She also established some action hero chops when she played the lead role in the underrated Bumblebee spin-off of the Transformers franchise. All that to say, Hailee Steinfeld been doing this a long long time and she’s been gifted from the jump.
With her recent addition to the MCU as Kate Bishop in Hawkeye & the near-universal acclaim she received from the nerd community for her starring role on Apple TV+’s comedy Dickinson, Hailee isn’t showing any signs of losing her grip on her Young GOAT™️ Top 10 spot any time soon.
5. Anya Taylor-Joy – 25 Years Old
Born in Miami to an English/Scottish father and an English/Spanish mother but raised in Buenos Aires and London, Anya Taylor-Joy’s beauty doesn’t seem quite of this world. During the beginning of the pandemic when we were all obsessed with her breakout, award winning performance in The Queen’s Gambit, the question of “is Beth Harmon/Anya Taylor-Joy actually hot?” was a common Twitter debate as we all tried to teach ourselves to play chess and wear masks. It’s a topic she knows all too well and Taylor-Joy is used to not quite fitting in. Late in 2020 in an interview with The Sun she said that she doesn’t feel beautiful enough to be a film star and that growing up she was “too English to be Argentine, too Argentine to be English, and too American to be anything.”
But watching her over the last 2 years those are exactly the qualities that I think make her one of the Young GOATs™️. She’s beautiful in a way that feels new and exciting and mysterious, and that certainly helped add to her devastating, haunting performance in Last Night in Soho, one of my favorite films of 2021. She glides effortlessly through being the coolest kid in the room, a tortured damsel in distress, and a terrifyingly justified creep in a way most people her age can only dream about. Up next she’s got The Northman, a Shakespearean Viking epic from Robert Eggers alongside heavy hitters like Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman. Then a handful of really interesting film projects after that. So if you haven’t seen the vision now, you’ll see it soon.
4. Tom Holland – 25 Years Old
After Spider-Man: No Way Home, I don’t know how you can argue with Tom Holland being the highest rated man in the Young Goat™️ Power Rankings. Not only was the movie incredible as a whole, but he also cemented himself as the definitive, superior live action Spider-Man. Holland was already better than Maguire and Garfield as Peter Parker to me when I saw him in Spider-Man: Homecoming and then Stan Lee confirmed that he was the perfect person for the character. But No Way Home put all the Iron Boy accusations to bed FOREVER and showed off even more range and depth for Holland’s acting. Between his musical chops – getting his start as a kid in a West End musical – already mastering an American accent, being supremely athletic/able to do his own stunts, and also just being really hot and part of a Young GOAT™️ power couple (more on his girlfriend in a bit), the future is extremely bright for Tom Holland. He had a couple of misfires during the pandemic – Cherry and Chaos Walking are both not good and made no money – but No Way Home is one of the highest grossing movies of all time despite the pandemic and Uncharted should be moderately successful as well. Holland is getting back to his musical roots as well, starring as Fred Astaire in an upcoming biopic that has Oscar-bait written all over it. Plus you know the MCU won’t abandon his Peter Parker anytime soon. It’s Tom Holland’s world right now.
3. Saoirse Ronan – 27 Years Old
Had I done this list in 2019, Saoirse Ronan would have been in the number 1 spot. She had just gotten her FOURTH Oscar nomination for Little Women, becoming the 2nd youngest person to ever get to 4 nominations (behind Jennifer Lawrence). She hasn’t gotten a win yet, being beaten out by older Hollywood royalty Renée Zellweger (Katy, Texas LEGEND), Frances McDormand, Brie Larson and Tilda Swinton, but it certainly feels like a win is coming sooner or later. And after she gets that first win the floodgates may open and she very well might win 3 more.
I would still say she’s the most technically gifted and brilliant actor on this list. Between her breakout role as a 13-year old in Atonement, her film nerd darling star turns in the romantic period film Brooklyn and the widely adored coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, I don’t think that can be questioned. Her skills are unmatched. The reason she’s at #3 now instead of #1 is simply because she hasn’t shown that superstar, must-see, box office magnet level of famous person personality just yet. And she may not even be interested in superstardom or fame at all. But as a film nerd I’m definitely ready to see whatever brilliance Saoirse Ronan gives us next in her next projects See How They Run and Foe. Hopefully we can finally get her the first of many future Oscars.
2. Zendaya – 25 Years Old
We’ve come so far from when I was in high school and Zendaya was the co-lead of a hip hop dance-based Disney Channel show and single-handedly carrying the SWAG era on her back. Since then she’s become not only one of the biggest names in the industry but also one of its best young performers. She nearly won Dancing with the Stars back in 2013, started showing up in music videos for Taylor Swift and Beyonce, joined the MCU as the new MJ in her boyfriend Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy, became part of an inexplicably hilarious meme, and she played a fantastic supporting role in the beloved musical The Greatest Showman. But what really cemented her as one of the great young actresses out right now and not just a famous person who used to be on Disney was her Primetime Emmy Award-winning role on Euphoria. Her role as Rue, her stellar performance in Malcolm & Marie, and the excitement for the next phase of the Dune franchise have combined with her already iconic mononym of a name and her likability as a person to catapult her into a new stratosphere. And even though she’s selective with the roles she chooses and it’s unclear what’s next, I know she’s on her way to being one of the greatest of her generation.
1. Florence Pugh – 26 Years Old
If you know anything about me or about the One Take Podcast, you know that long ago we decided as a unit that Florence Pugh had “IT“ and that she is the chosen one. We close every podcast and article with a reminder to #SupportFlorencePugh for a reason. From what I’ve seen, the 26 year old has ONLY put out incredible performances. Whether it’s as an indie darling in haunting British period piece films like Lady Macbeth, playing a real life superstar in a WWE Biopic like Fighting With My Family, being the sympathetic yet unsettlingly creepy focus of a folk horror film like Midsommar, or being a hilarious and badass spy in the MCU that does her own stunts, there’s nothing outside of her range. 8 years into her acting career she’s already got an Oscar nomination for Little Women and has been the best part of 2 different MCU projects as a supporting character. It’s only up from here for our queen with 3 films – Don’t Worry Darling, The Wonder, and A Good Person coming down the pike. Not to mention whatever may await her character in the next phase of Marvel’s ever-expanding universe.
In my opinion – the one that matters cause it’s my article – The Frowny Faced Gawd is the UNDISPUTED #1 Young GOAT™️ right now and she’s the actress under 30 with the best mix of talent & superstar potential. The Chosen One.
Follow me, Dex Hinton, on Twitter @LordDexHinton and holla at me with your thoughts on The Young GOATs™️, movies, the Oscar races, Baylor sports, Rockets, Texans, Astros, just whatever really. I be on there just talking all day.
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Thanks for reading and as always, #SupportFlorencePugh.
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