Class Of 2018: 23 Rising Stars You’ll Need To Know This Year

Florence Pugh is a name worth remembering. The 21-year-old has made just a handful of appearances on the big and small screen to date, but their pedigree has been impeccable. First came a magnetic turn as a troubled schoolgirl in The Falling, director Carol Morley's haunting take on female hysteria, then a star-making turn in Lady Macbeth, a bleak and brutal riff on Shakespeare's anti-heroine that ripped up the period drama rule book in fascinating ways. It's hardly surprising that she's earned a clutch of awards nominations, including for BAFTA's prestigious Rising Star. Up next is wrestling drama Fighting With My Family (which also stars The Rock, FYI), the BBC adaptation of King Lear and the TV mini-series of John Le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl.

Thanks to brilliant – and wildly different – performances in two of this season's awards favourites,* Call Me By Your Name* and Lady Bird, Timothee Chalamet has cemented his status as one of the most talented young stars working in the industry right now (He also has improbably perfect bone structure, but don't let that sway you.) In January, he became the third youngest Best Actor nominee in Academy Award history; his next project will see him play Henry V in Netflix's historical drama The King.

The chances are that you already recognise Kathryn Newton whether that's from her appearance in the most talked about TV show of last year (playing Reese Witherspoon's daughter in Big Little Lies), in a crowd-pleasing Christmas costume drama (playing the youngest March sister, Amy, in the BBC's Little Women adaptation) or in either of the two Oscar hopefuls in which she cameos (Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). Up next is the lead in Blockers, a comedy directed by Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon, and a role in the inexplicable Detective Pikachu.

A spring break trip to Florida proved to be a game-changer for Sasha Lane, who was spotted partying on the beach by British auteur Andrea Arnold. Conveniently, Arnold was on the hunt for a female lead for her next project, American Honey, and the then-psychology major had some indescribable quality that just seemed to fit the bill. Her latest project, conversion therapy drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post, made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where it picked up the top prize; it'll arrive in cinemas later this year.

19-year-old Amandla Stenberg is at the forefront of a new generation of socially engaged teen stars prepared to use their platform (in her case, a breakout role as Rue in the Hunger Games franchise) to engage with pressing political issues: her video 'Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows,' created for her history class, schooled viewers on the widespread problem of cultural appropriation, and has had millions of hits on YouTube to date. Last year saw her take her first lead role in YA adaptation Everything, Everything, playing a teen whose auto-immune disease has isolated her from her peers. Next up is Where Hands Touch, a World War II-set inter-racial love story co-starring George MacKay, directed by A United Kingdom's Amma Asante.

Fresh out of Australia's prestigious WAAPA stage school, Katherine Langford landed the lead role in 13 Reasons Why, Netflix's adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel. 13 Reasons Why was hardly your standard teen drama fodder: it was directed by Spotlight's Tom McCarthy, exec produced by Selena Gomez and dealt – for better and for worse – with mental health and slut-shaming, suicide and social media. Katherine played Hannah, a high school student who commits suicide - and sends her classmates 13 audio tapes explaining 'why.' Despite the controversy still bubbling around the show, Katherine will return for the second season later this year.

The title role in Billy Lynn's Half-Time Walk (directed by Ang Lee and co-starring the likes of Kristen Stewart) wasn't just the first time 26-year-old Joe Alwyn had top billing on a film's credits: it was the first time he'd been in a film, full stop. While in his final term at the Central School of Speech and Drama, he received the career-making call from Lee, who cast him as the returning Iraq war hero in his latest project. These days, it's rare that his name isn't prefixed by 'Taylor Swift's boyfriend,' but 2018 will put the focus back on his acting career, with roles in Mary, Queen of Scots and in The Favourite, a period drama set in Queen Anne's court which also stars Emma Stone.

Actress and activist Yara Shahidi's star has been on the rise since she was barely out of elementary school. After starting out with bit parts in US TV shows (including appearances as a younger version of Kerry Washington's Olivia Pope in Scandal), it was her role in hit comedy Black-ish that had everyone sit up and take notice - everyone including Beyoncé, who cast Yara in an Ivy Park fashion campaign. Since then, she's helmed a spin-off, Grown-ish, which sees her character Zoey heading off to college. The 18-year-old is a powerful, politically engaged voice on social media, has interviewed Michelle Obama for Teen Vogue (the former First Lady is going to write her a college reference) and also practises karate at black belt level in her down time. Remember: you have as many hours in the day as Yara Shahidi.

Cast your mind back to Christmas 2007, when Emma Watson appeared in her first non-Potter project, a cosy BBC adaptation of Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes. Acting alongside as her younger sister was a then 13-year-old Lucy Boynton, who'd also recently appeared as a young Beatrix Potter in Renée Zellweger's Miss Potter. Now 22, Lucy has followed up her early successes with a clutch of TV roles and, most notably, her roles as Ralphina in charming 80s musical Sing Street (it's on Netflix - watch it) and in the star-studded adaptation of Murder On The Orient Express. This year, she'll star opposite Rami Malek in the troubled Freddy Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

You'll recognise Trevante Rhodes as the oldest of the three Chirons (he shared the character with Alex Hibbert and Ashton Saunders) in _Moonligh_t, one of the most talked-about Best Picture Oscar winners of recent years. Before this breakout role, the 27-year-old former track and field star's CV was mainly confined to smaller parts (he appeared in Westworld and cropped up briefly in Terence Malick's new film Song to Song). Basking in the post-Moonlight glow, he has recently been confirmed for The Predator, the sequel to the classic 1987 sci-fi film and for Bird Box, a post-apocalyptic thriller with Sandra Bullock.

