5. Bria Vinaite

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Sean Baker clearly loves his phone. A year after shooting his breakout feature Tangerine entirely on an iPhone 5S, the director fell into a social-media black hole, scrolling through Instagram accounts for hours one evening. And then he saw her: the free-spirited fashion entrepreneur Bria Vinaite. With her sky-blue locks, steel lip stud and tattoos snaking all over her body, she twerked and she posed, laughed and smoked weed. Baker was mesmerised. He immediately direct-messaged her, inviting her to a casting call for his upcoming indie The Florida Project, and subsequently offered her the part of Halley, a raucous, down-on-her-luck teenage mother living hand-to-mouth in the candy-coloured Magic Castle motel. Despite being a first-timer, Vinaite delivers an electric performance in the film, stealing scenes from Willem Dafoe as she smears a soiled sanitary towel on a plate-glass window between them and hustles for junk food to feed her troublemaking six-year-old. Her star-making turn in The Florida Project has landed her a role in The Beach Bum – alongside Zac Efron, Isla Fisher and Matthew McConaughey – that is due for release later this year.