The Top 12 Breakthrough Actors Of 2014

Nat Wolff (The Fault In Our Stars, Palo Alto)

One of the year’s biggest box office successes was The Fault in Our Stars, which earned more than $300 million worldwide off a $12 million budget. Although much of the film’s young audience swooned for the male lead, Ansel Elgort, he was also one of the biggest problems of the film. In my three-star review, I wrote that his softened depiction of Augustus Waters “lacks the gripping pathos needed for the film’s tragic third act.”

The young actor who stole The Fault in Our Stars from Elgort’s grip was Nat Wolff, who played blind cancer survivor Isaac, a teen going through heartbreak of his own. Wolff gave the performance a sly sense of humor and delicate emotional nuance. He made a small character from John Green’s bestseller a more meaningful part of the big-screen adaptation, to the extent that director Josh Boone (who also directed him in Stuck in Love) also cast him in his upcoming big-screen rendition of Stephen King’s The Stand.

Meanwhile, the fellow member of the Naked Brothers Band also gave another memorable turn among a young ensemble in Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto. While that high-school drama was one of the poorest titles of the year (in this writer’s opinion), Wolff is the film’s high mark. As the unnerved delinquent Fred, Wolff gave the film a raucous energy that the rest of it lacks. His hyperactive character engages in a lot of mischief and law-breaking, yet is always fascinating to watch, and Woolf’s unhinged performance brought the role down to earth.