Meet the New Kings and Queens of Young Hollywood

 Meet the new kings and queens of young Hollywood.

- Dani Michelle

Wyatt Russell

“Today is legitimately the first day where I can just sit here, smoke a cigarette, and I don’t have to do anything,” Wyatt Russell says. He’s talking about enjoying his newly fixed-up house in Austin (where he lives when he’s not in L.A. for work), but he may as well be talking about his work schedule. The 29-year-old former pro hockey player has been pretty damn busy since a hip injury took him off the ice and into the family business (Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are his parents; Kate and Oliver Hudson are his half-siblings). After memorable roles in Judd Apatow’s This Is 40 and 22 Jump Street, he’s now playing a tie-dye-wearing, herb-toking, Carl Sagan-quoting baseball player in Everybody Wants Some. And with the Anna Kendrick wedding dramedy Table 19, comedy Folk Hero & Funny Guy (in it, he gets to play guitar—another one of his talents), and the sports comedy Goon: Last of the Enforcers on deck, he better enjoy that smoke break while he can.

I didn’t go to acting school. I found out who I was by playing hockey. I came from a place where you’re micromanaged from the time you’re 12. When I started acting, I was like, “Fuck that, I’m gonna go down in flames doing it my way, and if I suck, I suck, but I’m doing it the way I want to do it.”

I like working with wood and building guitars. I also enjoy going on hikes with my dog, a white husky named Snowman. He’s the man.

I don’t know if I’m at sex-symbol status. If people want to call me that, great, thank you for thinking that my parents made a pretty person. But looks are the first thing to go, if you’re lucky, so it’s just a world of disappointment if you put all your eggs in that basket.