(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 27 November 2025 20:45, UK
We are going to be seeing a lot of Hunter Schafer in the next couple of years, and that’s no bad thing, because as anyone who caught her in last year’s horror thriller movie Cuckoo or her role in the hit youth TV show Euphoria will know, she is a talent of quite considerable proportions.
A former model and an important role model for trans people, thanks to her success and representation in the industry, Schafer landed her part in Euphoria despite not having any prior acting experience and received widespread acclaim for her role as Jules Vaughn across three seasons.
That led to movies, and she appeared in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in 2023 before a cameo in the Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone film Kinds of Kindness a year later. She now has no less than eight different projects in various stages of production, including more Euphoria, a Blade Runner mini-series and another horror movie, this time from A24.
She has also spoken about the movies that have shaped her approach and that she loves more than any others, featuring a mix of animation and personal drama, with a Caped Crusader thrown in for good measure.
Schafer told Letterbox: “One for sure is Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston, a favourite, always. Mind Game by Masaaki Yuasa, a really great anime movie. (And) This is like so many people’s favourite, but The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan, it’s incredible. And then Ponyo by Studio Ghibli. If any character feels like who I am, it’s Ponyo. I wrote a TV episode about sea blobs, it’s just very in line with who I am.”
Schafer also expounded on her love of animation and one movie in particular by the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, saying: “I rewatched Spirited Away when I was sick, and that always takes me far away from earth. It’s a treasure. I think it was the first Studio Ghibli film I watched, and my mind was blown. I was then very hungry to watch all the Studio Ghibli films all at once. It started a rampage.”
She also chose Safe, a 1995 movie directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore, about a housewife dragged down by the domesticity of daily life who suddenly becomes seriously ill, leading her to be convinced it’s the result of her surrounding environment. While it performed poorly at the box office, it is considered thematically well ahead of its time and has become something of a cult classic.
Meanwhile, another interesting project that Schafer has coming up and due for release in 2026 is the latest Tom Ford movie, his first since 2016’s Nocturnal Animals. It’s a film called Cry to Heaven and features an all-star cast including Nicholas Hoult, Colin Firth and Aaron Taylor-Johnson and is set in 18th-century Italy, telling the story of a nobleman castrated as a boy to protect his soprano singing voice, rising to fame as an opera star.
Hunter Schafer’s six favourite movies:Spirited Away (2001, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)Paris is Burning (1990, Dir. Jennie Livingston)Mind Game (2004, Dir. Masaaki Yuasa)Safe (1995, Dir. Todd Haynes)Ponyo (2008, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)The Dark Knight (2008, Dir. Christopher Nolan)
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