30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment 2025: Kathryn Newton, Wesley Wang And Marcello Hernandez Are Thriving Going Into ‘25

“Survive till ‘25” has been the catchphrase in an industry grappling with AI and the financial hangover from the disruption of the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023. But the members of the 2025 30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment list are the energy behind a new wave of stories on screens big and small.

By Maggie McGrath, Lisette Voytko-Best, and Brittney McKenna

Kathryn Newton did not go into acting intending to become America’s next Scream Queen. Her first big acting break came at 15, for a role in Paranormal Activity 4. She found herself returning to the genre in the years since, landing starring roles in Freaky (2020), Abigail (2023) and Lisa Frankenstein (2024).

“I think horror touches people beyond [what] a romcom does or an action film does, or a fantasy film because horror is real,” Newton, 27, told Forbes. “You don’t have to be beautiful and you don’t have to be in love to be afraid. And people all know what it’s like to be in the dark and get scared.”

Newton—whose work brought in an estimated $2 million in earnings this past year—is speaking in an industry that is experiencing its fair share of fear. Concerns over generative AI, the cost of producing work in the U.S. and a financial and creative hangover from the 2023 SAG-AFTRA actors’ and writers’ strike has had many in the industry repeating, “survive till ‘25.” But if Newton and her 30 Under 30 Class of ‘25 Hollywood & Entertainment cohort prove anything, it’s that youth can be an advantage in finding new ways to make and tell stories.

“Make your own projects,” Newton says. “You don’t need a million dollars apparently. You just need an iPhone… I don’t think you have to wait for anybody.”

Filmmaker Wesley Wang, 20, embodies this ethos. During his senior year of high school, Wang wrote and directed the short film nothing, except everything and released it on YouTube. The film went viral, quickly surpassing seven million views, and in October 2023, he received an email from Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky.

“watched your film,” Aronofsky wrote, in all lower caps. “can you drop out of harvard?” In April of this year, following a bidding war, Sony’s Tristar Pictures acquired the rights to turn Wang’s film into a big screen feature (Aronofsky will produce).

Joining Newton and Wang on the 2025 Hollywood & Entertainment list are people working across movies, television, comedy and theatre both in front of audiences and as the masterminds behind the scenes. Some wear many hats: Marcello Hernández, 27, is a first-generation Latino comedian who writes, produces and performs stand-up comedy and is a current castmember on Saturday Night Live. (Most recently, Hernández has proven particularly adept at earning fans’ delight by showing up, in character as “Domingo,” at a Sabrina Carpenter concert.)

Other list multihyphenates include actor, writer and activist Nicole Maines, 27. She is the first actor to portray a transgender superhero on TV and went on to write her character’s comic book debut for DC Comics in 2021. Thomas Laub, also 27, is a three-time Tony Award-winning producer and founder of his own production company, Runyonland Productions. Ryan Destiny, 29, is a film and television actor who will star in the forthcoming Amazon MGM Studios film The Fire Inside, and she’s also an independent music artist.

The members of the 2025 Hollywood & Entertainment are clear-eyed about what it means to be young talent in Tinsel Town—“In an industry that values big names and big credits, it can feel impossible to get a start as a young actor,” Maines notes—but also the ways in which it is an advantage. “My generation (Gen Z) is filled with talented, hardworking individuals who often take non-traditional routes to achieve their goals,” says 28-year-old Straight to Cards vice president Justin McGriff, “showing that just because something has always been done one way doesn’t mean we can’t find a better way to do it.”

Helping the Forbes team identify Hollywood’s top young talent were four expert judges: Courtenay Valenti, Amazon’s head of Theatrical and Streaming Film; actor and producer Rob McElhenney; Celeste Yim, a writer and comedian, most recently serving as a supervising writer for Saturday Night Live; and Lexi Underwood, an actor, filmmaker and alum of the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 Hollywood list.

This year’s list was edited by Brittney McKenna, Maggie McGrath, and Lisette Voytko-Best, with extra reporting from Alexandra York. For a link to our complete Hollywood & Entertainment list, click here, and for full 30 Under 30 coverage, click here.

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