acting

Oct. 29 (UPI) — A federal judge has disqualified President Donald Trump‘s top prosecutor in Los Angeles, ruling Bill Essayli has been unlawfully serving as interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California since late July.

The order was issued Tuesday by Judge J. Michael Seabright of the Federal District Court in Hawaii, stating Essayli “is not lawfully serving as Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of California.”

The effect of the order, however, was unclear, as it states that though he may not continue in the role as interim U.S. attorney, he may continue to perform his duties as first assistant United States attorney.

“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing,” Essayli said in a statement.

“I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California.”

The ruling comes in response to motions filed by three defendants seeking to dismiss indictments brought against them and to disqualify Essayli as acting U.S. attorney.

Essayli, who was appointed by the Trump administration, was sworn in on April 2 to serve as the interim U.S. attorney for 120 days.

As his term was nearing its end on July 31, Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Essayli as a special attorney, effective upon his resignation as interim U.S. attorney.

In his ruling Tuesday, Seabright, a President George W. Bush appointee, said that Essayli assumed the role of acting U.S. attorney in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which limits the amount of time prosecutors may fill federal positions without Senate approval.

“Simply stated: Essayli unlawfully assumed the role of Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of California. He has been unlawfully serving in that capacity since his resignation from the interim role on July 29, 2025,” he said.

“He is disqualified from serving in that role.”

Despite his ruling on Essayli, Seabright denied the three defendants’ request to dismiss their indictments, stating “the prosecutions remain valid.”

The ruling is the latest going against the Trump administration’s attempts to employ people in high-ranking positions without securing congressional approval.

In August, a federal judge ruled Alina Habba, a former personal Trump lawyer, was illegally serving as acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey after her 12-day interim term expired.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that Sigal Chattah had been unlawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada.

Both decisions are being appealed.

Comedian Becky Robinson’s life has turned into the most insanely fun reality show. One minute she’s screaming into a closet mirror, feeling defeated back in her parents’ house, and a few viral moments later, she’s on The Members Only tour, zipping around country clubs in Oakleys with her tricked-out Streetrod Golf Cart, “sauvi B,” and a sun visor clamped on her blond bob like it’s couture. Her bestie Trish is one call away, her kids Macabee and Dashiell are wrecking the house, her husband Scott isn’t listening (shocker), but her fans-turned-friends, the “Gieurlz,” are. Welcome to the world of the Entitled Housewife. No fancy membership required here because none of it is real, but it’s all so real.

Every story, and character, has a beginning and before she was taking rides on custom carts, she was riding an emotional roller coaster during the pandemic. “So during the pandemic I was with my sister, and she was working at an ER,” says Robinson. “She was in the trenches trying to help people and coming home and you know, might die, and I was terrified because she was coming home from work every day and — who knows? I grew up around Portland, so I had packed up my wigs to go there in case I was going to have a proper ‘Menty-B’ [mental breakdown]. Then even she was like, why don’t you go to mom and dad’s and try to find some form of happiness. So many people were depressed during that time, but I didn’t realize how much I needed to perform.”

While she was stuck at a low point, her parents were somehow in peak vacation mode. “My dad was like, ‘Golf is all we have! You know, we’re golfing all day,’” Becky says, impersonating her father. “He was wearing a golf glove on both hands, kind of like COVID protection, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing my part, you know, I’m not wearing a mask, but I got a golf glove on both hands!’”

Becky Robinson takes the stage as the Entitled Housewife

(Megan Rego)

Her mom shared the same sentiment — not for double-fisting gloves — but she too needed to live. “My mom has kind of been through it health-wise, and so she was like, ‘I don’t want to be locked down. I want to go to happy hour with the gieurlz.’ I just sat there and watched them like, you guys are out of your f— minds. Then one day they left the house, and I just felt inspired. So I put a wig on.”

Robinson went into her parents’ closet and dressed herself in a polo, a skort and a visor. “I put on the Oakleys and the Air Pods and the second I looked in the mirror, I just started improvising. She was like, SCOTT! DASHIELL! MACABEE! [My character] had this element of, she could get frustrated very fast.”

That day, in her parents’ closet, Robinson turned lemons into hard lemonade, and with a visor high on her head like a regal crown, a new version of herself emerged — an entitled one. “I improvised for, like, five hours in character. It might have been a manic episode, I don’t know, but I just remember when the whole thing was assembled that day and I started filming, it was making me laugh and I was like, maybe it’ll make someone else laugh too.”

Initially, she hadn’t planned on posting videos of her in character on TikTok but considering how much she was making herself laugh, it was only a matter of time.

“When I made the first , I was like, ‘I can’t post this. It’s dark times and I’m going to look like such a fool for trying to be funny.’ But then I took an edible and showed my sister to see if it made her laugh because I figured she’s experiencing it every day, in the middle of it, and she told me to post it.”

The debut video of Entitled Housewife got millions of views on social media. As it would turn out, other people needed to laugh at the exact same time. “All these celebrities started messaging me and then Chris Pratt DM’d me and is like, ‘If you make a movie with these characters, I have to be Scott!’”

Robinson’s parents weren’t quite as enthusiastic when she showed them her content for the first time. “I think my dad walked out and my mom was like, ‘You know, Beck, this hits a little close to home.’ She was actually pissed at first because I used the real name of my dad’s country club, and it was so vulgar, so she was worried about him getting kicked out.”

Fast forward to now, and many of these types of golf clubs have booked her for shows and actually pay for her to be vulgar. “So they love it now!,” Robinson said. “People come up to my dad in the store like, ‘Are you Entitled’s dad?!’ He definitely loves the perks because he’s a huge golfer.”

“Some people really think I’m this 50-year-old golf lady with kids, and I think a lot of people think that I started when my character started,” Robinson said.

(Megan Rego)

With her family on board and fans worldwide cheering her on, she’s taking off the wig and going back to her stand-up, but with a touch of Entitlement. Shot at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, her debut comedy special, “Becky Robinson: Entitled,” comes out Friday exclusively on her website and shines a massive spotlight on the fact that Robinson has never needed to lean on props to be funny.

“We’re definitely excited to be releasing on our own platform with entire creative control. The team I work with is so bad ass and they’re really the reason it was all brought to life. I wanted something to give to the fans, and I wanted them to be able to watch it without ads. I want them to see how much they lift me up, so I’m excited to get to release this exactly the way we want it. You know, it’s a little longer than an hour, which streamers don’t like, but the Gieurlz will.”

Robinson has been doing stand-up for 13 years, and that experience shows the second she hits any stage (or bar top). In “Entitled,” you see her stand-up carries the same raw, fearless charge that made her Entitled Housewife sketches a phenomenon. Similar, yet clearly distinct, the two share a flair for the dramatic and an energy that feels almost superhuman. “People are always asking, is it drugs? IS IT?,” Robinson laughs. “In the last couple of years, I got this trainer who is like, ‘You gotta treat this like you’re a professional athlete, OK, because that’s what you’re doing up there!’ For a while, I never listened because we were having fun and it’s just stand-up! And for the first couple of years of touring I would have some drinks and stuff, but now, we’re playing at a level where there are acrobatics involved and cues and high kicks and all these things where injury is very possible. Still, though, when I go out there, I just can’t give them anything less than 200%. Then when I get home, I sleep for 24 hours and then, I’m a person again.”

