On Sunday, October 18th, the 27th annual Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF) held the 2026 Festival Honors Brunch and Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch at the Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach, CA.
This year’s honorees included Miles Teller (Artist of Distinction), Jessica Lange (Icon Award), Taraji P. Henson (Artist of Distinction), KJ Apa (Spotlight Award), Mckenna Grace (Spotlight Award), Jack O’Connell (Outstanding Achievement in Acting Award), Sosie Bacon (Breakout Award) and Sarah Finn (Casting Visionary Award).
Additionally, Variety presented its 10 Actors to Watch: Jaafar Jackson (“Michael”), Inde Navarrette (“Obsession”), Ray Nicholson (“The Mosquito Bowl”), Esmé Creed-Miles (“Sense and Sensibility”), Mariana Di Girólamo (“Wild Horse Nine”), Rosalind Eleazar (“Misty Green”), Guitarricadelafuente (“La Bola Negra”), Summer H. Howell (“Carrie”), Ruth Madeley (“Being Heumann”) and Joseph Zada (“The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping”).
The festival also honored Emmy Rossum with the outstanding Performance in Television at Fashion Island following a live recording of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast hosted by Scott Feinberg.
Emerging from the Shadows: Rediscovering the Legacies of Weinberg & Korngold, the acclaimed documentary by U.S.-German filmmaker Veronika Emily Pohl and an Official Selection of the festival, also premiered that day.
The film explores the extraordinary legacies of Mieczysław Weinberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold—two historically underrecognized composers whose lives and music were profoundly shaped by persecution, displacement, survival, and artistic reinvention. It follows world-renowned cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper and four-time GRAMMY®-nominated conductor Constantine Orbelian as they join Lithuania’s Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra for a deeply moving program celebrating the composers’ work.
Following the screening, guests gathered for a special reception at Cafe Sevilla, where an intimate live performance by Cooper provided a memorable coda to the evening.
Featured image: Jessica Lange (Photo by Tiffany Rose/Getty Images for Newport Beach Film Festival)
