For our 30th annual Hollywood Issue, we’ve chosen 11 vibrant, wildly different stars seizing this moment. We gathered them together over two sunny January days in Los Angeles, under the direction of photographer and filmmaker Gordon von Steiner, to talk about everything from their first auditions to their most unforgettable lines—and, of course, to create this year’s VF Hollywood cover, an homage to our first foray into the form three decades ago.

The uncertainties, of course, can’t be denied: The entertainment industry just emerged from the most profound work stoppage in its history. Audiences are splintering, bottom-line priorities are intensifying, and there are still existential questions about the future even as cameras start rolling again. But if movies as surprising and visionary as Barbie and Oppenheimer can smash box office records even as Marvel and DC franchises nose-dive, it’s clearly time to shake things up.

For our 30th annual Hollywood Issue, we’ve chosen 11 vibrant, wildly different stars seizing this moment. We gathered them together over two sunny January days in Los Angeles, under the direction of photographer and filmmaker Gordon von Steiner, to talk about everything from their first auditions to their most unforgettable lines—and, of course, to create this year’s VF Hollywood cover, an homage to our first foray into the form three decades ago.

The uncertainties, of course, can’t be denied: The entertainment industry just emerged from the most profound work stoppage in its history. Audiences are splintering, bottom-line priorities are intensifying, and there are still existential questions about the future even as cameras start rolling again. But if movies as surprising and visionary as Barbie and Oppenheimer can smash box office records even as Marvel and DC franchises nose-dive, it’s clearly time to shake things up.

And you’ll see a new generation rising, with bright talents like The Bikeriders’ Jodie Comer, Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan, and Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega imbuing complex roles with extraordinary humanity.

Some of the actors here were primed for a whirlwind before everything abruptly went quiet with the actors and writers strikes.

Ortega, who will star in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice sequel this fall, says Wednesday’s record-breaking Netflix launch, which closed out 2022, had been dizzying. “I didn’t know what to say or do,” she says. “I just became very confused emotionally.” The break imposed by the strike helped her remember why she’s been acting full tilt since she was nine: “To still enjoy the job just as much 12 years later—having seen all of the ugly and wonderful and extreme—is pretty cool.”

Others couldn’t slow down at all. Because Greta Lee’s Oscar-nominated movie, Past Lives, was an independent production, she had the mixed blessing of being allowed to do promotion for a year straight: “That’s why I feel like a corpse woman who’s ready to lie down and crawl into either a cheeseburger or bowl of spaghetti.”

But like many of her peers here, Lee spent years navigating narrow-minded business models, so she knows this moment matters. “For myself and for other Asian American women, I don’t want to accept my previous reality—I can’t,” she says. “I have to make up for lost time.”

Randolph, meanwhile, may well take home an Oscar on March 10 for her work in The Holdovers after making a name for herself on the New York stage. “When you truly understand the climate of this industry and who’s telling the stories, we’re marginalized. And then on top of that, to be a woman of color who is curvy?” she says. “This outdoes the dreams that I dreamt…. I let go of the wheel in that respect a long time ago.”

Lily Gladstone, an Oscar nominee this year for Killers of the Flower Moon, was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana, and came up fighting for a paltry selection of Indigenous parts in film and television. “You kick the door down to hold it open,” she says. She’s now the face of progress and could become the first Native American performer to ever win best actress. “I advocate for other people before I advocate for myself,” she says. “Even just making dinner reservations, I count the whole party and I forget myself.”

On a hazy winter afternoon, Charles Melton paces on his deck in the Silver Lake hills. He’s demonstrating exactly how, and where, he developed the physicality of his character, Joe, in May December, which has vaulted the Riverdale alum from teen-soap idol to art house heartthrob.

Between sips of Coke Zero, Melton gazes out at the panoramic view of the Los Angeles skyline. “I’ve always been a big dreamer, and I’ve tried not to set any limits in my mind because I’ll get caught up in the limits outside of me,” he says. “I’m always seeking. My ambition is always driving me.”

He can’t say what’s next, after so many prizes and nominations. But Melton has come out of May December focused and reoriented. He’s ready to take the town in his hands—and you hear that a lot from this group. “There’s been this democratization of creativity where gatekeepers have been demoted and everyone can make things,” says Portman.

Audiences are already reaping the rewards. —David Canfield

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