Hollywood loves to pretend that every breakout star spent a decade grinding through auditions and eating ramen in a studio apartment. Then someone like Aidan Delbis shows up and completely ruins that narrative. The guy made his feature film debut in a Yorgos Lanthimos movie after submitting a self-tape during his senior year of high school. No agent. No connections. No previous acting credits. Just a kid who saw an open casting call and decided to give it a shot. And now he’s the soul of Bugonia. Make it make sense.
Aidan Delbis plays Don, the cousin of Jesse Plemons’s character, in Lanthimos’s surrealist sci-fi comedy that also stars Emma Stone. The director specifically wanted a nonprofessional actor for the role and felt the character should be neurodivergent. Both Delbis and Don are on the autism spectrum, which means this wasn’t just casting. It was a genuine creative decision rooted in authenticity rather than Hollywood’s usual performative gestures toward representation. Lanthimos reportedly called Delbis the project’s “soul” and its “voice of logic,” which is high praise from a director who once made a movie about a man who turned into a lobster.
What’s genuinely impressive about Aidan Delbis is how he landed the part. He discovered the casting call through his mother’s friend, who worked at a talent agency. He submitted a self-tape while still in his final year of high school, and somehow impressed both Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone enough to beat out whatever army of professionally trained actors also wanted this role. That’s not luck. That’s the kind of raw talent that can’t be taught in an acting class.
The performance earned him a nomination at the 2026 Astra Awards for Best Young Performer, which is the kind of industry recognition that usually takes years to build. Aidan Delbis got there on his first try. His creative coach is Elaine Hall, founder of The Miracle Project, a fully inclusive theater and film program in Los Angeles where he honed his skills in sketch comedy and stand-up. So when you see him on screen, you’re not watching someone who stumbled into acting. You’re watching someone who found the one place where his specific talents actually matter.
Off-screen, Aidan Delbis is exactly the kind of person you’d want to cast in a Lanthimos film. He’s a massive horror fan with Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and It among his favorites. He’s read most of Stephen King’s notable works. He admires Vincent Price and Jack Nicholson and loves discussing complex characters. This isn’t a kid who wants to be famous. This is a kid who genuinely loves movies and somehow managed to walk directly into one of the most interesting films of 2025.
Bugonia premiered at the Venice Film Festival and hit theaters in October 2025, and Aidan Delbis has already done something most actors never achieve in their entire careers. He made audiences care about a character in a Yorgos Lanthimos movie without any formal training, without any industry connections, and without pretending to be anything other than exactly who he is. That’s not just a breakout performance. That’s a reminder that sometimes the best casting choice is the one that breaks every rule Hollywood pretends to follow. Aidan Delbis didn’t need the system. The system needed him.
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