Owen Cooper emphatically announced himself to the world in 2025. The “Adolescence” star became the youngest male acting winner at the Emmy Awards. He was just 15. It was his first professional job.
The young English actor’s rocket-fueled arrival was just one of several notable career turns that got the world of entertainment talking this year.
“Severance” star Tramell Tillman also made Emmy history as the first Black man to win for supporting actor in a drama series, Chase Sui Wonders helped make Seth Rogen’s “The Studio” a delicious satire, and Danny Ramirez captivated in Season 2 of “The Last of Us.” Plus, you couldn’t miss Arden Cho, who voiced Rumi, star of Netflix’s chart-topping animated film, “KPop Demon Hunters.”
All five have ended 2025 with critical and popular attention and have been named The Associated Press’ Breakthrough Entertainers of the Year.
Few performers have had a year like Cho, a Korean American who as the lead character in “KPop Demon Hunters” propelled it to becoming Netflix’s most watched movie of all time and watched as it notched four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including the No. 1 hit “Golden.”
“It feels like it is my golden moment,” says Cho.
The Harvard-educated Wonders had two plum parts in 2025 — playing Quinn Hackett, a comically manipulative creative executive on “The Studio” and the scream-queen Ava Brucks in “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
“I do feel absurdly lucky that I get to be on set with all my friends and telling a bunch of jokes and being a weirdo on screen,” she says.
Ramirez, best known for playing Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the first Latino Avenger — and Lt. Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia opposite Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick,” made a memorable turn as a vengeful member of the group that hunted down our favorite characters in the hellish landscape of “The Last of Us.”
“Across the board, it’s been creatively, incredibly fruitful,” says the actor. “I’ve been a part of some amazing productions. I’ve been able to see the world. It’s been the dream.”
Cruise also connects another AP Breakthrough Entertainer — Tillman, who co-starred in one of the biggest hits of the year, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” as well as enjoying a breakout Season 2 as Seth Milchick in “Severance,” capped by a finale in which he led a marching band with full choreography.
“It’s been quite a banner year,” he says. “I want to continue to expand and to tell more stories, stories that we haven’t heard and stories that tell the same story but in a different perspective.”
That’s also something the now-16-year-old Cooper is looking forward to after a 2025 that saw him anointed as a new Hollywood star.
“I just want to do everything,” he says.
For more on AP’s 2025 class of Breakthrough Entertainers, visit https://apnews.com/hub/ap-breakthrough-entertainers
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