Few actors had bigger breakout years in 2023 than Dominic Sessa, whose role as troubled boarding school student Angus Tully in “The Holdovers” established him as one of the independent film world’s rising stars after just one performance.
While a leading role in an Alexander Payne movie is the kind of debut that sets an impossibly high bar for future projects, Sessa is already thinking ahead to new opportunities. Speaking to IndieWire on the red carpet of the Screen Actors Guild awards, the 21-year-old actor revealed that he hopes to one day work with the likes of Bradley Cooper and Barry Keoghan.
“Bradley Cooper, maybe. He’s always been a very fun actor to watch and someone who inspires me,” Sessa said when asked about actors he hopes to collaborate with in the future. “Barry Keoghan also is someone who’s very cool. I aspire to play roles like he does. He’s got great performances that he’s done, so that’s someone.”
Sessa’s casting in “The Holdovers” was a serendipitous event. Payne recently told IndieWire’s Anne Thompson that he found the first-time actor after his lengthy New York casting search came up short. He opted to try a more authentic approach and invited theater departments from New England boarding schools to submit students for the role of Angus, which led him to find Sessa.
“I always try to cast in the locations where we’re shooting,” Payne said. “And so we called up the drama departments of the schools and talked to the drama teachers: ‘Oh, yes, we have some students who would be happy to audition for your movie!’ And there he was. [He needed to be] believable, interesting, able, and ultimately, possess a face of someone whom you would like to see cured, helped, if not saved, by the story that this movie is telling. Finding him, and at the last minute — because if you didn’t nail that part, then the movie is going to suck or you can’t make the movie — was a minor miracle.”
Watch IndieWire’s SAG Awards red carpet interview with Sessa below.
