Vanity Fair Hollywood issue features Colman Domingo, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Bradley Cooper

Three out of the 11 stars in Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue, the magazine’s most influential issue of the year, spotlighting actors with the brightest futures in Tinseltown, are from Philadelphia.

Bradley Cooper looks suave in a Louis Vuitton black suit. Colman Domingo looks clean as a whistle in lookalike menswear by Alexander McQueen. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is fearless and fine in a black, sleeveless LaQuan Smith gown. In the issue, each of them have discussed their road to stardom along side actors Natalie Portman (May December), Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us), Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders), Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Charles Melton (May December), Jenna Ortega (Wednesday), and Barry Keoghan (Saltburn). (Keoghan even did a little dance in his birthday suit in a social media video.)

This 30th annual Hollywood Issue focuses on the fabulousness of being a part of the Hollywood A-list and the importance of authenticity, without which these stars wouldn’t be where they are.

Cooper’s sophomore movie as a filmmaker, Maestro, is nominated for three Academy Awards — best actor, best director, and best screenplay. The Abington native has been working in the film industry for nearly 30 years with early roles in Sex and the City and top billing in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. How does Cooper know when a role is right for him?

“It is a feeling state and it’s sort of instinctual,” Cooper told Vanity Fair. “You just sort of know it. And you know it because one realizes the amount of work it will take to realize this story has to be fueled by an immense furnace of energy inside oneself.”

Domingo and Randolph listen to their inner voices when it comes to choosing roles. Yet it’s taken them longer to become stars because Hollywood just started paying attention to the stories people of color are moved to tell. Domingo and Randolph, Vanity Fair wrote, “have found stardom after years of grinding.” Their presence in the issue — an openly gay Black man and a very curvy woman — is proof the industry is open to change, albeit there is still a lot of work to do in the name of diverse storytelling.

“I’m old,” said Domingo, who starred as Mister in Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple. “I’ve been working for 33 years. For me to have this time now, it’s because people have caught up with what I actually do.”

Randolph, nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role as Mary Lamb in The Holdovers, talked about the authenticity she tapped into for the Oscar-nominated role.

“I’m a woman of color. And then on top of that, a woman of color who is curvy,” Randolph said. “Those stories don’t get told often. So I really take my time and do due diligence to tell relatable, authentic stories.”

The Vanity Fair Hollywood issue is on newsstands now.