Should there still be any confusion about Robinson versus Entitled Housewife, in addition to her special, she also released a 30-minute documentary that goes behind the scenes of “Becky Robinson: Entitled.” Also available on her website, Robinson couldn’t be more grateful for her Gieurlz who make this world of hers possible, even if some of them think she’s a bit “seasoned.”

“It took me a while to realize that people see videos and just buy tickets, and that they didn’t even know I was this person who’s done stand-up for 13 years,” says Robinson. “Some people really think I’m this 50-year-old golf lady with kids, and I think a lot of people think that I started when my character started. I feel my funniest when I’m doing characters, and I love that people come out dressed like Entitled, but now more and more people are saying they came for the character, and now they like my stand-up too. You love to hear that so that’s been really great!”

“I wanted something to give to the fans,” Robinson said about her new special. “I want them to see how much they lift me up, so I’m excited to get to release this exactly the way we want it.”

(Tara Johnson)

In no way does that signal the end of the fun with Entitled. This fall, Robinson is taking her skort-wearing alter ego global with her very own golf tournament. From Nov. 6 to Nov. 9, “She Gone Golfing: The Entitled Housewife Tulum Classic” hits the PGA Riviera Maya, Mexico’s No.1-ranked course, with PXG backing the madness. It’s a full-blown Gieurlz escape with golf by day, and karaoke-fueled chaos by night in Mexico’s Riviera Maya.

“This trip is probably gonna take years off my life, but we’re gonna turn it up in Mexico, baby! Let’s get international! We’re gonna get that tequila flowing!” Though the idea of being a golfer may have started out as a joke for Robinson, she’s now become fully addicted to the sport.

“It’s such a fun game and it can relax you when you’re just out there waxing those balls! I really want to introduce more people to it so this will be a fun way to do that. The only reason I’m able to do all of these things is because of the fans coming to see the show, buying the merch, and showing up in the visors. They really are the best!”

A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday to decide whether maneuvers used by the Trump administration to install Bill Essayli as acting United States attorney in Los Angeles are improper — and, if so, what should be done about it.

During a Tuesday hearing in downtown L.A., Senior Judge J. Michael Seabright — who flew in from Hawaii for the proceeding — wondered how to proceed after defense attorneys sought to dismiss indictments against three clients and to disqualify Essayli “from participating in criminal prosecutions in this district.”

Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.

His term was set to expire in late July unless he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges. But the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months without any confirmation process.

Seabright was selected from the District of Hawaii after L.A.’s federal judges recused themselves from the proceedings. He questioned the consequences of dismissing any charges over Essayli’s title.

“If I did this for your client, I’ll have to do it for every single defendant who was indicted when Mr. Essayli was acting under the rubric of acting U.S. attorney, correct?” Seabright said to a deputy federal public defender.

“I don’t think you will,” replied James A. Flynn. “This is a time-specific, case-specific analysis and the court doesn’t need to go so far as to decide that a dismissal would be appropriate in all cases.”

“Why not? You’re asking for a really draconian remedy here,” Seabright said, before questioning how many indictments had been made since Essayli was designated acting U.S. attorney at the end of July.

“203, your honor,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins responded.

In a court filing ahead of the hearing Tuesday, lawyers bringing the challenge against Essayli called the government’s defense of his status a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials.”

During the nearly two-hour hearing, Flynn cited similar legal challenges that have played out elsewhere. A federal judge ruled in August that Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.”

The judges who ruled on the Nevada and New Jersey cases did not dismiss the charges against defendants, instead ordering that those cases not be supervised by Habba or Chattah.

Flynn argued that the remedies in other states “have not been effective to deter the conduct.”

“This court has the benefit of additional weeks and has seen the government’s response to that determination that their appointments were illegal and I submit the government hasn’t gotten the message,” Flynn said.

Flynn said another option could be a dismissal without prejudice, which means the government could bring the case against their clients again. He called it a “weaker medicine” than dismissal with prejudice, “but would be a stronger one than offered in New Jersey and Nevada.”

The hearing grew testy at times, with Seabright demanding that Assistant U.S. Atty. Robbins tell him when Essayli’s term will end. Robbins told the judge the government believes it will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.

Robbins noted that Essayli has also been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, essentially allowing him to remain in charge of the office if he loses the “acting” title.

Bondi in July also appointed him as a “special attorney.” Robbins told the judge that “there’s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli’s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.”

“The defense challenge here, the stated interest that they have, is Bill Essayli cannot be acting,” Robbins said. “But they don’t have a compelling or strong response to Bill Essayli is legitimately in the office and he can be the first assistant … he can supervise other people in the office.”

Seabright asked both sides to brief him by Thursday on “whatever hats you believe [Essayli’s] wearing now” and “whether I were to say he wasn’t legitimately made acting U.S. attorney … what hats does he continue to wear.”

“If I understand the government’s proposed remedy correctly … it would essentially be no remedy at all, because they would be re-creating Mr. Essayli as the acting United States attorney, he’d just be wearing a first assistant hat,” Flynn said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”

“The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.

Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language verbatim at news conferences. His tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of prosecutors quitting.

The contradictions of mixed martial arts brawler Mark Kerr can’t be contained by a ring, an octagon or a film. A vulnerable man with a brutal career, he went undefeated on the mat while struggling in his private relationships and public addiction to painkillers, which he bravely revealed in John Hyams’ 2002 HBO documentary “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.” In that footage, shot between 1997 and 2000, you’re continually startled by how Kerr could clobber his opponents until some lost teeth — putting himself in a mental state he once likened to being a shark in a feeding frenzy — and then after the bell, flash a smile so wide and happy, it split his own head in half.

That’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s whole thing, too: Kill ’em with charm. So it’s as all-natural as his daily diet of organic chicken breast that the wrestler-turned-blockbuster-star would want to play Kerr in his own pursuit of excellence. He’s overdue for a sincere indie movie. Fair enough. Yet bizarrely, Johnson and writer-director Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems,” “Good Time”), working solo without his brother Josh, have decided to simply shoot Hyams’ documentary again.

These two high-intensity talents, each with something to prove, seem to have egged each other on to be exhaustingly photorealistic. Johnson, squeezed into a wig so tight we get a vicarious headache, has pumped up his deltoids to nearly reach his prosthetic cauliflower ears. And Safdie is so devoted to duplicating the earthy brown decor of Kerr’s late-’90s nouveau riche Phoenix home that you’d think he was restoring Notre Dame. In setting out to establish his own style, Safdie just mimics another.

Their version of “The Smashing Machine” tells the same story that Hyams did, across the same years with the same handheld aesthetics and rattle-snap jazz score (by composer Nala Sinephro). It’s stiff karaoke that earns a confounded polite clap. That can’t possibly have been the intention, yet even the songs used as needle-drops are conspicuously borrowed: covers of the country crooner Billy Swan singing Elvis, and Elvis singing Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, Johnson’s Kerr huffs up a set of stairs in a training montage that already belongs to “Rocky.”

Once again, Kerr gets shaken by his first defeat to Igor Vovchanchyn (played by Oleksandr Usyk, the current heavyweight boxing champion) in Japan’s Yokohama Arena, and responds by bottoming out, getting sober and committing to win his next tournament. All the while he bickers with his on-again, off-again alcoholic girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt), who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong in the ring. A teeth-grindingly mismatched couple, they can’t get through a conversation without arguing. Even trying her best to empathize, she’s overbearing. When Dawn alerts his friend and colleague Mark “The Hammer” Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader in his acting debut) that her battering ram of a boyfriend was drinking before a bout, Coleman snaps at her for letting him act so stupid.

