Sam Nivola thinks Hollywood is aging unusually in the 21st century — and that’s not a good thing for his peers.
The 21-year-old White Lotus breakout recently reflected on the state of the entertainment industry, specifically how older generations are clinging to their stardom and taking away lead roles from younger actors.
“The old movie stars are getting plastic surgery, and they’re looking younger and they’re staying young,” Nivola said in a new interview with Variety. “You have these really old people playing young roles. And it’s not giving any space for the young’uns to move in and make a name for themselves.”
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Sam Nivola on Aug. 7, 2025
The actor, who played the youngest son in a wealthy North Carolina family on season 3 of the Emmy-winning HBO series, went on to explain how he thinks the film industry might be shaken without new marquee idols. “With all due respect to those people, one day they won’t be here anymore, literally,” Nivola said. “And they will have to create new stars.”
But Nivola offered one exception to the rule. “I think Timothée Chalamet is one of the best actors alive, and he’s a total star,” he said. “He’s one of a very few examples I could come up with. But it’s a different kind of movie star; he’s not huge and jacked. He looks a little more like me.”
Nivola grew up in a household of thespians — his mother, Emily Mortimer, has starred in projects like The Newsroom and Lars and the Real Girl, while his father, Alessandro Nivola, has acted in films like The Brutalist and A Most Violent Year. He also lamented how the studio system has grown more financially conservative since his parents launched their careers in the mid-1990s.
“They’ve Moneyball-ed the film industry!” he told Variety. “Everything is about data now — and trying to predict, to the nearest dollar, how much money a movie’s going to make. It screws the idea of risk-taking.”
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Sam Nivola in ‘The White Lotus’ season 3
He pointed to one major victim of that paradigm shift. “Comedy is more about risk-taking than any other genre,” he said. “It’s rare to have comedies at all. It’s been pretty dry for a little while.”
Nivola, who previously had roles in Maestro and White Noise, will soon star in one of those rare comedies: Driver’s Ed, a new film from director Bobby Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber) that will also feature Ella Stiller, Alyssa Milano, Kumail Nanjiani, and Molly Shannon.
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He isn’t the only White Lotus actor who has denounced certain cosmetic procedures. Aimee Lou Wood, who portrayed Chelsea on season 3 of the show, recently told the Run-Through With Vogue podcast why she avoids Botox.
“I’m very anti-Botox,” she said. “People can do whatever the hell they want, but for myself — because, you know, a lot of my career relies on these facial expressions — I can’t start freezing my face. It needs to move.”
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