The karate instructor was selected for a lead role in “It Was Just an Accident” precisely because of her lack of celebrity. Iranian director Jafar Panahi made the film in secret and needed actors who could easily blend in. But we hope this is just the beginning of Afshari’s career on the global stage. Her finely calibrated performance as a wedding photographer who helps kidnap a man who might have been her torturer in a prison merits all the praise it’s been getting. And so does her verve, as a protester against the theocracy in real-life Iran. When government authorities told Afshari to wear a head covering to the film’s premiere in Cannes, she did what great women do. She ignored them. —Joe McGovern

Seehorn’s first major TV role since “Better Call Saul” put the actress back in business with the “Breaking Bad” universe’s mastermind, Vince Gilligan, who created “Pluribus” for her.

She stars as Carol Sturka, a fantasy-romance novelist and one of 12 people on Earth immune to an alien virus that turns the global population into a hive mind. Seehorn, who is in nearly every scene, expertly navigates the show’s unusual tone — a mix of drama, sci-fi and humor — and is the emotional anchor for the audience, even when she’s at her most caustic. Slowly, Seehorn reveals Carol’s vulnerability. It’s fascinating to watch. —MS

Writing about Swift’s coups can make you feel like a (ahem) broken record. After her history-making Eras Tour, the most powerful pop star in the world returned to the spotlight this year with her 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” which sold 2.7 million copies on day 1 of its release, surpassing the record Swift herself set in 2024 with her previous album. In modern streaming parlance, “Showgirl” sold 4 million equivalent album units in its debut week, the most ever.

In September, she became the first and only female artist to surpass 100 RIAA-certified album sales and extended her record as the female artist who’s debuted the most albums at No. 1, with 12. To tie it all together, the 89-minute promotional film “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” topped the box office during its one-weekend run, grossing $50 million worldwide. —MS

Sometimes, going back to basics is the smartest way forward. Just ask Aubrey, who greenlit “The Pitt,” the hospital drama from exec producers R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells and Noah Wyle that proved that even in the age of capital-p Prestige Programming, there is still magic to be tapped from the traditional TV model of longer seasons, modest budgets and annual returns of new episodes.

“The Pitt” earned critical raves, an average of 10 million viewers per each of its 15 episodes and 13 Emmy nominations — of which it won five, including Best Drama Series. Aubrey and her team have since ordered two new pilots in the “prestigeral” mold of “The Pitt” (which returns for Season 2 in January): “American Blue,” a cop drama from Jeremy Carver (“Supernatural”), and a family drama tentatively titled “How To Survive Without Me” from Greg Berlanti (“Brothers & Sisters”).

As HBO Max’s Head of Original Content, Aubrey is also tasked with spinning gold from existing Warner Bros. IP, which she did this year with “The Penguin,” Lauren LeFranc’s moody limited-series spin-off of “The Batman” that won nine Emmys. There’s also “It: Welcome to Derry,” which premiered to 5.7 million cross-platform viewers in its first three days. And finally, glowing on the horizon like a Patronus charm is the Harry Potter series from “Succession” team Francesca Gardiner and Mark Mylod, currently shooting in the U.K. and due to debut in 2027. —MS 

It’s been another massive year for Netflix. And Bajaria has been behind all of it. The chief content officer’s push into the global market paid off big time with the U.K.-produced limited series “Adolescence” — winner of eight Emmys — and the Korean-inspired movie “KPop Demon Hunters,” the streamer’s most-watched original ever, with 325 million views.

Between the NFL Christmas Day games and the January premiere of “WWE Raw,” which generated 4.9 million views (a “Raw” record), Netflix made headway in the increasingly important streaming sector of live events. And let’s not forget the series finales of landmark titles “Squid Game,” “You” and coming soon, “Stranger Things.” No matter where Netflix goes next, Bajaria will be helping steer the ship. —Kayla Cobb

For Cronk, creators are the future of entertainment. She has been instrumental in Whalar’s mission of connecting creative voices with brands that fit with their content, signing Anthropic, Nestlé Health Science, Peacock and the NFL as clients and boosting the company’s revenue by a reported 19%. And she was central to the launch of the co-working space/maker studio The Lighthouse in L.A., soon to be followed by locations in Brooklyn and London. In her mind, creators and Hollywood need to work hand in hand. 

