John Magaro

Magaro's screen career started in earnest with David Chase's *Not Fade Away* (2012) — Chase, of course, being the *Sopranos* creator, so the attention that came with that project wasn't nothing. Magaro won the Hollywood Spotlight Award for that performance (Perplexity), which signaled early that critics were paying attention even if mainstream audiences weren't quite yet. The mid-2010s were when things shifted. *The Big Short* (2015) and Todd Haynes' *Carol* (2015) came out the same year, putting him in two of that year's most-discussed films back to back — and he's credible in both, which isn't easy when you're working alongside Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling in one and Cate Blanchett in the other. His Netflix run on *Orange Is the New Black* (2015–2019, 11 episodes) gave him sustained visibility on a platform that was, at the time, genuinely reshaping how people watched television. He also appeared in *The Umbrella Academy* (2019) and Woody Allen's *Crisis in Six Scenes* (2016) for Amazon. The role that probably defines his current reputation, though, is *First Cow* (2019). Kelly Reichardt's film is slow and deliberate — almost stubbornly so — and Magaro carries long stretches of it on the strength of a performance that's more about what he doesn't say than what he does. The Gotham Award nomination for Best Actor in 2020 followed (Perplexity). Since then, he's appeared in *Showing Up* (2022, also Reichardt), *The Mistress* (2022), and Celine Song's *Past Lives* (2023), one of the most praised films of that year. His drama *Omaha*, about a father navigating a cross-country journey with his children after a family tragedy, premiered at Sundance in January 2025 (Perplexity) — suggesting he's not slowing down.