Brooklynn Prince, actor – “The Florida Project”
No, it’s not just you who cannot separate the immersive experience of “The Florida Project” from the fact that it’s mostly idle time spent in the company of its irrepressible, mischievous, rambunctious lead: When we spoke to director Sean Baker recently, he confessed, “I can’t imagine this film without Brooklynn. Now it seems like she’s just as much this movie as the movie is her.” As such it’s hard to tell if Prince, at the tender age of 7, will become a great actress in the classical sense — and we haven’t yet checked out her other 2017 performance, in “Robo-Dog: Airborne,” so have yet to see her as anyone but “The Florida Project”‘s Moonee, the heartbreakingly joyful daughter of poverty and Floridian sunshine. But whether or not she turns into an Olivier-level Shakespearean thesp is kind of beside the point. As she makes her infectiously unguarded and delightful way through the awards mill and the interview circuit one thing is abundantly clear: she is already a star.
Florence Pugh, actor – “Lady Macbeth”
In a year more than usually blessed with stories of women contending with various forms of oppression (on screens big and small, it being the Year of the Atwood TV Adaptation), it’s possible Florence Pugh’s turn in debut director William Oldroyd‘s “Lady Macbeth” should be the poster child. A riveting performance that is often contained in a perfectly opaque stillness as Pugh’s self-possessed heroine Katherine stares out defiantly from her corseted isolation, its real trick is making such an ambiguous and frequently unlikeable character so deeply fascinating and resonant. Pugh commands every frame she’s in, and she’s in almost all of them, with such maturity and confidence that it feels like she’s been around forever. That’s of course not true — she’s only 21 and has just a handful of other credits (notably in Carol Morley‘s “The Falling“). But she’s already on her way to a big future: as if to taunt us with her versatility, her next films will be b-movie genius Jaume Collet-Serra‘s “The Commuter” and Stephen Merchant‘s “Fighting with my Family,” where Pugh will play off the world’s biggest star, Dwayne Johnson.
Kelly Marie Tran, actor – “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”
Doing a stellar job on red carpets ever since Rian Johnson‘s ‘Star Wars‘ film opened, Kelly Marie Tran comes across as endearingly incredulous and unfailingly aware of her good luck, sort of the way you or I might be if we’d come more less from nowhere (actually from about six years of short movies and TV bit parts, but whatever) to star in ‘Star Wars.’ This everygirl quality is also what she brings in such engaging abundance to probably the single biggest all-new role ‘The Last Jedi’ boasts. And it’s especially gratifying because her turn as starstruck Resistance admirer and grieving sister Rose who becomes the unlikely heroine, and even briefly the romantic lead, of the film’s main subplot is the closest thing that the film has to an audience surrogate role, so everyone gets to identify with a Vietnamese-American actress. Representation matters, but Tran’s turn is much more than a tokenistic nod to diversity and whether or not you dig her character’s storyline, which is as much about failure as success, she brings a welcome dose of normalcy to a ‘Star Wars’ universe more usually associated with mythic abilities, epic destinies and grand confrontations between Good and Evil.
Lena Waithe, writer, actor – “Master of None”
While the terrific second season of Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang‘s “Master of None” does have an overarching storyline, it’s the show’s “bottle episodes” this time out that are its most impressive. Almost operating like mini-movies — appropriately for a season so upfront about its cinematic influences — both “New York I Love You” and “Thanksgiving” were the standalone standouts of a very strong season. Waithe has been a series regular as a performer since the beginning, playing Dev’s oldest friend Denise with an utterly singular, world-weary deadpan humor that has always been one of the show’s highlights. But “Thanksgiving” which she co-wrote with Ansari and for which she recently won an Emmy was the best showcase yet for her writing skills, and thankfully the good people at Showtime were also taking note: Waithe has created and written her own show, “The Chi,” for them next and it will be on air already in January 2018.
Ari Wegner, cinematographer – “Lady Macbeth,””The Girlfriend Experience”
As we inch closer to Oscar nomination time, it looks increasingly likely that the 90th Academy Awards will, for the 90th time, feature no female Best Cinematography nominees — unless Rachel Morrison beats the odds with her work on “Mudbound.” But after a few years when female DPs have made inroads — Morrison, Ellen Kuras, Reed Morano and Maryse Alberti to name a few — it feels especially important to champion the women who break out in this most boys-club of areas, and 2017 was a big year for Australian DP Ari Wegner. Her clinically cool, modern style brought the iciness to Lodge Kerrigan‘s episodes of “The Girlfriend Experience” but it was the subversion of that very modernity in service of William Oldroyd‘s period costume drama “Lady Macbeth” that was even more eye-opening. Shooting in composed, detached widescreen interiors and wilder, handheld exteriors, Wegner’s decisive framing gives such a contemporary edge to the scrupulously well-appointed 19th century story, that it feels like it’s happening while we’re watching and not long ago in some dusty past. Next up for Wegner is Peter Strickland‘s follow-up to “The Duke of Burgundy,” “In Fabric” about a cursed dress passing from owner to owner, which sounds very much like our bag.
Honorable mentions:
Other major discoveries in 2017 include William Oldroyd, director of “Lady Macbeth” that already had two entries on this list so we hope he’ll excuse us leaving him off for now. Hope Dickson Leach‘s “The Levelling” was another strong British directorial debut. Sabaah Folayan made another incredibly impressive first feature, with her Ferguson documentary “Whose Streets?” while on the performance side, we could easily have included Rachel Brosnahan‘s star-making turn in “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel,“ Betty Gilpin‘s MVP role in “GLOW,” Millicent Simmons’ delightful debut as the deaf little girl in the silent-movie part of “Wonderstruck,” Best Performances alum Daniela Vega‘s riveting performance in “A Fantastic Woman,” Jessie Pinnick in “Princess Cyd,” Kelvin Harrison Jr in “Mudbound” and “It Comes at Night,” among so many others — many of whom, again you can find on our Best Performances list or in amongs our 50 rising stars feature from back in August.
Let us know the bright new talents who suddenly came to your attention in 2017 in the comments below.
–with Oliver Lyttelton