“To succeed, we need to be doing things together,” she told TheWrap. “Yeah, creators are completely revolutionizing Hollywood and storytelling, but creators need the skill set of Old Hollywood. I think Hollywood also understands that the studios are going to be left behind unless they embrace this new way of telling stories. We’re all inspired by what’s come before us. Creators, they want to see themselves on our generation’s version of the big screen.” —KC

In 2025, García Jayaram launched Elevate Studios, the production arm of her philanthropic Elevate Prize Foundation, with the goal of creating content that centers on people making social progress globally. The company’s first docuseries, “Nevertheless: The Women Changing the World,” focused on three women — from Nairobi, Detroit and Mumbai — whose activism in criminal justice, poverty and health care has made a positive impact in their communities. The series amassed nearly 3 million views on YouTube, enough to greenlight a second season, “Nevertheless: Democracy Defenders.” This one will spotlight women who are fighting against the rise of authoritarianism in the United States and will debut next year.

“At a time when the truth and diverse representation are under fire, Elevate Studios remains committed to championing and amplifying those on the front lines around the world who continue to push society forward and spark real change,” García Jayaram said. “These narratives remind us that change isn’t just necessary, it’s within our reach.” —MS 

The first Black woman to lead the comedy division at a major talent agency started her career in entertainment as a teen rapper in Oakland. (She’s the inspiration for one of the characters in the 2025 indie “Freaky Tales.”)

Since being promoted to Innovative’s head of comedy in 2017, Goins has nearly doubled the department’s size and revenue, due to her knack for identifying promising new artists and nurturing established ones, such as Thomas “Nephew Tommy” Miles, whose show on OWN, “Ready to Love,” is nearing its 200th episode; Luenell, for whom Goins brokered deals for two Netflix stand-up specials; and the Tony-winning David Alan Grier, currently starring on the hit NBC sitcom “St. Denis Medical.” —Umberto Gonzalez

Goll, the first woman to be promoted to managing partner at the five-year-old company, consistently brings in some of the biggest bucks of anyone on staff. In 2025, she closed hundreds of ads and endorsement deals that topped eight figures. Among them: five spots on the Super Bowl and campaigns for clients Bradley Cooper (with Uber), Keegan-Michael Key (Jim Beam, Lay’s Potato Chips, EY Golf) and Vince Vaughn (Comcast). —MS 

One of the few women serving on the board of a major agency, Kohan represents a powerhouse roster of talent that includes Paul Rudd, Ali Wong, Cynthia Erivo and Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, whose smash Apple TV comedy series “The Studio” won a record-setting 13 Emmys in September.

She also reps Colleen Hoover, the e-book romance author turned publishing phenomenon who has sold more than 20 million books. Her “It Ends With Us” was adapted for the big screen and grossed $350 million (despite legal drama between lead Blake Lively and director-star Justin Baldoni). —UG

It takes a lot to run a cable-news organization. It takes even more to transform a cable-news organization into a newsgathering operation. Kutler took on that task when she ascended to president of MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, in January and prepared for parent company Comcast to spin off NBCUniversal’s cable assets into an independent company, Versant. Because MS NOW is no longer connected to NBC News, she has added dozens of prominent journalists to MS NOW’s arsenal of reporters and led a revamp of its primetime lineup, putting in place the voice of the opposition. —Corbin Bolies

Over the past two years, Langley has risen from chairman at Universal Pictures to leader of the entirety of NBCUniversal’s entertainment media portfolio, including NBC, Bravo and Peacock. Now the motion picture group that has kept the “Jurassic World” series humming along is dazzling the box office with “Wicked: For Good” and preparing a 2026 slate with films from Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan.

Langley also helped pull off one of the most seismic talent deals of the year by signing “Yellowstone” mastermind Taylor Sheridan after weeks of personal talks. Combine his shows with the return of the NBA to NBC and Peacock may have just found a second wind in the battle for streaming supremacy. —Jeremy Fuster

In 2022, Matt and Ross Duffer formed Upside Down Pictures and hired Leavitt to run it. One of the first major projects on her docket was the fifth and final season of the Duffers’ Netflix series “Stranger Things,” whose production was delayed due to the strikes. But at last, the first four episodes premiered over Thanksgiving to such a frenzy that Netflix crashed for some viewers.

