THR – In front of an audience at the Miami Film Festival’s GEMS event, the star of two of 2024’s most widely discussed and debated films reflected on his life and career.

Sebastian Stan, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience at the Miami Film Festival GEMS event last week, is one of the top young actors in Hollywood. Though he’s only 42, he has been acting on screens big and small for more than 20 years. He has been a part of giant blockbusters (he plays Bucky Barnes in Marvel’s superhero movies) and prestige projects (I, Tonya on film and Pam & Tommy on TV). And he has received Emmy, Golden Globe and Critics Choice award noms. But he has never had a year as big as his 2024.

This year, Stan is in the running for a best actor Oscar nomination for not one but two performances: as Edward, an aspiring actor afflicted with the craniofacial condition neurofibromatosis who undergoes groundbreaking facial reconstructive surgery, in Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, for which he was awarded the Berlin International Film Festival’s best actor prize; and as Donald Trump, a young businessman in the 1970s and 1980s learning the ropes from, and then abandoning, his mentor, Roy Cohn, in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice.

Over the course of our conversation, Stan, who was born in Romania, reflects on coming to America with his mother at the age of 12 and discussing the American dream; breaking in to the business on TV’s Gossip Girl, in the 2007 Broadway production of Talk Radio and in Jonathan Demme’s 2008 film Rachel Getting Married; big auditions that didn’t pan out, including one for the part of Captain America, which led to him being cast as Bucky Barnes; what he learned acting opposite the likes of Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep; how he came to and navigated the two tricky parts he played in 2024 films; what led him to the conclusion that Trump is a danger to America; plus more.