The turkey carcass is nearly bare and extremely unappetizing by now. The tinsel has gone limp and the dog has chewed off all the low-hanging tree baubles. It can only mean the year is ending, and so what better time to look at some of the new starts it’s given us? Over the last twelve months, while most of us have been having, let’s be honest, a pretty terrible time of it, a lucky few have had their big breaks and will look back on 2017 with a fondness the rest of us can only dimly relate to.
Here’s our highly subjective list of some of the year’s biggest breakouts — actors, directors, writers and a smattering of other talents — which reminds us that one of the eternally great things about the film and TV industries is how they constantly renew themselves, and how this job is a constant voyage of discovery when cynicism can tempt us to feel like we’ve already seen everything there is to see.
A good few of the actors included already appeared on our 50 Rising Stars feature from August, or our Best Performances of the Year list — rather inevitably some of the most buzzed-about breakthroughs were made as a result of a single, lightning-bolt brilliant turn in a 2017 film. And some of the directors are behind films that we’ve spent the best part of a year now talking up. But that’s because it does feel like 2017 was a spectacularly good year not just for films in general, but for debuts specifically, and many of the year’s most exciting turns came from actors we’d never really taken notice of before. The fact that this list could easily have been twice or three times as long, gives you some idea of just how hopeful the future looks, at least on screen. Here are just some of the seeds that sprouted, the flowers that blossomed, the, er, peaches that ripened in 2017 — read and take heart!
Click here for our full coverage of the best of 2017, including The Worst Films Of The Year, Best TV, Best Scores & Soundtracks, Best Cinematography, Posters, Trailers, Horror, Action Sequences, our Best Films Of The Year, Underrated and Overrated Films of the Year and the 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2018.
Claes Bang, actor – “The Square”
Breakouts, in both skincare and career terms, are usually associated with people younger than 50, but Danish actor Claes Bang’s witty and elegant turn as the hapless sophisticate at the center of Ruben Ostlund‘s Palme d’Or-winning satire “The Square” has suddenly had international audiences taking note of him after a 20-year career. It’s a turn we already talked up on our Best Performances of the year, for being so deceptively difficult, yet Bang sells all its awkward corners and provides what could otherwise be a very disjointed film with its throughline of rumpled, ruffled bourgeois unease. Perhaps the next Mads Mikkelsen, Bang is already capitalizing on his newfound fame with a role in next year’s ‘Dragon Tattoo’ sequel, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” which is apparently exclusively cast from our year-end, on-the-rise and ones-to-watch lists, as he’ll appear alongside “The Crown”‘s Claire Foy, Cameron Britton from “Mindhunter” and “Blade Runner 2049” standout Sylvia Hoeks.
Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, actor – “BPM”
Robin Campillo’s tremendous, sweeping AIDS activism drama “BPM” is very much an ensemble piece, introducing you to a dizzyingly large cast who all get a moment to shine. But the film’s emotional heartbeat comes courtesy of a gorgeous, head-turning performance from Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Sean, a young activist who, despite a grim prognosis, begins a relationship with newcomer Nathan (Arnaud Valois). The Argentinian actor has a handful of notable credits to his name, like Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Grand Central” with Tahar Rahim and Lea Seydoux, but he’s sure to be in demand massively after his performance here. Sean is never a victim, a figurehead or a martyr, he’s a sometimes infuriating, often sexy, entirely raw, impossibly wide-eyed young man, and your heart breaks for him.
Logan Browning, actor – “Dear White People”
What gigantic shoes “Dear White People,” the Netflix show had fill, attempting to adapt Justin Simien’s own celebrated indie movie into a series (which he developed, wrote and directed parts of too). But then think about stepping in for Tessa Thompson, the original brassy, complicated, feminist, button-pushing DJ Samantha White character who stole the movie and made the actresses career. On paper, it’s a wholly losing proposition for actor Logan Browning who took over the part. She should, with all good reason, fail in comparison, but she runs with it, unafraid to apply the same thorny characteristics of the part, but makes it completely her own. Known for unremarkable TV (“Tyler Perry’s For Better or Worse”) and disposable films (Bratz: The Movie”) if known at all, Browning planted herself on the map with “Dear White People,” and at this point, is never looking back.
Timothée Chalamet, actor – “Call Me By Your Name,” “Lady Bird,” “Hostiles”
Arguably no one is having a better 2017 than 22-year-old Timothée Chalamet. Sure, he’s already worked with Christopher Nolan (“Interstellar”) and Jason Reitman (“Men, Women & Children”), in small parts, and impressed us greatly in the underseen “Miss Stevens” last year. But Chalamet burst into 2017 with a stellar turn in one of the most adored movies of the year: “Call Me By Your Name.” Playing a young teenager still figuring out his complex sexual identity and in love with an older man, you can’t take your eyes off him in the movie. Moreover, when his heart breaks, we the audience are left absolutely shattered. Let’s not forget that Chalamet, who seemed to be everywhere this year, also had small, but striking supporting turns in both “Hostiles,” and “Lady Bird,” the latter being perhaps the most pompous Howard Zinn-reading, would-be radical teen you’ve ever seen on screen.
Greta Gerwig, writer, director – “Ladybird”
Greta Gerwig arguably had her breakout moment years ago when she stood out from the mumblecore pack and graduated into more mainstream indie filmmaking. And while she’s written and co-directed in the past, Gerwig finally delivered her first, full-on directorial debut from her own screenplay and “Ladybird” has obviously dazzled everyone, critics and audiences alike. More than just a coming of age tale that has empathy for the story of its lead character’s parents, “Lady Bird” is just sensitively realized, a shimmering portrait of adolescence,economic middle class life realities and the always-evolving complications of adulthood, but also a sweet loveletter to home, wherever that may be for you. Mixing laughs and pathos, Gerwig, with her fabulously humane and affecting script, crafts a loving, warm movie about our collective, continued growing pains and the forever-complicated relationships we negotiate with loved ones. Surely, this is just the beginning of a long and storied filmmaking career.