Holly Hunter

As Nahla Ake in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (2026), Holly Hunter can handle a cadet testing the rules without treating it as a threat to her authority. Her chancellor is free-spirited, but we never doubt that she can run the place. We warmed to her because she makes the young characters’ awkwardness seem like something an experienced adult could help with. It is an assured performance in a part that could easily have been reduced to telling everyone else to behave.

Her breakthrough came with two films in 1987: Raising Arizona, made with Joel and Ethan Coen, and Broadcast News. As the latter’s driven news producer Jane Craig, Hunter makes quick wit and high energy feel necessary to getting the work done. Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) gives her a different task as Ada McGrath, a mute pianist, putting greater demands on the gestures and body language that are central to her acting. Her distinctive Southern accent is only one of the tools available to her.

Later work includes Helen Parr, or Elastigirl, in The Incredibles (2004), and Beth Gardner in the contemporary family drama The Big Sick (2017). The animated role makes vocal nuance central again, a useful contrast with Ada. Across these different kinds of work, we value the small physical decisions and the scrappiness more than the mere variety of the credits. Hunter can make a woman forceful without making the acting feel laboured.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy lets that forcefulness coexist with a welcome capacity for amusement, though Hunter cannot repair everything around her. The familiar school-drama plotting remains familiar, and the young ensemble needs more equal attention. Her assurance also makes it easier to notice when another part of the programme is less certain of itself. What she gets right is the scale of the cadets’ troubles: they matter, but they need not overwhelm every adult in the vicinity. Try it for Hunter if hopeful science fiction appeals, provided familiar adolescent troubles will not spoil the evening.