Safdie frames Dawn as a force of domestic destruction (although Kerr tears down doors like wet cardboard). In her introduction, she — horrors! — makes his smoothie with the wrong milk and, a beat later, insists on cuddling the cat on their leather sofa. A shattered Japanese kintsugi bowl is a newly added visual metaphor of their relationship, as is Dawn’s attempt to fix it with Krazy glue, a wink-wink at her emotional volatility. Still, we never understand what holds them together. Blunt is stuck in a reprise of her Oscar-nominated supporting role in “Oppenheimer” as the drunk whose cruelty pardons the male lead’s flaws. Yeah, Mark fizzled in Yokohama, but boy was she awful.

What’s the point? Having stripped away most of the documentary’s narration and sit-down interviews with Kerr’s family and friends, the film barely explores anyone’s psychology — and Blunt’s railroaded Dawn loses her chance to speak for herself. “I don’t think you know a damn thing about me,” she snipes mid-screaming match. She’s right. We don’t know much about her either, nor any of the noisy things onscreen, from the bloodrush of combat to the pull of their co-dependent affair.

We’re supposed to find depth in Johnson’s weary, pinched grin as he appreciates the sunset on a flight to Japan or watches fans at demolition derby cheer just as loudly for mindless chunks of metal getting crushed. He’s quieter than the real Kerr, who could come across like a guileless chatterbox, and when he does talk, it’s often about the control he must exert on his body and his backyard — the diet, the exercise, the sobriety, the gardening — delivered with the conviction of someone giving motivational advice to the manosphere.

If you squint, there’s an idea here that his personal needs set an unyielding tempo in their home, a notion Johnson must resonate with as someone who sets his morning alarm for 3:30 a.m. But we become better acquainted with how light ripples across Johnson’s shirtless back in a tracking shot than with whatever’s going on in his character’s head. More often than not, we’re just watching him walk around in a skin suit of Kerr, trying and failing not to see the movie star underneath. I wonder if Johnson might have channeled the open-faced Kerr better without the fake eyebrows, if he’d trusted his own inner glow instead of immediately going for the dramatic kill.

Look at how dutifully Safdie and Johnson have worked to re-create this world, the movie seems to be saying. Appreciate the intentionally cruddy camerawork by Maceo Bishop that duplicates Hyams’ low-budget limitations. Enjoy how costume designer Heidi Bivens has put Johnson in another silver-buckled black leather belt similar to the one in his infamous, much-memed Y2K-era photo, the one with the turtleneck, chain jewelry and fanny pack. You know without doing the math that, at this time, 39-year-old Safdie was in his early teens, an age that’s a sweet spot for nostalgia. This is his chance to go back to the future. No wonder he doesn’t want to change a thing.

But “The Smashing Machine” should be about change. For the MMA, this was an era of evolution as it transitioned from a contest of raw strength to one of endurance and skill. Former collegiate wrestlers like Kerr and Coleman could no longer win with their signature ground-and-pound techniques. Organizers forbade several of their key moves as their brusque victories weren’t telegenic. Kerr’s early contests often ended in less than two minutes, an oops-I-missed-it-grabbing-a-beer brevity that would have made pay-per-view buyers grumble. Headbutts were disallowed in part to draw the action out, and also because John McCain didn’t want what he called “human cockfighting” on TV.

These underlying tensions were just coming into focus. The original documentary felt blurry because Hyams didn’t yet know how the off-camera legalities would play out. He would have never guessed that the once-maligned Ultimate Fighting Championship league, purchased in 2001 for $2 million, would become a powerhouse with the clout to ink a $7.7-billion television deal just this summer. He also didn’t know that the cash payments Kerr earned in Japan would be revealed to have the yakuza’s fingerprints on them, or that Kerr’s opioid addiction was start of a burgeoning national health crisis that would soon have America in a chokehold.

Surely, Safdie with his two decades of perspective and his own knack for movies about hard-charging, charismatic screwups like Adam Sandler’s gambling addict Howard Ratner in “Uncut Gems” has something to add? Nope, just tell the same tale twice.

Hyams stopped filming in May 2000, at a point when it appeared that Kerr had chosen love over war. Safdie is aware that Kerr would live on to make more choices and that love doesn’t win, either. But despite the benefit of hindsight, Safdie doesn’t seem to have considered that the old narrative no longer fits. He just updates the title cards on the end: a sentence about Kerr and Dana’s future, a note that today’s MMA stars are better paid, a point undermined by a shot of the actual Kerr climbing into an exorbitantly glossy new truck. Turns out Kerr has been a car salesman for the last 15 years, but you wouldn’t know that leaving “The Smashing Machine.” You wouldn’t know why this movie existed at all.

THE SMASHING MACHINE

(15) 123 min

★★★☆☆

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WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.

Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.

In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.

Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.

He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.

A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.

Acting muscles

And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.

But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.

American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.

But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.

Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.

Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.

The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.

As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.

While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.

Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.

But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?

They just might.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

(15) 112mins

★★★★★

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KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.

The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.

The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.

Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.

The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.

Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.

It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.

LINDA MARRIC

HIM

(18) 96mins

★☆☆☆☆

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HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.

In short, this is a mess.

The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.

When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.

But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.

Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.

Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.

Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.

Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.

LINDA MARRIC

ADOLESCENCE star Owen Cooper has earned a major honor as the youngest male winner ever at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards.

The actor nabbed the award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

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This was also the first nomination for the 15-year-old.

Owen tearfully hugged his parents and colleagues before approaching the stage where actress Sydney Sweeney presented him with the gold trophy.

He then delivered a heartfelt speech, acknowledging all those who had worked on the project.

His words touched host Nate Bargatze, who appeared to stop the countdown he’d set during his opening monologue, penalizing those who went over the allotted 45-second acceptance speeches.

The comedian jokingly threatened to take away money from his $100,000 donation to the Boys and Girls Club for every second an Emmy winner extended their speech.

Owen, however, didn’t have those same rules, despite it being an ongoing bit throughout the show.

Nate addressed the change in rules afterward, revealing that he hadn’t penalized the teenager, although his speech had exceeded the time limit.

Owen was up against some heavy hitters in the category, including his co-star Ashley Walters, Presumed Innocent’s Bill Camp and Peter Sarsgaard, Javier Bardem in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and Rob Delaney for Dying for Sex.

Before Owen, the youngest actor to win the award was then-23-year-old Michael A. Goorjian, for his portrayal in 1994’s David’s Mother.

Adolescence premiered on Netflix in March 2025 and also stars Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty, and Faye Marsay.

The psychological drama had gained recognition not only for its intense storyline but also for its impressive filming.

All four episodes of the series were shot in one continuous take, with no cuts.

Owen played Jaime, a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering his classmate in Northern England.

Ahead of the star-studded awards ceremony, the young star spoke with People about making his acting debut on the project.

