A star is rising across the pond. On Tuesday, January 7, at a press conference held at London’s Savoy Hotel, the nominees for BAFTA’s 2025 Rising Sta
A star is rising across the pond. On Tuesday, January 7, at a press conference held at London’s Savoy Hotel, the nominees for BAFTA’s 2025 Rising Star Award were announced: Anora’s Mikey Madison, In Camera’s Nabhaan Rizwan, Back to Black’s Marisa Abela, Unstoppable’s Jharrel Jerome, and Alien: Romulus star David Jonsson.
First awarded in 2006, the honor highlights five up-and-coming talents in the entertainment industry, chosen by the BAFTA juries. After a vote conducted by the British public, one lucky star takes home top honors. Previous BAFTA Rising Star nominees include Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, and Anya Taylor-Joy, while gigantic names like Kristen Stewart, Tom Holland, and Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya have won the award in years past. Last year, Mia Mckenna-Bruce took home the honor in a category rounded out by Phoebe Dynevor, Jacob Elordi, Sophie Wilde, and Ayo Edebiri.
This year’s nominees include Madison, who’s been on a tear for her titular role as a Brooklyn sex worker at the center of a Cinderella story turned nightmare in Sean Baker’s Anora. The 25-year-old Californian previously appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and 2022’s Scream, and has been an awards-season darling for her work in Anora, receiving a Golden Globes nomination for best actress in a musical/comedy. She’s also on the BAFTA long list for leading actress in a film and is considered to be a major contender for forthcoming SAG and Oscar nominations as well.
Last year, Jharrel Jerome, 27, starred opposite Jennifer Lopez and Don Cheadle in Amazon Prime’s Unstoppable, in which he plays Anthony Robles, an American wrestler born with only one leg who won the 2011 NCAA individual wrestling national championship. A Bronx native, Jerome broke through in Hollywood by starring in Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winning Moonlight in 2016, and soon followed that with his Emmy-winning turn as Korey Wise—one of the Exonerated Five—in the Netflix narrow series When They See Us.
As it so happens, the remaining three Rising Star nominees—Rizwan, Abela, and Jonsson—have all worked together on the HBO series Industry, filling out the up-to-date class of aspiring bankers at Pierpoint on the buzzy British finance drama. Rizwan played the tragic Hari Dhar, who briefly yet unforgettably appeared in Industry’s first season back in 2020. Since then, the 28-year-old has starred as Dionysus opposite Jeff Goldblum’s Zeus in Netflix’s Kaos, a darkly comic reimagining of Greek mythology. In 2023, he starred as Aden, a newborn actor facing repeated rejection in the British film In Camera.
Jonsson played Augustus “Gus” Sackey, a gay Eton and Oxford grad and son of a Ghanaian diplomat, on the first two seasons of Industry. The 31-year-old earned critical acclaim and a British Independent Film Award nomination for playing Dom in the 2023 romantic comedy Rye Lane. Last year, he starred as Andy, a reprogrammed android, in Fede Álvarez’s science fiction horror film Alien: Romulus, and was included on Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch list. He’s reportedly in talks to play Sammy Davis Jr. opposite Sydney Sweeney’s Kim Novak in a musical biopic directed by Colman Domingo.
The sole Rising Star nominee still on Industry, Abela plays troubled heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani, who winds up engaged to landed gentry failed entrepreneur Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington) at the end of Industry’s third season. Last year, the 28-year-old also starred as the slow, great Amy Winehouse in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s musical biopic Back to Black, earning a London Critics Circle Film Award nomination, and, like Madison, made the BAFTA long list for leading actress in a film. This year, she’s set to star opposite Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in Black Bag, a thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh, and is expected to return to Industry to film its fourth season.
One of these five talented performers will be crowned the BAFTA Film Awards’ 20th Rising Star at a ceremony that will take place Sunday, February 16, and air on BBC. The decision now rests in the hands of the British public. The voting window is open, and, assuming you are a British citizen, you can vote at ee.co.uk/BAFTA until 12 p.m. Friday 14. May the brightest star win.
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