Leavitt, a veteran of Hulu, BBC America and MRC, has also been pushing the Duffers’ universe beyond their signature sci-fi show, spearheading expansion into the upcoming animated series “Tales from ’85,” plus an adult-skewing anime set in Japan and its live-action spinoff. Next year will bring “The Boroughs,” described as “Stranger Things” in a retirement community, and “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” about a doomed wedding. After that? The company’s move in April 2026 from its longtime home at Netflix to Paramount Pictures, where Leavitt and the Duffers will develop series as well as films for theatrical release. —Drew Taylor

Over the past seven years, Rebbapragada has climbed the ranks at Sony from marketing SVP to COO of its anime division, Crunchyroll. Using her marketing experience and lifelong love of anime, she has helped build Crunchyroll not just as a streaming service with 17 million subscribers (a 30% boost from 2024), but also as a theatrical distributor of franchise films. And 2025 turned out to be a banner year.

In the space of two months, Crunchyroll snagged two box office hits: “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” and “Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc.” Combined, they grossed roughly $175 million domestically and became a life raft for a box office that was facing another deep autumn slump. “Demon Slayer,” one of the most globally popular anime series today, also netted Sony more than $350 million in overseas markets, making it by far the company’s highest grossing film of 2025 and proving that the right anime film can be a tentpole. —JF

After co-running the company for two years with David and Bob Gersh, Siebert was promoted to sole president in 2025, becoming the first woman to run a major talent agency. In addition to leading Gersh on the day-to-day and helping double its size with the acquisition of Madrid-based sports firm You First, she reps such stars as Jacob Elordi, Hiroyuki Sanada, Kyle Chandler and Angela Bassett, for whom she negotiated a three-year deal with ABC’s “9-1-1.” As a result, Bassett is now the highest-paid Black actress in TV history. —MS

It hasn’t been a perfect year for Walden. Under pressure from the Trump administration, she and Disney CEO Bob Iger suspended Jimmy Kimmel for a week — a dark moment for the country. But Walden, whose domain includes ABC, ABC News, Disney Branded Television, FX, Hulu Originals and National Geographic, had several hits this year — “Andor” Season 2, “Paradise,” “Dying for Sex” and “Alien: Earth” among them. And she’s still a strong contender to succeed Iger and become the 101-year-old company’s next CEO.

History will remember Bigelow as the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar for her bomb-disposal drama “The Hurt Locker.” But this uncompromising artist has never made movies for golden statuettes. Her 45-year career is stacked with gonzo action thrillers (“Point Break,” “Strange Days”) and powder-keg political dramas (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Detroit”). This year, she pushed the hot button again with her unsettlingly realistic “A House of Dynamite,” which chronicles the panicking halls of power as a nuclear missile heads for Chicago. The film’s bold final moment sparks a conversation with the audience: This is in your hands, Bigelow is telling us. What kind of ending do you want? —JM

Famous worldwide for her 27 seasons (and counting) on “Law & Order: SVU,” Hargitay made her feature directorial debut this year with an uncommonly moving documentary about her mother, bombshell actress Jayne Mansfield. Much of the film focuses on Mansfield’s life and legacy — she was killed in a 1967 auto accident when Mariska was three — but the last third turns into something else, deep and cathartic, as Hargitay digs into her own past and the hidden secret of her parentage. Although the movie is too subtle to draw this line explicitly, it represents the extraordinary origin story of an actress who would devote her career to playing an impassioned detective relentlessly seeking the truth. —JM

Zhao triumphed at the Oscars five years ago, winning Best Director and Best Picture for “Nomadland” at the pandemic-era ceremony in L.A.’s Union Station. This season, she’ll undoubtedly be at the Academy Awards again and could very well collect more trophies for her emotional Niagara set in Elizabethan England.

Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about a tragedy that befalls Agnes and William Shakespeare (Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal), the film has devastated — and then beautifully uplifted — every audience that’s seen it. Zhao is a believer in the benefits of meditation and has an intuitive sense about the healing power of storytelling. She also knows about gaining wisdom from our experiences, whatever they might be. She credits her work on Marvel’s “Eternals,” a critical flop in 2021, with teaching her the necessary world-building skills required for “Hamnet.” —JM

TV veteran Brock Akil took a 50-year-old cornerstone of American teen literature and turned it into an urgently modern drama series. She reimagined Judy Blume’s 1975 novel about the romantic and sexual awakening of white teenagers in Me Decade New Jersey as the story of Black high schoolers (Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr.) falling in love in 2018 Los Angeles — the year was chosen deliberately to underscore the anxiety Black parents felt about their children’s safety after the murder of Trayvon Martin and before George Floyd. 

In her review for TheWrap, Ronda Racha Penrice called “Forever” a “stunning achievement” and wrote, “In chronicling what it means to be young and Black exploring your first love in a world not fond of giving young Black boys and girls second chances, Brock Akil doesn’t betray the universal values of Blume’s original through her reimagining.” Netflix renewed the show for a second season. Brock Akil — who got her start with the 1994 Fox series “South Central” before creating “Girlfriends,” “The Game” and “Being Mary Jane” — will be returning. —MS

There isn’t enough bandwidth on the internet to list all of the power producer’s 2025 projects, so here are just a few: “F1,” the $631 million-grossing blockbuster starring her Plan B partner Brad Pitt; Kaouther Ben Hania’s devastating Venice Silver Bear winner “The Voice of Hind Rajab”; “Hedda,” Nia DaCosta’s bold new interpretation of the Ibsen classic; Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras’ documentary “Cover-Up,” about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh; “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” Andrew Dominik’s film version of the U2 frontman’s 2023 one-man stage show; “Anemone,” Ronan Day-Lewis’ directorial debut that got his dad out of retirement; and the Emmy-winning Netflix sensation “Adolescence.”

It’s a list of astounding versatility — who else can claim a hi-octane race-car flick, a doc about a rock legend and a Daniel Day-Lewis indie in the same year? And it’s a testament to what Gardner, the only female producer to win two Best Picture Oscars, has been bringing to the industry for the past two decades. —MS

LeFranc knows about building worlds inside preexisting properties. She previously worked on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” ostensibly part of Marvel Studios’ sprawling MCU, and on “Impulse,” a YouTube Premium series based on the same books that inspired Doug Liman’s “Jumper.”

But with “The Penguin,” her nine-time Emmy-winning series set in the aftermath of Matt Reeves’ film “The Batman,” LeFranc was able to build something towering and complicated, full of nuance and personality. And with Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone, she created a character as compelling as Colin Farrell’s titular mobster, if not more so. She was villain and victim, queen and captive. The role won Milioti an Emmy. —DT

There were few cinematic events this year that matched Ryan Coogler’s vampire-western-slash-musical “Sinners” in IMAX. Much of that had to do with the stunning cinematography of Durald Arkapaw, the first female DP to shoot a movie on large-format IMAX. A previous collaborator with Coogler on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” she shot “Sinners” on 65mm film, using a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision 70 cameras. 

The results were remarkable — images both expansive and intimate. When the IMAX aspect ratio is introduced during a pivotal sequence late in the film, it becomes a moment in and of itself. Audiences applauded. What makes her work on “Sinners” even more impressive is the chameleonic change from her previous film, Gia Coppola’s intimate, gritty indie “The Last Showgirl.” —DT

No other prime-time news anchor also serves as their network’s chief White House correspondent, and few are as plugged into the Trump administration as Collins. As anchor of “The Source” every night at 9, she’s broken hundreds of stories on the Trump White House, sat in on press briefings and sparred with the president since he took office in January. Even though he calls her “fake news,” he hasn’t stopped answering her questions. —CB

Bari Weiss started off 2025 running the Free Press, her unabashedly “anti-woke” journalistic operation. She’s ending it $150 million richer, after David Ellison’s Paramount purchased her company and hired her as CBS News’ inaugural editor-in-chief. During her first weeks on the job, she leveraged her stature in the media industry to land big interviews (President Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and tried to lure top talent (Anderson Cooper, Bret Baier).

