Paul Mescal

When Paul Mescal appeared on screens for the first time in Normal People, the pandemic-era streaming sensation based on author Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name, it was the announcement of a new and different kind of heartthrob — an emotionally tortured young man who wore all of his teenaged confusion and passion just below the surface of his skin. The masses swooned. The Irish actor, born in County Kildare, was a Gaelic football star turned theater nerd, and he was ready for Hollywood to come calling.

Following his breakout role, Mescal made the leap to film, where he was cast to play other pained souls such as a young barman having a dalliance with a single mom in Maggie Gyllenaal’s The Lost Daughter (2021); a single dad grappling with depression in Aftersun (2022), for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar; the alcoholic lover to Andrew Scott’s lonely writer in All of Us Strangers (2023); and the brooding illegitimate son of slain general Maximus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II (2024).

In 2025, Mescal starred in two tearjerkers, the gay romance The History of Sound, opposite Josh O’Connor, and the Shakespeare family drama Hamnet, opposite Jessie Buckley. Next up, he is slated to play Paul McCartney in director Sam Mendes’ four Beatles biopics, due in 2028, and composer Franklin Shepard in a multiyear adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, to be filmed by director Richard Linklater.