An uncanny performance as a young girl seduced by the supernatural in Sundance hit The Witch kick-started Anya Taylor Joy's career. Since then, she's played a violent hybrid-human in Morgan, an abductee in M. Night Shyamalan's comeback thriller Split and a naïve young wife in the BBC's Christmas adaptation of The Miniaturist, earning a BAFTA Rising Star nomination in the process. Coming up are roles in teen revenge drama Thoroughbreds, Split sequel Glass and X: Men spin-off The New Mutants.

Admit it: you weren't exactly convinced about the prospect of a Han Solo spin-off movie (after all, who could possibly compare to Harrison Ford?) until Alden Ehrenreich - who you'll recognise from his scene-stealing turn in the Coen brothers' Hail! Caesar - was confirmed as the lead (seeing off competition from just about every other young male star in Hollywood in the process). Solo will arrive in cinemas in May, doubtless propelling him to intergalactic levels of fame in the process.

She's aged just 17 (yep, another teen who has already super-charged their career), but Australian actress Angourie Rice has managed to notch up parts in The Nice Guys, where she played Ryan Gosling's daughter, in Sofia Coppola's Civil War-set drama The Beguiled and in Spider-Man: Homecoming, playing a classmate of Peter Parker.

Marvel's Black Panther has been rightly hailed for its brilliant ensemble cast, but Letitia Wright, who plays Wakandan princess and tech genius Shuri, is a real standout. The 24-year-old Londoner got her start back in 2011 with a role in the first series of Top Boy, which she followed up with a handful of TV and indie film appearances (including one in Black Mirror's season four finale, Black Museum). With not one but three blockbusters lined up (as well as Black Panther, she'll reprise Shuri in Avengers: Infinity War and star in Spielberg's Ready Player One), 2018 is set to be her year.

Oldham-born Olivia Cooke's breakout role came in Sundance hit _Me and Earl and the Dying Gir_l back in 2015. Her star has continued to rise ever since, but 2018 looks set to be her biggest year yet: as well as roles in Spielberg's Ready Player One, Thoroughbreds (co-starring with Anya Taylor-Joy) and star-heavy drama Life Itself, she'll take the role of Becky Sharp in ITV's adaptation of Vanity Fair, which will doubtless earn her Downton levels of ubiquity.

Like so many Brit stars, Daniel Kaluuya got his start in Skins, appearing as 'Posh Kenneth' in the show's first generation then taking a seat in the writer's room for season three. Since then, he's notched up an impressive number of supporting roles in film and TV (including an early Black Mirror episode Kick Ass 2 and Sicario), but it's his lead role in the brilliant Get Out that's ultimately super-charged his career, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in the process. As well as appearing in Black Panther, this year will see him star in Steve McQueen's next project, Widows, alongside Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki and Colin Farrell.

When she was just 10 years old, Storm Reid was cast in a small role in Steve McQueen's Best Picture-winning 12 Years a Slave. Five years later, she'll take the lead in A Wrinkle In Time, the major adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's best-selling fantasy novel that's been directed by the brilliant Ava DuVernay. It's a role that'll doubtless soon make her a household name (and means she's on friendly terms with the likes of Oprah, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling).

The daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, 19-year-old Maya is new Hollywood royalty. After a year spent training at prestigious drama school Juillard, she dropped out after landing the role of Jo March in the BBC's Little Women adaptation. Next is a part in Ladyworld, an apocalyptic teen drama. Alongside her acting work, her good genes have won her a handful of high profile modelling gigs so far, including a Calvin Klein campaign directed by Sofia Coppola.

One of this year's five EE BAFTA Rising Star nominees, Josh O'Connor's biggest role to date came in God's Own Country, in which he played a young Yorkshire farmer who ends up falling for a Romanian migrant worker. Prior to that, he's appeared in ITV's gently crowd-pleasing The Durrells and in other Brit TV staples like Peaky Blinders and Lewis. Up next is the role of Marius in the BBC's Les Miserables adaptation, opposite Ellie Bamber's Cosette.

Hold your double takes: Ellie Bamber is neither Isla Fisher nor Amy Adams, but she did star alongside both Hollywood redheads in Tom Ford's second directorial effort, the visceral Nocturnal Animals. Since then, she's been taken into the Chanel fold as a Lagerfeld muse and won roles in the BBC's big-budget adaptation of Les Miserables (she'll play Cosette in the mini-series based on Victor Hugo's novel, rather than the stage musical) and in Disney's fantastical The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, alongside Keira Knightley and Helen Mirren.

You'll probably recognise Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki from either her role as Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, or perhaps from the BBC's The Night Manager mini-series. Her star will continue to rise in 2018, with roles lined up in Steve McQueen's Widows, where she'll play one of four women finishing the heist which their dead husbands failed to pull off, and in Vita and Virginia, where she'll play Virginia Woolf to Gemma Arterton's Vita Sackville-West.

Like Douglas Booth and Eddie Redmayne before him, 27-year-old Callum Turner can place a starring role in a Burberry campaign alongside his numerous acting credits. To date, his biggest roles so far have been in E4's rural murder mystery, Glue, and in the BBC's lavish War and Peace adaptation, in which he played the supremely shifty Anatole Kuragin. He'll join the Harry Potter universe later this year when he appears in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald as Theseus Scamander, brother of Eddie Redmayne's Newt.

Recognise 31-year-old Sonoya Mizuno? It's probably thanks to her string of supporting roles in all your favourite films, from Ex Machina (playing the android in that memorable dance sequence) to La La Land (playing Emma Stone's roommate) to Beauty and the Beast (as a blink-and-you'll-miss-it 'debutante'). This year, she'll be stepping forward with parts in Netflix's Maniac (also starring Emma Stone), Annihilation (with Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Crazy Rich Asians.