NEW YORK (AP) — As a child, Fred Hechinger dreamed of running away to join the circus. Now, as his acting career takes off, he jokes that it feels like he’s finally living that childhood dream.

“I thought that looked really fun. And now I kind of feel like I work in the circus,” Hechinger told The Associated Press, which selected him as one of its Breakthrough Entertainers of 2024.

Levity suits the 25-year-old, despite his role as the tyrannical Emperor Caracalla in “Gladiator II.” While his year — which has included the highly praised “Thelma,” with June Squibb — has been “fun and busy,” Hechinger says, it also “feels in some ways like a reflective year at the moment.”

Hechinger kicked off his acting career in Bo Burnham’s adolescent dramedy “Eighth Grade,” released in 2018. In 2020, he found himself alongside Tom Hanks in the Paul Greengrass-directed Western “News of the World.” But it was in 2021, playing Quinn Mossbacher in the first season of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” that he really made a splash.

With the success of “Gladiator II” and “Thelma,” and the upcoming “Nickel Boys,” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — not to mention the anticipation for the Spider-Man spinoff “Kraven the Hunter” — Hechinger is cognizant of the challenges that come with fame. However, blending his private and public lives doesn’t seem to faze him — within reason, of course.

“We’re all human and everyone should be treated as full humans. But I don’t have any particular gripes at the moment,” Hechinger says.

Instead, he expresses gratitude for having the opportunity fulfill his dream.

“For so many years I wanted to tell stories and be an actor,” he says. “So, the moment I started to get paid to do it, where it was a job, an actual real job to do this thing that I loved to play and focus and work in this way, that’s something I count as a blessing.”

With his busy schedule, Hechinger has picked up a valuable lesson: Once filming wraps, it’s time to let go. He acknowledges that after he’s done his part, it’s out of his hands. Although he doesn’t have kids of his own, he compares finishing a movie to raising children and sending them off into the world.

“You’re always there for them, you care about them, but you can’t be with them every step of the way. You have to let them stand on their own,” Hechinger compares. “It’s the same with a movie — once it’s done, you’ve done all you can, and now it’s time to release it, share it, and hope people connect with it.”

With his breakthrough year coming to a close, Hechinger wants to continue the momentum of telling stories.

“I love that I’m able to do it and I just want to keep doing it in ways that push and scare me a little bit,” he says, “and also take those creative risks and hopefully give people stories that that can mean something to them.”

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For more on AP’s 2024 class of Breakthrough Entertainers, visit https://apnews.com/hub/ap-breakthrough-entertainers

News from © The Associated Press, 2024