2025 EMMYS NOMINEE’S GIFT BAG

The Emmy Awards Giving Suite will provide an exclusive backstage experience for presenters, nominees, and winners with a generous swag bag worth a fortune. The gifting suite will be open on Emmys rehearsal days as well as during the live telecast on Sept. 14. Among some of the items the stars will get to take home include:

Miage Skincare set – $200 

Alma hair restoration treatment – $3,900 

Hasbro game pack – $150

Krovblit Fine Art – ranges from $100 to $10,000

Peta x Miomojo vegan leather bag – $400 

Beboe marijuana basket – $300

Brightharbor disaster relief for LA fire victims still struggling – Up to $1m in relief 

DESUAR day spa experience – $400

Helight Sleep device – $140  

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky – $230

LifeRegen skincare bundle – $200

Senorita THC-infused drinks – $100

SKANDINAVISK candles – $150 

Training Loft personalized training, coaching, nutrition & wellness services for one month – $1,000

“It’s my first role — it’ll be the best role of my life,” Owen gushed to the outlet.

“It was the best summer of my life to film, and I just can’t wait to be there on the night of the Emmys. I can’t wait.”

The U.S. Sun exclusively revealed in March that the streamer is exploring options to extend the series after its rave reviews.

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A whole lot has happened in the world in the years since Ariana Grande last toured in 2019. But the “Wicked” star is finally returning to the road next year in support of her latest album, 2024’s “Eternal Sushine.”

Grande’s tour kicks off in June 2026, and comes to Los Angeles later that month for four nights split between the Crypto.com Arena and Kia Forum. Tickets for the U.S. dates go on sale Sept. 10.

While Grande’s last tour wrapped up in December of 2019, after her “Sweetener” and “Thank U, Next” albums, the singer has been a fixture in theaters recently. In November, she’ll star in “Wicked: For Good,” the sequel to her smash hit with Cynthia Erivo, and she is currently shooting the “Meet the Parents” franchise sequel “Focker In-Law.”

The tour announcement will be relief to Ari fans who feared she might not return to live stages for some time (she headlined Coachella in 2019 to mixed reviews). Last year, she told Variety that “I feel so grateful to the acting, and I think my fans know that music and being on stage will always be a part of my life, but I don’t see it coming anytime soon. I think the next few years, hopefully we’ll be exploring different forms of art, and I think acting is feeling like home right now. … I am appreciative for [my fans’] understanding.”

Netflix fans have been searching through the streaming service’s catalogue to find the best hidden gems, and one ‘absolutely incredible’ particular show is getting a lot of love

Netflix boasts an enormous library of films and series covering a wide variety of genres, including content in multiple languages. There’s something suit every TV enthusiast, whether you’re into true crime, action-packed thrillers or laugh-out-loud comedies.

Some blockbuster programmes and movies dominate many Netflix subscribers’ viewing lists and receive widespread promotion across social media platforms, such as Wednesday, Stranger Things and Bridgerton. However, the streaming giant’s vast collection also contains a number of lesser-known gems that audiences have discovered to be surprisingly captivating viewing. With such an extensive selection of series and films available, there are inevitably some brilliant hidden treasures waiting to be found.

A Reddit user recently asked fellow forum members to share the “most underrated” Netflix show they have found.

The user went on to explain that they occasionally stumble upon programmes they’ve never heard of before, only to find themselves enjoying them far more than anticipated.

The streaming fan continued: “I am curious if anyone else has had this experience. What is the most underrated show you have discovered on Netflix that more people should watch?”

The post attracted more than 400 responses, with the top suggestion being the 2019 drama series Unbelievable, starring Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever and Toni Colette.

Netflix’s description of the show reads: “After a young woman is accused of lying about a rape, two female detectives investigate a spate of eerily similar attacks. Inspired by true events.”

It describes the programme as “bittersweet” and “emotional.” The eight-part series boasts an outstanding 98 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes alongside an 8.3 out of 10 score on IMDb.

Several Reddit users have expressed their views on Unbelievable. One wrote: “Absolutely incredible show with incredible acting. I’ve watched it multiple times, even though it’s a tough watch.”

Another remarked: “Depressing and amazing at the same time.” A third added: “Love this show. Great characters.”

Responding to the suggestion about Unbelievable, another Reddit user declared: “I was coming to suggest Unbelievable too!”

A second reply states: “True that, [I] started watching this a few days ago and it’s so underrated.”

The programme was jointly created by Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon.

It draws from the 2015 news article ‘An Unbelievable Story of Rape’ written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong concerning the Washington and Colorado serial rape incidents between 2008 and 2011.

Unbelievable received a nomination in the International section of the BAFTA TV Awards in 2020 along with numerous other honours, including the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes USA and Primetime Emmy Awards.

Toni Collette secured victory at the Critics Choice Awards in 2020 for her role in Unbelievable, claiming the Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television award.

Aug. 7 (UPI) — Myanmar’s junta-appointed acting President U Myint Swe died Thursday morning, weeks after he was declared unable to perform his mostly ceremonial duties due to Parkinson‘s disease. He was 74.

Myint Swe died at 8:28 a.m. local time at the No. 2 Defense Services General Hospital, the National Defense Security Council said in a statement.

Myint Swe, a former general, was vice president of Myanmar during the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup. He was appointed acting president after the country’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested.

According to the National Defense and Security Council, Myint Swe began experiencing “sluggishness in movement and the ability to consume food and nutrients” in early 2023, and was soon diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls is a progressive nervous system disorder that afects movement and has no cure.

In April of last year, he received medical treatment at Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Medical Center. Then from late May to mid-June of this year, he received treatment again, this time at the No. 2 Defense Services General Hospital in Myanmar.

According to officials, Myint Swe experience wight loss, loss of appetite, fever and a decline in cognitive function last month, and was placed on medical leave July 18 and then hospitalized on July 24.

He was listed as in critical condition after being hospitalized in the Special Intensive Care Unit of the No. 2 Defense Services General Hospital, where he died Thursday morning.

A period of mourning has been declared from Thursday to Monday, during which the national flag will be flown at half-mast.

The coup of 2021 has upended the country, which has been embroiled in civil war since. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, more than 7,000 civilians have been killed by junta forces amid the civil war and 22,000 remain arbitrarily detained.

The United Nations estimates 22 million are in need of assistance and more than 3.5 million have been displaced by the fighting.

Frankie Muniz may be the only actor who has been nominated for an Emmy award and driven in a NASCAR event at Daytona. But if Muniz had been old enough to get a driver’s license before he moved to Hollywood, there may never have been a “Malcolm in the Middle.”

“When I’m in that race car and I put my visor down and I drive out of that pit lane, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do and that’s what I’m doing.”

And acting?

“I don’t feel like I’m a good actor,” he said. “I know I can act. But when I look at good acting, I go ‘dang, I could never do that’.”

That’s not true, of course. Muniz, who started acting when he was 12, has been credited in 26 films and 37 TV shows, including the title role in “Malcolm in the Middle,” which earned him two Golden Globe nominations and one Emmy nod during its seven-year run on Fox.

But acting was a profession. Racing is a passion.

“Excitement and all the emotions. That’s what I love about racing,” he said. “The highs are so high and the lows are unbelievably low. It’s awesome.”

Muniz placed 28th in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday. He is 23rd among the 64 drivers listed in the series points standings, with his one top-10 finish coming in the season opener at Daytona.

Muniz, 39, isn’t the first actor to try racing. Paul Newman was a four-time SCCA national champion who finished second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979 while Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Can’t Buy Me Love”) has driven sports cars at Le Mans and in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, in addition to other series.

