2015's Biggest Breakout Stars

01 of 09

This Year's Faces to Remember

This Year's Faces to Remember
Focus Features; Fox; ABC

You've seen a few of them before, but 2015 was the year Hollywood met some of the brightest and boldest stars onscreen. From an Oscar contender to an animated emotion, check out eight of this year's breakout stars, ahead.

02 of 09

Alicia Vikander

Alicia Vikander
Focus Features

If you’ve been to the movies in the past two years, chances are you’ve seen Alicia Vikander — whether as a suave undercover spy in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or an impossibly perfect cyborg in Ex Machina. The Swedish actress, 27, is Hollywood’s hottest new import, and her star is rising higher with the release of The Danish Girl, starring Eddie Redmayne as transgender pioneer Lili Elbe. As Elbe’s wife, Gerda, Vikander unfurls a mesmerizing performance that has positioned her as a strong Supporting Actress Oscar contender. And she’s showing no signs of slowing down, with both the next Bourne film with Matt Damon and the literary drama The Light Between Oceans on the horizon. Luckily, she doesn’t require much downtime. “I have this inevitable feeling [that] I can be up till 2 a.m. and not sleep,” says Vikander. “You can do that when you have that passion within you.” —Nina Terrero

03 of 09

Joel Edgerton

Joel Edgerton
Matt Kennedy

He’s been a sturdy actor for more than a decade (e.g., Animal Kingdom, The Great Gatsby), but this year Joel Edgerton proved an expert writer-director with his outstanding corker The Gift. (He also had a juicy role as an FBI agent in Black Mass.) The Gift was shot in 23 days for $5 million (it grossed nine times that) and focuses on a married couple (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) whose lives are upended by a creepy encounter with the husband’s childhood acquaintance (Edgerton). “I was wondering what the lives of bullies and their victims could become in later life,” Edgerton says. As director, he referenced masters of dread like Hitchcock and Polanski, and in an inspired decision gave Bateman the complex lead role and cast himself as the ugly duckling. “Writing and directing is an opportunity to create characters that I might not get asked to play,” he says. “It’s easier to abandon all vanity and be allowed to live in a morally murky place.” It’s a good spot for him to be in. —Joe McGovern

04 of 09

Tessa Thompson

Tessa Thompson
Warner Bros

When Tessa Thompson first expressed interest in Creed, she didn’t know it was a Rocky sequel. “I thought maybe it was about the band,” she says with a laugh. For her role as Bianca — an experimental musician with progressive hearing loss and the girlfriend of Michael B. Jordan’s titular boxer — the 32-year-old actress (Selma, Dear White People) spent hours fleshing out her character with director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station). “I could give you a novel-length footnote of all the things we came up with for her that weren’t in the movie,” she says. “She went to Quaker school, for example.” Thompson, who’s been getting steady work ever since a stint on Veronica Mars in 2005, is currently finishing filming for the new HBO sci-fi series Westworld. But her recent rise in visibility hasn’t exactly made things easier. “For me it only gets harder,” she says. “It’s a certain necessary discontentment that keeps you reaching.” —Keith Staskiewicz

05 of 09

Sadness

Sadness
Pixar

Count on Pixar to take a much-avoided emotion and turn it into a scene-stealer — even a hero. Voiced by The Office alum Phyllis Smith, Sadness plays a pivotal role in helping 11-year-old Riley accept her difficult move from Minnesota to San Francisco in Inside Out, teaching her a tough, grown-up lesson: that feeling blue is not only okay but necessary for growth. With her warbly deadpan delivery and airy sighs, Smith brings Sadness to hilarious heart-tugging life, winning the appreciation of very young fans. “The other day when I was in Target, I heard this voice behind me,” Smith says. “And there was this tiny little girl. I think she was in kindergarten or first grade. She had this Sadness doll and she said, ‘Would you sign this, please? I love Sadness.’ ” Now so do we. —Nina Terrero

06 of 09

Rami Malek

Image
Virginia Sherwood/USA Network

For all its twists and murders, the first season of Mr. Robot was defined by a moment that nearly everyone saw coming. But as we watched Elliot Alderson’s world crash down around him, the truth of “Who is Mr. Robot?” wasn’t the revelation we cared most about. In that graveyard scene, it was the heartbreaking quality of Rami Malek’s performance that blew us away. Before the USA series, Malek had been steadily building his résumé with small roles in films like Short Term 12, Night at the Museum, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn— Part 2. But the role of Elliot gave him an opportunity that he had never had before. “I get to be a part of something that affects people’s lives. The show unites them and inspires them,” Malek says. “I had a grandmother come up to me on the street the other day. She said, ‘Look at how old I am, and I love your show.’” Someone out there has one cool grandma. —Kevin P. Sullivan

07 of 09

Jussie Smollett

Jussie Smollett
Chuck Hodes/FOX

There was no bigger TV story in 2015 than the rise of Fox’s Empire. And much of the series’ success is thanks to the magnetic performance of Jussie Smollett as Jamal Lyon. Playing the gay son of music titans Lucious (Terrence Howard) and Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson), Smollett radiates both rock-star charisma and a natural vulnerability, which have made the 32-year-old a household name. “It’s mind-boggling,” he says of the success. “I truly have gotten my life with Empire.” When Smollett — previously best known for the ’90s ABC sitcom On Our Own starring him and his five siblings — first read for the part with his onscreen parents, it was obvious that this was the role he was born to play. Remembers Smollett, “Terrence grabbed me on my shoulders and hugged me and said, ‘There are angels guiding you right now. You are Jamal.’ And then he walked out, and I was like, ‘What the f--- just happened?’ ” We think that’s called the moment a star is born. —Tim Stack

08 of 09

Constance Wu

Constance Wu
Eric McCandless/ABC

On ABC's Fresh Off the Boat, Constance Wu shines as the Huang family’s metaphorical (and oh-so-comical) rudder, Jessica. She’s a confident and sarcastic — yet deeply loving — matriarch who transcends the too easy tiger-mom stereotype. “We are leading and telling our own unique story,” the 33-year-old says of the sitcom, now in its second season. That narrative approach, coupled with Wu’s winning performance, has resonated with viewers — especially those who are finally seeing their experiences reflected on screen. “To come from a group that’s so grossly underrepresented in media and feel like that group feels like they’ve been heard is something I’ve never experienced,” she says. “It’s been incredibly rewarding, almost moving, hearing other people’s, what we’re calling ‘fresh off the boat’ stories.” Here’s to staying the course for years to come. —Amanda Michelle Steiner, with reporting by Kevin P. Sullivan

09 of 09

Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg
Mark Vessey/Alfred A. Knopf

After years of feverish anticipation, City on Fire, Hallberg’s 944-page debut, finally hit bookstores this fall. When Knopf purchased the novel for a cool $2 million after a two-day auction in 2013, expectations were high — not least because the book, a sprawling, layered epic following punks, artists, and socialites in the years leading up to the 1977 New York City blackout, is both ambitious and challenging. “My wife and I joke, ‘If you don’t like books, then you’re really going to hate this,’” Hallberg says. He needn’t have worried: Both critics and readers have praised the novel for its transportive qualities and luminous prose, christening the author as one to watch. For Hallberg, though, the real victory came when producer Scott Rudin bought the film rights even before the publishing rights sold, while Hallberg was still struggling to write and provide for his family. “I thought, ‘If I could wave a magic wand and make my wife’s student-loan debts go away, I will have done something with this book,’ ” he says — and with that money, he did. “It was enough to make us both cry.” —Isabella Biedenharn

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