Variety’s 10 Actors Watch Talk Film Debut at Newport Beach Fest

Milly Alcock found out she had booked the coveted role of Supergirl in one of this year’s biggest hits when “Superman” director (and co-CEO of DC Studios) sent her a link to an article announcing her casting. She admitted that she had some doubts. “My first thought was: what have I done?” Alcock told a packed audience at the Newport Beach Film Festival. “It’s just scary.” But she enjoyed her cameo in “Superman” and went on to shoot her own movie, “Supergirl,” due out next year. “I learned a lot from it, and it’s such an honor to play her and be that person for young girls.”

Alcock was one of this year’s classmates Variety‘s 10 Actors to Watch, an annual award given since 1998. Past winners include more than 30 Oscar nominees and winners, including Octavia Spencer, Brie Larson and Timothée Chalamet. All ten attended the festival’s Honors Brunch, where awards were also presented to actors such as Brendan Fraser, Mark Hamill and Diane Lane. Scarlett Johansson, who recently made her feature film debut with “Eleanor the Great,” was honored Variety‘s Groundbreakers and Legends Award. And Steven Gaydos, who recently retired Variety after more than 30 years with the publication, he was honored with the festival’s Arts Champion Award.

This year’s class of 10 Actors to Watch included several actors making their film debuts: Miles Caton, star of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” Chase Infiniti from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” and Guillaume Marbeck, who stars as Jean-Luc Godard in Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague.” Caton joked about how his life has changed since playing the role of Sammie, a guitarist so talented that he attracts supernatural attention. Saying that strangers have come up to him and called him Sammie, he noted, “I can still go out and have fun and chill and be with my family.”

Infiniti’s film debut saw her hold her own against heavyweights like Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro. “I took every moment and treated it like a Master Class,” Infiniti revealed. “I really wanted to make sure I was observing and learning, and I was there every second of the way to see what makes the great great.”

Many of this year’s students shared scenes with big stars. In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Tonatiuh stars in his first leading role in film – or roles, playing both a strange man in an Argentine prison and the Golden Age movie star in whose film he escapes. His co-stars include Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna. When he won the role, the actor said he was ready. “I felt like this was the opportunity I’ve been training for my whole life and my mom moved here and worked at a drive-thru,” he said. “And to be in a cast with Jennifer and with Diego, and in a Bill Condon musical, all of that, it felt like I was being invited to the Olympics.”

He added that his prisoner character, Molina, “is a beautiful, genderless expression” and that the film has an all-Latin American cast. “And I feel like at a time when Latinos and LGBTQ people are under attack, our movie says, we love you, we see you, and we’re going to give you the Hollywood treatment.”

British stage actor Jay Lycurgo stars opposite Cillian Murphy in “Steve,” now streaming on Netflix. The recent Oscar winner plays a troubled teacher at a school for young men with social and behavioral problems. Lycurgo had a personal connection with the material: his father has a similar job. “Some of you may be struggling with your mental health today and for me personally, I struggle with it every day,” Lycurgo revealed. “So I’m just really happy with the film, very passionate about it, and even more so because I get to narrate my father’s work.”

We also share scenes with big names in upcoming films: Ella Anderson, who plays the daughter of Kate Hudson’s character in “Song Sung Blue,” the true story of a couple who form a Neil Diamond tribute band. The film, which also stars Hugh Jackman, will be released in December. Norwegian actor Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays the down-to-earth daughter of Stellan Skarsgård’s film director in Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” the sequel to his Oscar-nominated “The Worst Person in the World.” And Edmund Donovan, winner of the Obie and Drama Desk Award for his work in the play “Greater Clements,” plays an admirer of Willem Dafoe’s forgotten poet in “Late Fame.”

Mari Yamamoto will be seen later this year in “Rental Family,” starring Brendan Fraser, who visibly broke down in tears as she spoke about working with him. She told a story about filming a scene on a precarious balcony in Japan and how, even though he wasn’t on camera, he “wanted to be there for me so badly that he leaned out.” She continued, “He’s leaning so far forward to get his face as close to me as possible, and he’s worried about that, but I’m afraid the Oscar winner will fall off the balcony. That’s a story that tells you what he’s like as a person and as an actor. That he’ll do everything he can to catch you if you fall, and that he’ll always be there for you. I’ve learned that’s who I want to be as a person and as an actor. So thank you, Brendan Fraser.”