Frankie Muniz qualifies at Daytona International Speedway in February.

(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)

But driving isn’t a side hustle for Muniz, who last October signed with North Carolina-based Reaume Brothers Racing to be the full-time driver of the team’s No. 33 Ford in the truck series. Muniz also raced twice last year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

“When I originally started racing, I was kind of at the height of my [acting] career. I had tons of offers to do movies and shows and all that,” said Muniz, who made his stock-car debut in the fall of 2021 in Bakersfield, then accepted an offer to drive full time in the ARCA Menards Series in 2023. “Very easily could have stayed in that business. But I wanted to give racing a try. And to compete at the top level, you have to put in the time and effort that professional race car drivers are doing, right? You can’t do it halfway.”

Muniz was into racing before he even thought about acting. Growing up in North Carolina, he remembers waking early on the weekend to watch IndyCar and NASCAR races on TV. No one else in his family shared his interest in motorsports, so when his parents divorced shortly after Muniz was discovered acting in a talent show at age 8, his mother moved to Burbank, where he made his film debut alongside Louis Gossett Jr. in 1997’s “To Dance With Olivia.”

Two years later he was cast as the gifted middle child of a dysfunctional working-class family in the successful sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle.” Motorsports continued to tug at him so after running in a few celebrity events, Muniz twice put his acting career on hold to race, first in 2007 — shortly after “Malcolm” ended after seven seasons and 151 episodes — when he started a three-season run in the open-wheel Atlantic Championship series.

Still, Muniz, who lives with his wife Paige and 4-year-old son Mauz in Scottsdale, Ariz., is dogged by criticism he is little more than a weekend warrior who is using his substantial Hollywood reputation and earnings to live out his racing fantasies.

“I don’t spend any of my money going racing,” he said. “I made a promise to my wife that I would not do that. So I can kill that rumor right there.”

But those whispers persist partly because Muniz hasn’t completely cut ties with acting. Because the truck series doesn’t run every weekend, racing 25 times between Valentine’s Day and Halloween, Muniz had time to tape a “Malcolm in the Middle” reunion miniseries that is scheduled to air on Disney+ in December.

He has also appeared in two other TV projects and two films since turning to racing full time. But his focus, he insists, is on driving.

“If I wanted to go racing for fun,” he said, “I would not be racing in the truck series. I’d be racing at my local track or I’d be racing some SCCA club events. I want to be one of the top drivers there are. I want to make it as high up in NASCAR as I can. And I’m doing everything I can to do that.”

Fame outside of racing can be a double-edged sword in the high-cost world of NASCAR. It can open doors to a ride and sponsorships others can’t get, but it can also cause jealousy in the garage, with drivers crediting that fame and not talent for a rival’s success. And Muniz isn’t the only rookie driver who has had to deal with that.

Toni Breidinger, who finished 27th in Friday’s race and is one place and eight points ahead of Muniz in the season standings with nine races left, is a model who has posed for Victoria’s Secret and been featured in the pages of Glamour, GQ and Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition. She’s also a good driver who has been going fast on a racetrack far longer than she’s been walking slowly down a catwalk.

Toni Breidinger prepares for NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series practice at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday.

(Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

“I was definitely a racer before anything. That was definitely my passion,” said Breidinger, who started driving go-karts in Northern California when she was 9. “I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do modeling to help support that passion. But at the end of the day, I definitely consider myself a racer. That’s what I grew up doing and that’s the career I’ve always wanted do to.”

Still, she sees the two pursuits as being complementary. When Breidinger appears on a red carpet, as she did before this month’s ESPY Awards in Los Angeles, it helps her modeling career while at the same time giving the sponsors of her racing team — which includes 818 Tequila, Dave & Buster’s and the fashion brand Coach — added value.

“It’s all part of the business. It all goes back into my racing,” said Breidinger, 26, who is of German and Lebanese descent. “The side hustles, I like to call them. I don’t think that takes away from me being a race car driver.”

Breidinger, who won the USAC western asphalt midget series title as a teenager, raced in the ARCA Menards Series for five years before stepping up to truck series in 2021, making NASCAR history in 2023 when she finished 15th in her first race, the best-ever debut by a female driver. That helped her land a full-time ride this season with Tricon Garage, Toyota’s flagship team in the truck series.

Like Muniz, Breidinger sees the truck series, the third tier of NASCAR’s national racing series, as a steppingstone to a seat in a Cup car.

“I want to climb the national ladder. That’s what I’m here to do,” she said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have long-term plans and long-term goals. I’m a very competitive person, especially with myself.”

Kyle Larson, who climbed to the top of that ladder, running his first NASCAR national series race in a truck in 2012, then winning the 2021 Cup championship nine years later, said the path he took — and the one Muniz and Breidinger are following — is a well-worn one.

“Anybody racing in any of the three series has talent and ability enough to be there,” he said.

Funding, Larson said, and not talent and ability, often determines how fast a driver can make that climb and that might be a problem for Muniz since Josh Reaume, the owner of the small three-truck team Muniz drives for, has complained about the price of racing. It can cost more than $3.5 million a year to field one competitive truck in the 25-race series — and that cost is rising, threatening to price many out of the sport.

But having drivers like Muniz and Breidinger in NASCAR will help everyone in the series, Larson said, because it will bring in fans and sponsors that might not have been attracted to the sport otherwise.

“I just hope that he can get into a situation someday where you can really see his talent from being in a car or a truck that is better equipped to go run towards the front,” Larson said of Muniz. “You want to see him succeed because if he does succeed, it’s only going to do good things for our sport.”

And if it works out the way Muniz hopes, perhaps he’ll someday be the answer to another trivia question: Name the NASCAR champion who once worked in Hollywood.

For filmmaker Scott Mann, three dozen F-bombs had the makings of a million-dollar headache.

When Mann wrapped “Fall,” a 2022 thriller about two women stranded atop a 2,000-foot radio tower, he figured the hard part was over. Shot in the Mojave Desert on a $3-million budget, the film didn’t have money to burn and seemed on course. But Lionsgate wanted a PG-13 rating and, with 35 expletives, “Fall” was headed for an R. Reshoots would cost more than $1 million — far beyond what the production could afford.

In the past, a director might have taken out a second mortgage or thrown themselves at the mercy of the ratings board. Mann instead turned to AI.

A few years earlier, he had been dismayed by how a German dub of his 2015 thriller “Heist” flattened the performances, including a key scene with Robert De Niro, to match stiff, mistranslated dialogue. That frustration led Mann to co-found Flawless, an AI startup aimed at preserving the integrity of an actor’s performance across languages. As a proof of concept, he used the company’s tech to subtly reshape De Niro’s mouth movements and restore the emotional nuance of the original scene.

On “Fall,” Mann applied that same technology to clean up the profanity without reshoots, digitally modifying the actors’ mouths to match PG-13-friendly lines like “freaking” — at a fraction of the cost.

A series on how the AI revolution is reshaping the creative foundations of Hollywood — from storytelling and performance to production, labor and power.

As AI stirs both hype and anxiety in Hollywood, Mann understands why even such subtle digital tweaks can feel like a violation. That tension came to a head during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, in which AI became the defining flash point in the fight over acting’s future.

“Ours is a rights-based industry,” says Mann, 45, who helped develop a digital rights management platform at Flawless to ensure performers approve any changes to their work. “It’s built on protecting human creativity, the contributions of actors, directors, editors, and if those rights aren’t protected, that value gets lost.”

