How Jonathan Bailey Is Changing Hollywood as 2025’s Top-Grossing Actor

The box office has a new king.

As 2025 draws to a close, Jonathan Bailey is the year’s highest-grossing actor, thanks to his roles in “Jurassic World Rebirth” (which made some $869 million globally) and “Wicked: For Good” ($468.3 million to date). 

Neither of these movies were sold solely on Bailey’s participation — both benefit from the infusion of energy and life the actor provides. Bailey’s climbing to the top of the Hollywood heap is a pivot point in his journey from “Bridgerton” standout to anointed leading man, just as was his selection, earlier this year, as People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” In both of those moments — his status as top box-office star and the People cover — he was breaking a barrier. Bailey is the first out gay man to be the box-office champ, and the fact that it barely feels notable at all is itself notable.

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Bailey came out in the media before his rise to fame stateside; he was, when he first discussed the subject of his sexuality publicly, a well-regarded actor on British television and in theater in London. The rocketship he’s been riding ever since — breaking out with Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix soap “Bridgerton” in 2020, then receiving an Emmy nomination for 2023’s limited series “Fellow Travelers” and some measure of Oscar buzz for the first “Wicked” in 2024 — has all happened within the context of the public understanding him as, in his personal life, a gay man. Even 10 years ago, that might have been limiting. Today, it’s no big deal.

Or, well, not no big deal — but the manners in which it colors the public perception of this actor have seemed only to redound to his benefit. The flirtatious, vervy energy Bailey brought to his recent Actors on Actors conversation with fellow hunk David Corenswet (who is straight) seems to have utterly charmed the internet, as did the pair breaking into a Cole Porter song together on-camera. While promoting the “Jurassic” film, Bailey and co-star Scarlett Johansson embraced and kissed frequently on red carpets, a refreshing burst of just-this-side-of-platonic chemistry done both to sell the movie and celebrate a seemingly deep friendship. And in “Wicked,” a film franchise where just about everyone seems to exist somewhere beyond a Kinsey 0, Bailey’s friskiness and sly, knowing line deliveries lend a queer-adjacent panache to a straight love story.

All of which is to say that Bailey is doing fine as a movie star, but his success isn’t happening despite his sexuality. His flair and his sense of fun and performance are intrinsic to him in a manner that seems familiar from past gay actors who never, quite, got the chance to rise so far. In past eras, those traits might have been leveraged to keep Bailey a sidekick, a gifted actor who would get one or two chances to be the supportive friend or witty assistant to the film’s real star. In other words, he might have been the Rupert Everett who excelled in “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and then never got a chance that good again.

In “Wicked” and “Jurassic World Rebirth,” Bailey is paired opposite a female lead with whom he shares real chemistry (something he might not have been allowed in the past) and is allowed to be overtly sexual (ditto). The fact of his not only being gay but having memorably played a gay character on the very explicit “Fellow Travelers” seems only to have impressed audiences, not threatened his future viability as a lead. And the movies are better for it: “Jurassic World Rebirth” doesn’t hold a candle to the Steven Spielberg dino movies from the 1990s, but Bailey looks good in his little glasses! And, in “Wicked: For Good,” Bailey’s theater-kid exuberance makes the (rare, for this overlong sequel) showstopper “As Long as You’re Mine” feel rapturous.

Movies are more fun with Jonathan Bailey around. So, too, is the movie-promotion apparatus, which Bailey takes on with a sense of happy-to-be-here delight and a slight wink to the audience. (Straight actors tapped by People to assume the Sexy Man mantle tend to approach their term in Sexy Man office with a certain pomposity, as if bristling against the inherent corniness of the honor; Bailey is the least self-serious Sexiest Man Alive that I can recall.) One hopes for many more years of him headlining the projects he chooses — and many more queer actors in his wake, bringing precisely the energy that’s natural to them.