Vanity Fair’s 2024 Hollywood Issue Unites 11 Spectacular Stars

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.”