Empire Spotlight: Fred Hechinger Is Here To Entertain You

The Gladiator II actor pauses to reflect upon his mile-a-minute career

“I have a hard time taking a break,” says Fred Hechinger. “The thought of it is nice, but by the second day...” He pulls a bored face. This is not very surprising. Hechinger does not stop. In just six years as a working actor, he has had roles in over 20 films and four TV shows. He started with Bo Burnham’s raw high-school drama Eighth Grade, broke out with The White Lotus, and has racked up co-stars including Tom Hanks (News Of The World), Natalie Portman (Vox Lux), Christian Bale (The Pale Blue Eye), and Amy Adams (The Woman In The Window). He has five projects out this year alone.

“My family don’t really understand it,” he says of his very busy slate. “They’re like, ‘How have you done all this?’ I have to explain, ‘I don’t do it all at once. And I don’t have a clone.’”

He does, however, now have a twin. At least, a pretend one. The biggest project of Hechinger’s career so far is Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s very belated sequel. He plays Caracalla, one of a pair of twin emperors — the other, Geta, is played by Joseph Quinn — who rule Rome with a mix of ineptitude and childish entitlement. “In conversations with Ridley Scott, the influences were pretty vast,” he says. “Everything from the real Caracalla and Geta (they’re very loosely based on historical figures) to Beavis and Butt-Head, and Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten.”

Caracalla would be more the Beavis and Vicious halves of their respective duos, being by some distance the less sane brother. When he’s not gurning ghoulishly at bloody gladiator battles, he’s consulting with his dress-wearing pet monkey, whom he considers to be a close advisor in government matters. “Her name is Sherry,” says Hechinger. “And I think Sherry was more of a natural than the rest of us.”

While his ascent has been speedy, Hechinger has made sure to appreciate every step. “You learn from every bit of it,” he says. “There are no tangents in filmmaking. Every part of the process informs another.” He’s been acting since he was in school and his first job came just after that, with his brief role in Eighth Grade. Watching Bo Burnham, until then known chiefly as a comedian, figuring out movie directing showed Hechinger that approaching work with “a level of fearlessness” could produce great results. “It was very formative,” he says.

'I always want to be taking big swings.'

It was on the first season of The White Lotus, Mike White’s brilliant skewering of unchecked privilege, in which Hechinger played a socially awkward teen and one of the only non-awful characters, that he realised people were actually paying attention to what he was doing. “It was the first time I would walk outside and people would want to talk to me about [something I was in],” he says. Having any level of fame is still something he’s “trying to figure out”, and he may have to work on that before the end of the year. As well as Gladiator II, he’ll be appearing as comic-book villain the Chameleon in the much-delayed Kraven The Hunter. “His villainous power is practically being an actor,” says Hechinger of the master of disguise. “It’s the most meta thing I’ve done, probably.”

Hechinger is not one to complain about his growing status. He sees that it has a massive upside. “The more you make stuff that reaches people and connects with them, the easier it gets to make more things,” he says. “I always want to be taking big swings. I want to keep making things that are entertaining and challenging at the same time.” Judging by his current velocity, we won’t have to wait long for them.

The Show: Arrested Development

“I’ve recently been rewatching [it] for maybe the 20th time. It’s so jam-packed with jokes that every single time you watch it you’re laughing at a new thing. There are about 15 jokes in every frame.”

The Book: Dept. Of Speculation – Jenny Offill

“I loved how painful it was. It left me hopeful as well, but it was not scared of [causing] pain. Her sentences are like little knives. It’s like, ‘What? That’s such a spare and short sentence, and yet you’ve just destroyed my life.’”

The Album: Honey – Samia

“It’s a masterpiece. It came out a while ago. I’m not even being biased — she is a dear friend, but that album is one I listen to a lot. It’s just so incredible.”

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Empire. Photography by Jake Chessum, shot exclusively for Empire in New York. Gladiator II is in cinemas from 15 November.