CBS News staffers have bristled at the elevation of a rabble-rousing opinion journalist with no broadcast experience to the apex of the Tiffany Network, and it’s too soon to say how successful she’ll be, but there is no question that Weiss has blazed a new path to the top of news media. —CB

Last year, Cooper made our list because of her SiriusXM deal, reportedly worth $125 million. This year, she’s here as an empire builder.

Since its foundation in 2023, Unwell Network has grown to include 11 podcasts, including the OG hosted by Cooper, “Call Her Daddy,” which averages a reported 10 million listeners per episode; a TV-production arm, Unwell Productions, whose reality series “Love Overboard” premieres next year on Hulu; a drink brand, Unwell Hydration, that signed a season-long sponsorship with the National Women’s Soccer League; an advertising company, Unwell Creative Agency, that signed a multi-year deal with Google to promote the company’s products for content creation; and two SiriusXM channels, Unwell on Air and Unwell Music.  —KC

One of the most ambitious names in the scripted-creator space is Kinigra Deon, dubbed the “Tyler Perry of YouTube.” With 5.5 million YouTube subscribers and 8 million TikTok followers, the laboratory scientist turned uber-creator specializes in broad comedies with Hollywood-level production values that focus on high-school-age characters.

The release of her content rivals that of a production studio; it’s not uncommon for her channel to release multiple half-hour episodes or even entire movie-length videos in a single week. She’s also leading the next wave of creators: One of the four movies coming exclusively to Tubi from Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat will be a horror movie that Deon wrote, directed and stars in. —KC

The Londoner emerged on the scene by making awkward conversations with guests at fried-chicken joints in the U.K. More than 10 years later, she’s got her own company, Dimz Inc., and has helped pioneer a new era of digital-first talk shows alongside her 3.3 million YouTube subscribers.

It’s not just Dimoldenberg’s existence as a social-media talk-show host that feels revolutionary — it’s her singular style, a mode of questioning that is both flirty and standoffish, vulnerable and snarky, but never cruel. And she’s launched this character into her other shows, “Amelia’s Cooking Show” and “Fake News,” as well as into the real world through her red carpet appearances. If Alex Cooper and Kinigra Deon are empire builders, then Dimoldenberg and Dimz Inc. are an experiment in how widely you can scale a satirical figure in the digital age. —KC

Texas’ sweeping abortion ban almost killed Zurawski. After she went into labor at 18 weeks and doctors refused to terminate her non-viable pregnancy, she got sepsis twice and was ultimately left with a permanently closed fallopian tube.

In 2023, she sued the state of Texas to clarify when physicians can perform abortions to save a woman’s life. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the ban, but Zurawski hasn’t stopped fighting. She has traveled the country, speaking at screenings of “Zurawski v Texas,” the documentary made with the Center for Reproductive Rights about her plight, and offering her harrowing experience as undeniable proof that the abortion ban endangers women’s health.

“The anti-choice movement would want us to be tired, they’d want us to rest,” Zurawski has said. “It’s not in my nature to give up. It can get worse, and it will, if we don’t continue to fight.” —MS

In Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” Kellyman displays grit and tenderness as a student who strikes up a friendship with a 94-year-old (June Squibb). Playing a melancholy New Yorker, she makes us instinctively believe her — all the more impressive considering she’s British and had never visited NYC before. In the U.K., viewers have been charmed by her work on TV, including “Raised by Wolves” and “Top Boy.” After appearing at the end of “28 Years Later,” she has a bigger, fiercer role in Nia DaCosta’s “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” out in January. —JM

After making a name for herself with “Shiva Baby” and “Bottoms,” Sennott made a jump that few emerging actors-writers-producers are able to do so quickly: creating and starring in her own HBO series. The half-hour comedy centers on a group of twentysomething friends navigating life and love in the City of Dreams and has been called Gen Z’s answer to “Girls.” —LS

“SNL” is firmly in its TikTok era, so who better to keep it flourishing than a comedian whose star has been rising on social media over the past few years? The thirty-year-old Canadian has amassed more than 1 million Instagram followers through her “aggressive fool” brand of comedy, often playing characters who very quickly embarrass themselves but defiantly push through to laughs aplenty. Although she’s been on “SNL” for only a few months, already Slowikowska is holding her own, co-leading sketches opposite hosts like Sabrina Carpenter. —Adam Chitwood