screen crush

Meet the smokin’ hot Aussie actors heating up the screen in this sexy gay coming-of-age romance

By · 17 comments · Updated on January 26, 2024
One man in a white t-shirt embraces another, in a yellow t-shirt, from behind, as they stand in front of a blue skyscape in early morning, with powerlines behind them.
Image Credit: ‘Of An Age,’ Focus Features

Valentine’s Day might’ve came and went, but the romantic movie event of the season arrives in theaters today: Of An Age, an unforgettable gay drama from Macedonian-Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski.

Partially inspired by Stolevski’s own experiences with coming out and coming-of-age in Melbourne (after emigrating from North Macedonia at a young age), the film takes us back to 1999—at least initially.

Kol (Elias Anton) is a 17-year old amateur ballroom dancer, whose family moved to Australia from Serbia some years earlier. He’s in final rehearsals for a big recital when he gets a phone call: It’s his best friend and dance partner, Ebony (Hattie Hook), who’s stranded hours away after a night of reckless partying.

Related: ‘Of An Age’ Is a Beautiful Queer Coming-Of-Age Story Full of What-Ifs

In a panic, Kol makes a plan to get Ebony back to safety, enlisting her older brother Adam (Thom Green)—who he hadn’t previously met—to drive him. As the two weave through traffic, there’s an obvious attraction between them, even if Kol isn’t quite ready to admit it.

Over the next 24 hours, the pair grows closer, while bracing for an inevitable heartbreak: Adam’s moving to Argentina, and they can’t help but wonder if they’re ending something special before it even has a chance to start.

Without giving too much else away, the film’s third act jumps ahead in time to 2010, checking in on their lives 11 years after their fateful encounter. Do they still have that spark?

Stolevki’s achingly romantic film will have you swooning from the moment Kol and Adam meet to its very last frame. As their relationship blossoms from nervous flirtation to something more over a limited stretch of time, Of An Age recalls similar love stories like Richard Linklater’s beloved Before trilogy, or Andrew Haigh’s gorgeous Weekend, which also focuses on the intense connection between two gay men who’ve just met.

Every detail of Of An Age is thoughtfully crafted, but its main selling point is the chemistry between its leads, Anton and Green, who bring such naturalism to their performances and make the pair easy to fall for.

Since the film will be the first time most American audiences will be seeing these two on screen, we thought we’d offer up a quick crash course on these two rising stars:

Elias Anton

Amazingly, Of An Age is only Anton’s second film. The 24-year old Melbourne-born actor first appeared in a one-off guest role in the long-running Australian soap, Neighbours, in 2016. But he made an even bigger splash later that year as the lead of Barracuda, a mini-series about a young swimmer who faces pushback in his journey to become a record-breaking athlete.

The series was adapted from a book of the same name, which was inspired by real-life gay Olympic medalist Daniel Kowalski. At the time, Anton spoke to press about being emotionally invested in the role, despite not being gay himself.

He has since appeared in the ensemble drama Australia Day, but Of An Age represents his first lead film role. Next, he’ll star in Sunflower, another Australian queer coming-of-age story that is currently in post-production.

Thom Green

Green is a professionally trained actor and dancer, born in Australia in 1991. (Ironically, Anton plays a dancer in Of An Age, but Green actually is one in real life.)

He began his career when he was still a teen, making his screen debut in the 2007 made-for-TV crime drama, