X-Men spinoff The New Mutants is finally coming out on August 28, 2020, more than two years
after it was originally set to be released. These characters have been around for decades,
and their actors have been working for years but where exactly have we seen these kids
before?
Anya Taylor-Joy's path to Hollywood began when she was flagged down by a stranger in
London at the age of 16 — which sounds like the start of a horror story. The Miami-born
actor got quite the shock when she noticed a mysterious black car started tailing her,
panicking to the point that she picked up her dog and started running. She later told
Style magazine that she thought, quote, "This is the end."
"So I like speed up, pick up the dog and start running. And then this guy sticks his head
out the window and goes 'If you stop, you won't regret it.' And I stopped."
It turned out not to be the end, but rather the beginning of something huge the person
in the car was veteran modeling agent Sarah Doukas, the woman who launched the careers
of Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne. Taylor-Joy was signed to a contract the next day, and
before long she was rubbing elbows with acting agents, too.
Taylor-Joy jumped in at the deep end with her acting career, taking on the lead role
in her first film. The newcomer was widely praised for her performance as a Puritan girl
in 2015's The Witch, a New England-set Gothic horror that blew the critics away.
She cemented herself as an exciting new talent the following year when she appeared in sci-fi
slasher Morgan; college-age Barack Obama biopic Barry, in which she played the future president's
girlfriend; and M. Night Shyamalan's surprise superhero sequel, Split. She would reprise
the latter role in 2019's Glass, by which point her work on The New Mutants was already
done and dusted. Fans of British drama will also recognize Taylor-Joy from her roles in
The Miniaturist and Peaky Blinders.
Chances are you already know where you've seen Maisie Williams before, but in case you've
been living under a rock this past decade, she starred as Arya Stark in the HBO fantasy
series Game of Thrones.
Williams' life was pretty much consumed by Game of Thrones from the moment it became
a hit, with her mother choosing to pull her out of school to concentrate on acting full-time.
But she still found time to work on other projects during its eight-season run.
She appeared in British shows like The Secret of Crickley Hall and Doctor Who, and she began
making her mark in feature films with lead roles in period mystery piece The Falling
in 2014, sci-fi thriller iBoy in 2017, and adventure comedy Then Came You in 2018.
Like his New Mutants co-star Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton rose to prominence after landing
a part in a TV show that quickly blew up. He's portrayed Jonathan Byers on Netflix hit
Stranger Things since the show's first season, though unlike Williams, he had a number of
credits to his name prior to his big breakthrough.
He cut his teeth on British TV dramas DCI Banks, Vera, and Casualty before making the
move to feature films in 2015, playing a drug dealer in gangster flick Rise of the Footsoldier
Part II. After a few more small roles in indie films, the Yorkshire native was off to Hollywood.
He had to rough it a little to begin with, but before long Heaton was walking red carpets.
He told GQ,
"I had this crazy trajectory. I went from literally living in a hostel in L.A. at the
beginning of 2015 to shooting Stranger Things at the end of 2015... I had this turbulent,
crazy year, and then the show came out in 2016."
He appeared alongside Naomi Watts in psychological thriller Shut In that same year, and in 2017
he filmed his scenes as Marvel mutant Samuel Guthrie, a.k.a Cannonball.
Blu Hunt wasn't very well known when she landed the part of mutant Danielle Moonstar a.k.a
Mirage but she wasn't exactly plucked from obscurity, either. Hunt, who is of Lakota
ancestry, began working on a web series when she moved to L.A., but she didn't have to
wait long for her first mainstream role.
In 2017, The CW snapped her up to play Inadu a powerful Native American witch better known
by the name The Hollow in Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals, which is where you
may know her from. Hunt went straight into The New Mutants from there, but she's played
a number of other roles since filming the X-Men movie.
In 2019, Hunt appeared in the debut episode of Cobie Smulders crime drama Stumptown, which
scored rave reviews during its first season. She also went on to star in a lead role on
the Netflix series Another Life.
Henry Zaga made his debut in 2015 when he appeared in an episode of the NBC procedural
The Mysteries of Laura. It was just a one-off appearance, but he was destined for bigger
things anyway soon after, the up-and-comer landed the role of Josh Diaz in Teen Wolf,
cementing his spot among the ranks of Hollywood's newest teen heartthrobs.
Zaga made his feature-film debut the following year with a role in Netflix's XOXO, an ensemble
film about the interconnecting lives of six strangers.
He popped up in former drug dealer Angie Wang's debut feature MDMA in 2017, though that would
be largely overshadowed by his role in another Netflix production he played Tony's boyfriend
Brad in the first season of 13 Reasons Why.
Like his New Mutants co-stars, Zaga has worked on numerous other projects since he finished
shooting the Marvel film, seemingly happy to move from teen drama to teen drama.
He went on to play Jake in Hulu miniseries Looking for Alaska and then portrayed Luka
in 13 episodes of the Netflix show Trinkets, about three friends who meet at Shoplifters
Anonymous.
Unlike the youngsters under her supposed care, Alice Braga who plays Dr. Cecilia Reyes has
been around for some time.
She made her film debut as Angelica in critical darling City of God and went on to star in
two more Brazilian films 2005's Lower City and 2006's Only God Knows before making the
transition to Hollywood in the mid-2000s. She became known to wider audiences in 2007
when she worked alongside Will Smith in I Am Legend, playing the survivor who takes
the cure from the star before he blows himself and a bunch of terribly rendered zombies to
pieces.
Since then, Braga has split her time between the States and Brazil, where she has her own
production company. She's never stopped acting, however, and chances are you've seen her do
her thing on numerous occasions over the past decade, even if you didn't know it.
In 2010 she starred opposite Jude Law and Forest Whitaker in action thriller Repo Men,
and that same year she joined an ensemble cast that included Adrien Brody and Laurence
Fishburne for Predators, an attempted revival of the sci-fi franchise. Other notable credits
include the Matt Damon sci-fi thriller Elysium in 2013, and the Simon Pegg comedy Kill Me
Three Times the year after. Since 2016, she's starred on the hit show Queen of the South,
as Teresa Mendoza, a downtrodden Mexican woman who builds a drug empire.
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