Fred Hechinger

In Kraven the Hunter (2024), Fred Hechinger's Dmitri Kravinoff does impressions of other people's voices and is the softer of two brothers. Russell Crowe plays their father as a bully who would rather be feared than liked. We felt for Dmitri because his softness made him vulnerable in a family governed by intimidation. He was the only character in J.C. Chandor's film who prompted that response. That is a real achievement in a film whose script explains everything twice, though it is no reason to recommend the film.

The small parts began with Trevor in Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade (2018), where Elsie Fisher makes teenage social anxiety hard to watch and worth the discomfort. Wider recognition came with Quinn Mossbacher in The White Lotus (2021) and the Fear Street trilogy that year. By 2024, Hechinger was taking leads and prominent ensemble roles alongside continued independent work. His youthful features help explain the casting: he can look endearing even when the character is behaving appallingly.

Ridley Scott's Gladiator II (2024) is a less convincing use of him. Hechinger's Emperor Caracalla and Joseph Quinn's Geta are spoilt children handed enormous power, and both actors play them broadly. Their behaviour belongs to a different film from the one Paul Mescal is acting in, without Scott finding a way to bring the performances together. We would welcome the excess in a film prepared to accommodate it; here it makes the uneven direction harder to ignore.

His part as Harper in RaMell Ross's Nickel Boys (2024) puts him in a film we recommend warmly, despite its length and occasional absorption in its own technique. Ross's decision to film through the two boys' eyes gives us a tender account of the reform school, though Hechinger is not the reason we would send someone to it. For his next substantial role, we would like a character as vulnerable as Dmitri and a script that does not keep explaining itself.