Sebastian Stan

Sebastian Stan is a Romanian-born American actor, born on August 13, 1982, in Constanța, Romania. His mother, Georgeta Orlovschi, a pianist, named him after the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. His parents divorced when he was two years old. Following the Revolutions of 1989, Stan and his mother relocated to Vienna, Austria, where she worked as a pianist. Four years later, the family moved to Rockland County, New York, after his mother married the headmaster of a school in the United States. Stan became a United States citizen in 2002 and was raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church.

During his school years in Rockland County, Stan performed in productions including Harvey, Cyrano de Bergerac, Little Shop of Horrors, Over Here!, and West Side Story. He also attended Stagedoor Manor summer camp, where participation in numerous productions led him to pursue acting seriously. He enrolled at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts, which included a year abroad studying at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, and graduated in 2005.

Stan made an early screen appearance in Michael Haneke's 1994 film 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, and his career resumed in earnest in 2003 with a role on Law & Order. He subsequently appeared in Tony n' Tina's Wedding, The Architect, and The Covenant, both in 2006. Beginning in 2007, he took on a recurring role as Carter Baizen in the television series Gossip Girl, a role he held through 2010. That same year, he appeared on Broadway in Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio. In 2009, he played Jack Benjamin as a lead in the series Kings, and in 2010 he appeared in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and in the comedy Hot Tub Time Machine.

Stan's Broadway career, which spanned 2007 to 2013, included two notable productions. In addition to Talk Radio, he starred as Hal Carter in the Roundabout Theater Company's production of William Inge's Picnic at the American Airlines Theater in 2013.

Stan entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2011, portraying Bucky Barnes in Captain America: The First Avenger. He went on to reprise the role across numerous MCU films, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. He also starred as the lead in the Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which aired in 2021, and appeared in Thunderbolts* in 2025.

On television, Stan played the Mad Hatter in Once Upon a Time beginning in 2012, and that same year starred in the USA Network miniseries Political Animals as the troubled gay son of a former First Lady, earning a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries. In film, he co-starred in The Martian in 2015 as NASA scientist Dr. Chris Beck, and in 2017 portrayed Jeff Gillooly alongside Margot Robbie in Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya.

Stan received significant critical recognition for playing Tommy Lee in Hulu's Pam & Tommy in 2022, a miniseries centered on the theft of a personal sex tape belonging to Lee and Pamela Anderson in 1995. The performance earned him nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. He also starred that year in the Hulu thriller Fresh opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones.

In 2024, Stan portrayed a man with neurofibromatosis in A Different Man, for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. That same year, he portrayed a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The two roles resulted in simultaneous Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Motion Picture.