Catherine “Katie” Laga’aia, born December 17, 2006, in Sydney, Australia, is the 19-year-old actress who landed the title role in Disney’s live-action Moana after a global search that attracted more than 32,000 applicants. Her casting has placed her in one of Disney’s biggest live-action projects and given her a major step into global visibility. Catherine…

Jaafar Jeremiah Jackson, born July 25, 1996, in Los Angeles, is the 30-year-old actor and singer who made one of the year’s biggest debuts by playing his uncle Michael Jackson in the Lionsgate/Universal biopic Michael. The film, directed by Antoine Fuqua, surpassed $1 billion globally and became the highest-grossing biopic of all time, putting Jaafar…

Inde Navarrette is one of the biggest breakout film stars of 2026 after her lead turn in the A24 horror hit Obsession, which became a surprise box-office and cultural phenomenon. Born Danielle Fabiola Navarrette on March 3, 2001, in Tucson, Arizona, she is now 25. Her father is of Mexican descent and served in the…

Maryam Adedoyin Apaokagi, known widely as Taaoma, was born on 28 February 1999 in Ilorin, Kwara State, the last of five children in a Yoruba Muslim family. Early on, the expectation was for medicine or law, the conventional routes many Nigerian parents still favour. Instead, she found her voice through short-form comedy sketches that captured…

Tomiwa Tegbe was born on 22 May in Ibadan, Oyo State, and followed an academic path far removed from the entertainment industry. He studied Environmental Management and Toxicology at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, a choice that reflected typical career planning in Nigerian families. Passion for performance, however, took over. He embarked on a…

Genoveva Umeh was born in Enugu in 1995 and took a conventional academic route that looked set to see her in the courtroom. She studied Law at the University of Surrey in the UK, graduated and then made the difficult decision to move away from legal practice. In 2018, she returned to Nigeria determined to…

Mike Afolarin was born on 1 September 1993 and studied Economics at the University of Lagos before being lured away by the theatre. He made his first stage appearance in the 2013 production Magic Time, and the real industry notice came with Kasala in 2018, a film that introduced him to a wider audience. From…

Chimezie Imo was born in Lagos on 7 January, with family roots tracing back to Imo State. He acquired his early lessons in performance through church theatre groups, where he spent years developing his stagecraft before any camera work. These formative years taught him the importance of timing, voice projection and the discipline of rehearsing…

Belgian actress Violet Braeckman has been named one of the ten European Shooting Stars for 2026 by the European Film Promotion. The 29-year-old Flemish performer was awarded in recognition of a body of work that demonstrates versatility across the mediums of film and television. Jury members described her chameleon-like abilities and capacity to vanish into…