Next Gen Talent 2024: The 10 Hottest Young Stars in Hollywood
From Netflix-turned-Broadway sensation Kit Connor to DC newcomer Aaron Pierre, meet the young stars climbing everyone’s call sheet.
Thank you for the tipoff @thegoldenretrieverandthegaynerd (X)
Kit Connor and Josh Rivera photographed November 11th at Broken Shaker in New York; Source: Hollywood Reporter (X)
1. Kit Connor
Connor is ready to break out beyond high school. He built his career as a child actor (see him as a young Elton John in Rocketman) before scoring the lead role in the high school rom-com series Heartstopper. This desire to graduate is part of what drew the Brit to Broadway, where he’s currently leading Romeo + Juliet with Rachel Zegler, bringing Shakespeare to the Gen Z masses. “It just felt ballsy,” Connor says. “It’s been what I’ve been trying to do with my career decisions recently, just try and do things that are a little bit more ballsy.” Connor, 20, isn’t sure if Heartstopper will return for a fourth season, but after the curtain goes down on his Broadway stint, he’ll start promoting his most adult role yet in Alex Garland’s A24 thriller Warfare. After that, he says, “I’d like to take a little break just so that I can kind of cleanse my mind and my palate, and then I’d like to do something completely different.” He adds, “I want to try and spend the next couple years just doing quite hard stuff so that I can try and force myself to get better.”
IF I WASN’T AN ACTOR I’D BE “I would first and foremost be a student due to my age. [My major] would probably be something like film studies, English or history, those are the subjects I found the most interesting in school because they were about people. I never did well with numbers. Still don’t.”
THE PERSON I AM DYING TO WORK WITH “I would love to work with Josh O’Connor. He and I are friendly, and every time I see him I think how I would love to see him at work.”
HOW I DECOMPRESS ON SET “I like my private time. On Warfare, we didn’t do that at all. Every night we did everything together and I wouldn’t have changed it at all. But a lot of time on jobs, I go home and just sit and listen to music.”
BEST ADVICE I’VE GOTTEN WORKING IN ENTERTAINMENT “Trusting the process. Quite a lot of my friends in the industry have given me that general advice.”
SONG OR ALBUM I HAVE ON REPEAT “David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I used to, at the beginning of the run of the play, I was listening to a lot of music that would try to hype me up because I wanted to have a load of energy going into the play but then I started re-listening to that album‚ “Rock and Roll Suicide”, “Five Years”, “Moonage Daydream” — that put me in a good mindset for [the play].”
THE MOVIE OR SERIES I AM OBSESSED WITH “The Sopranos. I started watching it when I got to [New York] because I thought Jersey is just around the corner.”
MOST HOLLYWOOD THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME “There is something pretty crazy about seeing your face on a billboard in any capacity.”