Mann at his office in Santa Monica.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

Still, Mann doesn’t see AI as a threat so much as a misunderstood tool — one that, used carefully, can support the artists it’s accused of replacing. Flawless’ DeepEditor, for example, lets directors transfer facial expressions from one take to another, even when the camera angle or lighting changes, helping actors preserve their strongest moments without breaking continuity.

“Plenty of actors I’ve worked with have had that moment where they see what’s possible and realize, ‘Oh my God, this is so much better,’” Mann says. “It frees them up, takes off the pressure and helps them do a better job. Shutting AI out is naive and a way to end up on the wrong side of history. Done right, this will make the industry grow and thrive.”

AI isn’t hovering at the edges of acting anymore — it’s already on soundstages and in editing bays. Studios have used digital tools to de-age Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” resurrect Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin in “Rogue One” and clone Val Kilmer’s voice in “Top Gun: Maverick” after throat cancer left him unable to speak. The technology has reshaped faces, smoothed dialogue and fast-tracked everything from dubbing to reshoots. And its reach is growing: Studios can now revive long-dead stars, conjure stunt doubles who never get hurt and rewrite performances long after wrap.

But should they?

Actors outside Paramount Studios during a SAG-AFTRA solidarity rally in September 2023.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

As the tools grow more sophisticated, the threat to actors goes beyond creative disruption. In an industry where steady work is already elusive and the middle class of working actors is vanishing, AI raises the prospect of fewer jobs, lower pay and, in a dystopian twist, a future in which your disembodied face and voice might get work without you.

Background actors were among the first to sound the alarm during the 2023 strike, protesting studio proposals to scan them once and reuse their likenesses indefinitely. That scenario is already beginning to unfold: In China, a state-backed initiative will use AI to reimagine 100 kung fu classics, including films starring Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, through animation and other digital enhancements. Lee’s estate said it was unaware of the project, raising questions about how these actors’ likenesses might be used, decades after filming.

If the soul of acting is a human presence, what remains when even that can be simulated?

“You want to feel breath — you want to feel life,” said actor and director Ethan Hawke during a panel at 2023’s Telluride Film Festival, where strike-era unease over AI was palpable. “When we see a great painting, we feel a human being’s blood, sweat and tears. That’s what we’re all looking for, that connection with the present moment. And AI can’t do that.”

Who’s in control?

Justine Bateman may seem like an unlikely crusader in Hollywood’s fight against AI. Launched to fame as Mallory Keaton on the 1980s sitcom “Family Ties,” she later became a filmmaker and earned a computer science degree from UCLA. Now, as founder of the advocacy group CREDO23, Bateman has become one of the industry’s fiercest voices urging filmmakers to reject AI-generated content and defend the integrity of human-made work. Loosely modeled on Dogme 95, CREDO23 offers a certification of films made without AI, using minimal VFX and union crews. It’s a pledge backed by a council including “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, “The Handmaid’s Tale” director Reed Morano and actor Juliette Lewis.

The 2023 SAG-AFTRA contract set new guardrails: Studios must get actors’ consent to create or use digital replicas of their likenesses, and those replicas can’t generate new performances without a separate deal. Actors must also be compensated and credited when their digital likeness is used.

But to Bateman, a former SAG-AFTRA board member and negotiating committee rep, those protections are little more than sandbags against an inevitable AI flood: hard-won but already straining to keep the technology at bay.

“The allowances in the contract are pretty astounding,” Bateman says by phone, her voice tight with exasperation. “If you can picture the Teamsters allowing self-driving trucks in their contract — that’s on par with what SAG did. If you’re not making sure human roles are played by human actors, I’m not sure what the union is for.”

Justine Bateman, photographed by The Times in 2022.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

To Bateman, the idea that AI expands access to filmmaking — a central tenet of its utopian sales pitch — is a dangerous myth, one that obscures deeper questions about authorship and the value of creative labor.

“Anyone can make a film — my last two, I shot on an iPhone,” Bateman says. “The idea that AI is ‘democratizing film’ doesn’t even make sense. What it really does is remove the barrier of skill. It lets people pretend they’re filmmakers when they’re not, by prompting software that wouldn’t even function without having stolen a hundred years of film and TV production made by real filmmakers.”

Bateman’s opposition to AI is rooted in a deep distrust of Silicon Valley’s expanding influence over the creative process and a belief that filmmaking should be driven by artists, not algorithms. “The tech bro business completely jumped the shark with generative AI,” she says. “Is it solving plastics in the ocean? Homelessness? L.A. traffic? Not that I’m aware of.”

She scoffs at the supposed efficiencies AI brings to the filmmaking process: “It’s like saying, whatever somebody enjoys — sex or an ice cream sundae — ‘Hey, now you can do it in a quarter of the time.’ OK, but then what do you think life is for?“

To Bateman, an actor’s voice, face, movements or even their choice of costume is not raw material to be reshaped but an expression of authorship. AI, in her view, erases those choices and the intent behind them. “I’m deeply against changing what the actor did,” she says. “It’s not right to have the actor doing things or saying things they didn’t do — or to alter their hair, makeup or clothes in postproduction using AI. The actor knows what they did.”

While Bateman has been public and unwavering in her stance, many actors remain unsure whether to raise their voices. In the wake of the strikes, much of the conversation around AI has moved behind closed doors, leaving those who do speak out feeling at times exposed and alone.

Scarlett Johansson, who lent her smoky, hypnotic voice to the fictional AI in Spike Jonze’s Oscar-winning 2013 film “Her,” now finds herself in a uniquely uncomfortable position: She’s both a symbol of our collective fascination with artificial performance and a real-world example of what’s at stake when that line is crossed. Last year, she accused OpenAI of using a chatbot voice that sounded “eerily similar” to hers, months after she declined to license it. OpenAI denied the claim and pulled the voice, but the incident reignited concern over consent and control.

Johansson has long spoken out against the unauthorized use of her image, including her appearance in deepfake pornography, and has pushed for stronger safeguards against digital impersonation. To date, though, she is one of the few major stars to publicly push back against the creeping mimicry enabled by AI — and she’s frustrated that more haven’t joined her. “There has to be some agreed-upon set of boundaries in order for [AI] to not be detrimental,” she told Vanity Fair in May. “I wish more people in the public eye would support and speak out about that. I don’t know why that’s not the case.”

Lights, camera, replication

Ed Ulbrich, 60, a pioneering visual effects producer and co-founder of Digital Domain, has spent his career helping actors do the impossible, one pixel at a time.

In 2008’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” he led the team of more than 150 artists in building a fully digital version of Brad Pitt’s face so the actor could convincingly age in reverse — a two-year effort that earned Ulbrich and three colleagues an Oscar for visual effects and set a new benchmark for digital performance. (Nearly two decades later, the achievement is still impressive, although some scenes, especially those with Pitt’s aged face composited on a child’s body, now show their digital seams.) For 2010’s “Tron: Legacy,” Ulbrich helped digitally transform Jeff Bridges into his 1982 self using motion capture and CGI.

Working on last year’s “Here” — Robert Zemeckis’ technically daring drama starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as a couple whose lives play out across decades in a single New Jersey living room — showed Ulbrich just how far things have come. For someone who jokes he has “real estate in the uncanny valley,” it wasn’t just the AI-enabled realism that floored him. It was the immediacy. On set, AI wasn’t enhancing footage after the fact; it was visually reshaping the performance in real time.

Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the movie “Here.”

(Sony Pictures Ent.)

“You look up and see 67-year-old Tom Hanks. You look down at the monitor — he’s 20, and it looks better than the best CGI,” Ulbrich says. “In my world, the human face is the holy grail. That is the most complicated thing you can do. And now it’s getting done in near real time before your eyes. The actor can come back and look at the monitor and get new ideas, because they’re seeing a different version of themselves: younger, older, as an alien or whatever.”

This kind of seamless AI-driven alteration marks a new frontier in postproduction. Modern AI systems can now “beautify” actors’ faces, like some would with a Instagram or Zoom filter: smooth out wrinkles, alter skin tone, sharpen jawlines, subtly nudge eye position to better match a desired gaze. What once required painstaking VFX can now be handled by fast, flexible AI tools, often with results invisible to audiences.

Once limited to only big-budget sci-fi and fantasy productions, this digital touch-up capability is expanding into rom-coms, prestige dramas, high-end TV and even some indie films. Dialogue can be rewritten and re-lipped in post. Facial expressions can be smoothed or swapped without reshoots. More and more, viewers may have no way of knowing what’s real and what’s been subtly adjusted.

“Here” was largely rejected by both audiences and critics, with some deeming its digitally de-aged performances more unsettling than moving. But Ulbrich says digitally enhanced performance is already well underway.

Talent agency CAA has built a vault of client scans, a kind of biometric asset library for future productions. Some stars now negotiate contracts that reduce their time on set, skipping hours in the makeup chair or performance-capture gear, knowing AI can fill in the gaps.

“Robert Downey, Brad Pitt, Will Smith — they’ve all been scanned many times,” says Ulbrich, who recently joined the AI-driven media company Moonvalley, which pitches itself as a more ethical, artist-centered player in the space. “If you’ve done a studio tentpole, you’ve been scanned.

“There is a lot of fear around AI and it’s founded,” he adds. “Unless you do something about it, you can just get run over. But there are people out there that are harnessing this. At this point, fighting AI is like fighting against electricity.”

While many in Hollywood wrestle with what AI means for the oldest component of moviemaking, others take a more pragmatic view, treating it as a tool to solve problems and keep productions on track. Jerry Bruckheimer, the powerhouse producer behind “Top Gun,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and this summer’s “F1,” is among those embracing its utility.

“AI is not going anywhere and it’s only going to get more useful for people in our business,” he said in a recent interview with The Times.

He recalled one such moment during post-production on his new Brad Pitt–led Formula One drama, a logistical feat filmed during actual Formula One races across Europe and the Middle East, with a budget north of $200 million.

“Brad was in the wilds of New Zealand, and we had test screenings coming up,” Bruckheimer says. “We couldn’t get his voice to do some looping, so we used an app that could mimic Brad Pitt. I’m sure the union will come after me if you write that, but it wasn’t used in the movie because he became available.”

While he’s skeptical of AI’s ability to generate truly original ideas — “We’re always going to need writers,” he says — Bruckheimer, whose films have grossed more than $16 billion worldwide, sees AI as a powerful tool for global reach.

“They can take Brad’s voice from the movie and turn it into other languages so it’s actually his voice, rather than another actor,” he says. “If it’s not available yet, it will be.”

The debate over AI in performance flared earlier this year with “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet’s award-winning drama about a Hungarian architect. After the film’s editor, Dávid Jancsó, revealed that AI voice-cloning software had been used to subtly modify the Hungarian accents of stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, the backlash followed swiftly.

Some critics accused the film of using AI to smooth over performances while presenting itself as handcrafted, a move one viral post derided as trying to “cheap out without soul.” Corbet later clarified that AI was used sparingly, only to adjust vowel sounds, but the decision left some viewers uneasy — even as Brody went on to win the Oscar for lead actor.

If the controversy over “The Brutalist” struck some as a moral crisis, David Cronenberg found the whole thing overblown. Few filmmakers have probed the entanglement of flesh, identity and technology as relentlessly as the director of “Videodrome,” “The Fly” and last year’s “The Shrouds,” so he’s not particularly rattled by the rise of AI-assisted performances.

“All directors have always messed around with actors’ performances — that’s what editing is,” Cronenberg told The Times in April. “Filmmaking isn’t theater. It’s not sacred. We’ve been using versions of this for years. It’s another tool in the toolbox. And it’s not controlling you — you can choose not to use it.”

Long before digital tools, Cronenberg recalls adjusting actor John Lone’s vocal pitch in his 1993 film “M. Butterfly,” in which Lone played a Chinese opera singer and spy who presents as a woman to seduce a French diplomat. The director raised the pitch when the character appeared as a woman and lowered it when he didn’t — a subtle manipulation to reinforce the illusion.

David Cronenberg, photographed at his home in Toronto, Canada, in April.

(Kate Dockeray / For The Times)

Far from alarmed, Cronenberg is intrigued by AI’s creative potential as a way of reshaping authorship itself. With new platforms like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 3 now capable of generating increasingly photorealistic clips from simple text prompts, an entire performance could conceivably be conjured from a writer’s keyboard.

“Suddenly you can write a scene — a woman is walking down the street, she looks like this, she’s wearing that, it’s raining, whatever — and AI can create a video for you,” Cronenberg says. “To me, this is all exciting. It absolutely can threaten all kinds of jobs and that has to be dealt with, but every technological advance has done that and we just have to adapt and figure it out.”

Ghosts in the frame

In the Hollywood of the late 1970s, there was no AI to tweak an actor’s face. So when “Star Wars” star Mark Hamill fractured his nose and left cheekbone in a serious car crash between shooting the first and second films, the solution was to tweak the story. The 1980 sequel “The Empire Strikes Back” opened with Luke Skywalker being attacked by a nine-foot-tall snow beast called a wampa on the ice planet Hoth, partly to account for the change in his appearance.

Decades later, when Hamill was invited to return as a younger version of himself in the 2020 Season 2 finale of “The Mandalorian,” the chance to show Luke “at the height of his powers was irresistible,” he says.

But the reality left him feeling oddly detached from the character that made him famous. Hamill shared the role with a younger body double, and digital de-aging tools recreated his face from decades earlier. The character’s voice, meanwhile, was synthesized using Respeecher, a neural network trained on old recordings of Hamill to mimic his speech from the original trilogy era.

“I didn’t have that much dialogue: ‘Are you Luke Skywalker?’ ‘I am,’” Hamill recalled in an interview with The Times earlier this year. “I don’t know what they do when they take it away, in terms of tweaking it and making your voice go up in pitch or whatever.”

When fans speculated online that he hadn’t participated at all, Hamill declined to correct the record.

“My agent said, ‘Do you want me to put out a statement or something?’” Hamill recalls. “I said, ‘Eh, people are going to say what they want to say.’ Maybe if you deny it, they say, ‘See? That proves it — he’s denying it.’”

A digitally de-aged Mark Hamill as the young Luke Skywalker in a 2020 episode of “The Mandalorian.”

(Lucasfilm Ltd.)

