Noah Centineo

Noah Centineo did the standard American teen apprenticeship: Disney Channel and Nickelodeon parts, Austin and Ally, then Jesus Adams Foster on The Fosters from 2015. A Netflix romantic comedy changed everything. To All the Boys I've Loved Before landed in 2018 and made him briefly the most discussed young actor on the service, and inside a year he had followed it with Sierra Burgess Is a Loser and The Perfect Date.

Peter Kavinsky works because Centineo underplays him. On the page the character is a high school heartthrob, which usually produces a performance made entirely of smirking. Centineo instead plays him as slightly bewildered and unfailingly decent, and the trilogy runs on that one choice. He is a generous scene partner, comfortable being the less interesting person in the shot, which is rarer than it sounds.

The pivot since has been deliberate and is not yet convincing. Black Adam gave him Atom Smasher, a superhero written as comic relief. The Recruit made him the lead of a CIA thriller. Dream Scenario and Warfare are the more interesting choices, small parts in films with something on their minds. Ahead of him are Ken Masters in a Street Fighter adaptation and the title role in a John Rambo film, which is either the boldest casting of his career or a category error, and there is no way to know which yet.