This is a unique Oscar season in which child actors play prominent roles in a number of the most celebrated films. The Hollywood Reporter gathered together Alex Hibbert and Jaden Piner (“Moonlight”), Shree Crooks and Charlie Shotwell (“Captain Fantastic”), Sunny Pawar (“Lion”) and Saniyya Sidney (“Fences” and “”) to play a game of “First, Best, Last, Worst.” Watch it above.
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Hibbert reveals the first famous person he ever met was Denzel Washington. “I remember my mom didn’t want to wash her hands after she shook his hand,” says Hibbert. And for Shotwell, the first time he met “Captain Fantastic” star Viggo Mortensen, “I drew a little picture of him as Aragorn [from ‘The Lord of the Rings’] and I’d written on it, ‘I know who you are.'” The kids also discuss the best on-set snacks, the last movie that made them laugh and their worst subjects in school — a nice change of pace from the heavier subject matter dealt with in their films.
Hibbert plays a young Chiron in “Moonlight,” who questions his identity and has a close, complicated bond with his friend Kevin (Piner). The SAG nominated kids of “Captain Fantastic” play the children of a fanatical father (Mortensen) who raises them in the wilderness. Critics’ Choice nominee Pawar stars in “Lion” as an Indian boy who becomes tragically separated from his family and is adopted by an Australian couple. And SAG nominee Sidney plays the daughter of a troubled Pittsburgh man (Washington) in “Fences” and the daughter of a genius NASA mathematician (Taraji P. Henson) in “Hidden Figures.”
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