When Luke returned again in a 2022 episode of “The Book of Boba Fett,” the process was even more synthetic: Hamill was minimally involved on camera and the character was built almost entirely from digital parts: a de-aged face mapped onto a body double with an AI-generated voice delivering his lines. Hamill was credited and compensated, though the exact terms of the arrangement haven’t been made public.

The visual effect was notably improved from earlier efforts, thanks in part to a viral deepfake artist known as Shamook, whose YouTube video improving the VFX in “The Mandalorian” finale had racked up millions of views. He was soon hired by Industrial Light & Magic — a rare case of fan-made tech critique turning into a studio job.

“In essence, yes, I did participate,” Hamill says.

It’s one thing to be digitally altered while you’re still alive. It’s another to keep performing after you’re gone.

Before his death last year, James Earl Jones — whose resonant baritone helped define Darth Vader for generations — gave Lucasfilm permission to recreate his voice using AI. In a recent collaboration with Disney, Epic Games deployed that digital voice in Fortnite, allowing players to team up with Vader and hear new lines delivered in Jones’ unmistakable tones, scripted by Google’s Gemini AI.

In May, SAG-AFTRA later filed a labor charge, saying the use of Jones’ voice hadn’t been cleared with the union.

Last year’s “Alien: Romulus” sparked similar backlash over the digital resurrection of Ian Holm’s android character Ash nearly a decade after Holm’s death. Reconstructed using a blend of AI and archival footage, the scenes were slammed by some fans as a form of “digital necromancy.” For the film’s home video release, director Fede Álvarez quietly issued an alternate cut that relied more heavily on practical effects, including an animatronic head modeled from a preexisting cast of Holm’s face.

For Hollywood, AI allows nostalgia to become a renewable resource, endlessly reprocessed and resold. Familiar faces can be altered, repurposed and inserted into entirely new stories. The audience never has to say goodbye and the industry never has to take the risk of introducing someone new.

Hamill, for his part, seems ready to let go of Luke. After his final arc in 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” he says he feels a sense of closure.

“I don’t know the full impact AI will have but I find it very ominous,“ he says. “I’m fine. I had my time. Now the spotlight should be on the current and future actors and I hope they enjoy it as much as I did.”

Actors, not avatars

Actor and AI startup Wonder Dynamics co-founder Tye Sheridan, photographed by The Times in 2021.

(Michael Nagle / For The Times)

Actor Tye Sheridan knows how dark an AI future could get. After all, he starred in Steven Spielberg’s 2018 “Ready Player One,” a sci-fi thriller set inside a corporate-controlled world of digital avatars. But Sheridan isn’t trying to escape into that world — he’s trying to shape the one ahead.

With VFX supervisor Nikola Todorovic, Sheridan co-founded Wonder Dynamics in 2017 to explore how AI can expand what’s possible on screen. Their platform uses AI to insert digital characters into live-action scenes without green screens or motion-capture suits, making high-end VFX more accessible to low-budget filmmakers. Backed by Spielberg and “Avengers” co-director Joe Russo, Wonder Dynamics was acquired last year by Autodesk, the software firm behind many animation and design tools.

“Since the advent of the camera, technology has been pushing this industry forward,” Sheridan, 28, says on a video call. “AI is just another part of that path. It can make filmmaking more accessible, help discover new voices. Maybe the next James Cameron will find their way into the industry through some AI avenue. I think that’s really exciting.”

With production costs spiraling, Todorovic sees AI as a way to lower the barrier to entry and make riskier, more ambitious projects possible. “We really see AI going in that direction, where you can get those A24-grounded stories with Marvel visuals,” he says. “That’s what younger audiences are hungry for.”

The shift, Todorovic argues, could lead to more films overall and more opportunities for actors. “Maybe instead of 10,000 people making five movies, it’ll be 1,000 people making 50,” he says.

Still, Todorovic sees a threshold approaching, one where synthetic actors could, in theory, carry a film. “I do think technically it is going to get solved,” Todorovic says. “But the question remains — is that what we really want? Do we really want the top five movies of the year to star humans who don’t exist? I sure hope not.”

For him, the boundary isn’t just about realism. It’s about human truth.

“You can’t prompt a performance,” he says. “You can’t explain certain movements of the body and it’s very hard to describe emotions. Acting is all about reacting. That’s why when you make a movie, you do five takes — or 40. Because it’s hard to communicate.”

Sheridan, who has appeared in the “X-Men” franchise as well as smaller dramas like “The Card Counter” and “The Tender Bar,” understands that instinctively and personally. “I started acting in films when I was 11 years old,” he says. “I wouldn’t ever want to build something that put me out of a job. That’s the fun part — performing, exploring, discovering the nuances. That’s why we fall in love with certain artists: their unique sensibility, the way they do what no one else can.”

He knows that may sound contradictory coming from the co-founder of an AI company. That’s exactly why he believes it’s critical that artists, not Silicon Valley CEOs, are the ones shaping how the technology is used.

“We should be skeptical of AI and its bad uses,” he says. “It’s a tool that can be used for good or bad. How are we going to apply it to create more access and opportunity in this industry and have more voices heard? We’re focused on keeping the artist as an essential part of the process, not replacing them.”

For now, Sheridan lives inside that paradox, navigating a technology that could both elevate and imperil the stories he cares most about.

His next acting gig? “The Housewife,” a psychological drama co-starring Naomi Watts and Michael Imperioli, in which he plays a 1960s New York Times reporter investigating a suspected Nazi hiding in Queens. No AI. No doubles. Just people pretending to be other people the old way, while it lasts.

Two contestants on Love Island are said to have got together before the series began – but now the Islanders are acting like they haven’t met while in the villa

Two Love Island stars have reportedly hooked up with each other before this year’s series even began. The Casa Amor duo is said to have taken part in ITV’s unfilmed rehearsal in May, where they joined a number of fake cast members to test out camera angles and general life in the villa.

It has been reported the two, Ty Isherwood and Lauren Wood, were later invited back onto the show as the Casa Amor cast and have been acting like they don’t know each other despite a brief fling. They said: “Ty and Lauren are acting like they’ve only just met but that’s far from the case.”

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“They hooked up during the dry run, which is where a fake cast moves into the villa to test out everything from camera angles, to kitchen appliances and run-through challenges,” they said to The Sun.

According to the insider, Ty and Lauren also ‘saw each other on the outside’ before they were invited back onto the show by ITV producers.

The Mirror have reached out to ITV for comment. Meanwhile, Lauren and Harrison narrowly avoided being dumped earlier this week after Shakira and Ty chose to dump Tommy and Lucy – saving Harrison and Lauren and Conor and Emma.

The pair seemed to celebrate their survival in the bedroom – with fans left shocked as they saw Harrison ask Harry for a condom. As the Islanders settled down for the night, Harrison was seen reaching over to Helena and Harry’s bed via the night cam, as he asked: “Do you have a condom?”

Harry and Helena could be seen in hysterics as Helena quickly pulled one out the drawer, with Harry passing it over. The couple then got under the covers, as the cameras panned to them kissing.

Fans were shocked by the move and rushed to social media to share their thoughts, with one user writing: “Did Harry just pass a condom to Lauren and Harrison???! I didn’t know I was watching too hot to handle.”

A second shocked fan said: “I have never. In all my years seen someone ask for a condom on #loveisland. Like yayyyyy for sexual safety but that is tooooooooooo raz.”

“Do you have a condom? Is going to haunt me until the day that I die #LoveIsland,” said a third.

Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX*

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