Trending Now: Top interviews of 2025: Sydney Sweeney to Leonardo DiCaprio – Fans React

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From our very first conversation of the year with comedian Tim Allen to our last with Avatar filmmaker James Cameron, the Sun spoke with the who’s-who of the entertainment world in 2025.

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Whether they were starring in big-budget tentpole movies or appearing in a smaller role hoping to show off their acting chops, the celebrities we spoke with in 2025 were all focused on giving audiences a unique entertainment experience. Sydney Sweeney and Ryan Reynolds discussed their personal passion projects, Sweeney with her role as pioneering female boxer Christy Martin in Christy and Reynolds with his John Candy biopic.

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Meanwhile, director Benny Safdie convinced Dwayne Johnson to abandon his good-guy image to play a drug-addled MMA fighter in The Smashing Machine.

Originality reigned at the box office, with a pair of horror movies — Ryan Coogler’s vampire film Sinners and Zach Cregger’s nightmarish Weapons — becoming two of the most talked-about films of the year.

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Superstars, Superman and super Canucks

As Brad Pitt’s F1 raced to $631 million worldwide, the actor found himself starring in his biggest hit. Not bad for a career that stretches back more than 30 years. Leonardo DiCaprio talked about finally getting a chance to work with celebrated filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson on One Battle After Another; a movie he said demanded to be seen on the big screen. Sylvester Stallone, on the other hand, said he had embraced acting in the hit TV series Tulsa King because the movie industry is more interested in “messaging.”

DC flipped the script on Marvel with James Gunn’s Superman reboot besting Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps at the box office.

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After breaking out in 2024 with her Golden Globe-nominated role in The Last Showgirl, Canadian actress Pamela Anderson kept rolling with a new cooking show and a role opposite Liam Neeson in a revamp of The Naked Gun. She spoke effusively of her love of Canada, something members of the Toronto Blue Jays and her fellow Canadians Sarah McLachlan and Alex Lifeson also emphasized in their conversations with us.

The biggest hit of the year had Minecraft star Jack Black singing Billy Joel. He ended 2025 by treating us to his version of AC/DC’s Walk All Over You.

The world can be a dark place. The people we spoke with wanted to entertain. Here, the Sun looks back at some of our most memorable interviews from the past 12 months.

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Tim Allen

When his sitcom Last Man Standing ended its nine-season run in 2021, Allen swore he was done with TV. But the funnyman was lured back to primetime with Shifting Gears when he was pitched an idea that allowed him to play a character that leaned into his “smart-a–” standup act. “I said, ‘If you can come up with a story about people who restore things … a story about a guy who’s recently lost his wife and has a very disconnected relationship with his daughter …  Let’s go there.’”

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Sarah McLachlan

After releasing her first album in more than a decade, the Canadian pop star was reflective about her 30-plus years as a singer-songwriter. “It’s dark and cold a lot of the year and what else are you going to do other than make art?”

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Alex Lifeson

Before announcing a 50th anniversary tour with Rush bandmate Geddy Lee in October, Lifeson spoke about the sophomore effort from his new band Envy of None and looked back on some of his career highlights. Of Rush’s staying power, he said the ingredients for success were simple: “We took advantage of opportunities that came our way and we worked hard.”

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio Del Toro

DiCaprio had been wanting to work with Anderson for nearly 30 years. He finally got his chance with One Battle After Another. The politically charged film is the leading nominee at next month’s Golden Globes and is expected to rack up nominations at the Academy Awards. “The fact that it’s coming out right now, it’s really a mirror for what’s going on in politics and our world and our society,” DiCaprio said.

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The Toronto Blue Jays

When the Blue Jays opened spring training, no one was picking them to go all the way to the World Series. The team’s best player hadn’t been signed to a long-term extension — yet — and questions loomed of the ball club’s lineup. But buoyed by their shared love for one another, Toronto turned all of Canada into baseball fanatics as they marched toward the fall classic and came within two outs of winning it all. “The fans were one of the main reasons why we were where we were. It was an awesome year,” American League Championship Series hero George Springer said earlier this month.

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Christopher McQuarrie

Tom Cruise will do just about anything to entertain moviegoers. That includes hanging to the side of a biplane, which he performed during a midair action sequence for his latest Mission: Impossible adventure. Director Christopher McQuarrie worked with Cruise on the stunt for years and said he reminded him constantly of the dangers. “This was your idea,” McQuarrie recalled telling the actor. “Just remember, you wanted this.”

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Tom Hardy

“It’s gangsters and Guy Ritchie.” That’s how Tom Hardy summed up MobLand, his crime drama that became a streaming hit for Paramount+. But as he did the press rounds for the show, the Oscar nominee was able to reflect on his rise to stardom. Acting was something he fell into. “I liked playing and I liked stories,” he said. “I latched onto that feeling of belonging in the arts … And now I’m here.”

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Sydney Sweeney

Perhaps no one courted as much controversy as Sweeney. A harmless ad for American Eagle became a lightning rod for thousands of critics. But through it all, Sweeney was unbowed. So playing a female boxer was an apt role for her. “I fight my own respective fights in a ring and outside of the ring,” she said. Sweeney wasn’t done causing a stir when she revealed her contentious take on hotdog toppings, but she shrugged it off. “I eat my hotdogs plain. I didn’t know it was such a thing.”

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Joseph Kosinski

After guiding a high-flying Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski put Pitt in the driver’s seat for F1: The Movie. “When you see Brad driving, that’s not acting. He’s really concentrating on keeping that car on the track and out of the wall,” Kosinski said.

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Jack Black

Black only listens to the hits when he’s filming a movie. When he was shooting Minecraft, he cranked up Billy Joel. But when he was filming Anaconda, he needed something heavier. “If you’re a true-blue AC/DC fan, you go old-school Bon Scott era,” he said, breaking out into a rendition of Walk All Over You. “You get me started and then I can’t stop.”

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Sylvester Stallone

Stallone was among the luminaries celebrated at the annual Kennedy Center Honors. But after a 50-plus year career on the big screen, he told us he was enjoying finding new audiences leading the streaming hit Tulsa King. “So much of cinema today is messaging, messaging and it’s too much. I’m into escapism,” he said.

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Eddie Murphy

Not only did Eddie Murphy invent the mic drop, but the Saturday Night Live alum said he was instrumental in making the very first action comedy. “I know it sounds pretentious if you don’t know the history, but I kind of pioneered (the genre). The very first action-comedy movie is 48 Hrs. Before 48 Hrs., there were no movies where you had action and comedy,” he said.

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James Cameron

Cameron has been dreaming about his Avatar movies since he was a teenager. In December, he released Fire and Ash — the third movie in his ongoing science-fiction franchise. Cameron doesn’t know if there will be a fourth, but speaking to us earlier this month he felt he had come up with a satisfying ending if the story doesn’t continue. “We’ve told a story that results in some heartbreak, some tears of joy and some sense of resolution,” the Oscar winner said.

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Ryan Reynolds

Like many Canadians, Reynolds has always been obsessed with the late Candy. So along with Colin Hanks, he decided to pay tribute to his comedic idol with the moving documentary I Like Me. “John brought people together and he did it with authority and leadership and kindness. That is something that is a scarce resource these days,” Reynolds said.

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Pamela Anderson

After years spent being tabloid fodder, Anderson embraced her natural beauty in a way readers found most refreshing. She isn’t worried about trying to be the biggest star. Moving back to Canada in deciding to live in her grandmother’s home on Vancouver Island became a metaphor for her own life. “I’m just enjoying the moment and I’m happy in the moment,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happening next, so it’s a little mysterious, but that’s my favourite place to be.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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