Sebastian Stan on screen and stage

Sebastian Stan is a Romanian and American actor. He appeared briefly in Michael Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) as a child, before taking on minor roles in the early 2000s, considering The Architect (2006) to be his major debut.^[1] This was followed by roles in Renny Harlin's The Covenant (2006), Fred Durst's The Education of Charlie Banks (2007), Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married (2008), and the television series Gossip Girl (2007–2010) and Kings (2009), as well as his Broadway debut in Eric Bogosian's play Talk Radio (2007). Despite performing in Darren Aronofsky's blockbuster Black Swan (2010), he struggled financially and survived on residuals from Steve Pink's Hot Tub Time Machine (2010).^[2][3]

In 2010, Stan was cast in his most prolific role as Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He began portraying the character in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and has since appeared in nine films, two television series, and one video game within the franchise. Notable entries include Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), What If...? (2021–2024), Thunderbolts* (2025), and the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday (2026); of these, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame rank among the highest-grossing films of all time.^[4] He is also slated to join the Batman film franchise as Harvey Dent in The Batman: Part II (2028).

Stan expanded his career with television series such as Once Upon a Time (2012) and Political Animals (2012), and films such as Demme's Ricki and the Flash (2015), Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015), Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya (2017), and Mimi Cave's Fresh (2022). He began to find wider critical success in the 2020s, receiving Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for portraying musician Tommy Lee in the miniseries Pam & Tommy (2022).^[5][6][7] He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor for playing a disfigured actor with neurofibromatosis in Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man (2024), and was nominated for the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor for playing Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice (2024).^[8][9][10] Further acclaim came for portraying a conservative father in Cristian Mungiu's Fjord (2026).