10 Actors Who Had Tremendous Breakthroughs In 2015

3) Emory Cohen – Brooklyn

Emory Cohen shouldn’t really be considered a newcomer when he did such stellar work in The Place Beyond the Pines two years ago. But considering critics were surprisingly (and unfairly) cool on the film and audiences hardly took to it, it’s been up to this year’s immigrant drama Brooklyn to reveal Cohen as one to watch. Unsurprisingly, after Pines, Cohen is excellent.

As the Italian-American sweetheart to Saoirse Ronan’s Irish girl in New York, Cohen couldn’t be more different from his arrogant, swaggering AJ in Pines. Here he’s just a simple guy, a plucky plumber looking to his eight-year-old brother for advice on writing letters to his new girlfriend, one with a deep desire to care and provide for Ronan’s Eilis. You feel him as the heart of Brooklyn, even during a third-act he largely spends off-screen.