This is a season of firsts for Dominic Sessa — a wondrous Cinderella moment on the threshold of further adventures in fame. Not yet two weeks out from the Golden Globes, when the 21-year-old actor sauntered onto the red carpet — tousle-haired in a Saint Laurent suit, his black silk shirt unbuttoned, his eyes hidden behind dark shades — unleashing a million online stans, he arrived in Paris for his first time at the fashion shows.
It has been a virtual eye blink since Mr. Sessa was in Santa Monica, Calif., to receive the Critics Choice Award for best young actor or actress, quickly followed by a BAFTA nomination in the best supporting actor category for his film debut in “The Holdovers,” the director Alexander Payne’s darkly funny period drama set at a New England boarding school in the 1970s.
Here he is now in the opulent breakfast room of the Hôtel de Crillon, his gangly frame clad in sweats, wedged into a gilded Louis XVI chair, shyly requesting a glass of water. “I’m not a caffeine person,” Mr. Sessa said.
Neither is he a hypebeast. He has no public relations team or, for that matter, much presence on social media and so is all but oblivious of the effect he is already having online. The night of the Golden Globes, a single tweet on X (“dominic sessa stop. your bob dylan drip is too immaculate. your timeless beauty swag is too unreal. timothee chalamet is gonna kill you”) was seen more than a million times in just hours.
Mr. Sessa at the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes and the Governors Awards.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Elyse Jankowski/Golden Globes, via Getty Images; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Few who saw Mr. Sessa’s performance as Angus Tully, a troubled student abandoned by his parents over the Christmas holidays and forced to “hold over” at his all-boys prep school, would have been surprised to hear his name when the Oscars nominations were announced on Tuesday. So natural is he in the role that it is a surprise to learn he almost didn’t get it.
SOURCE: New York Times
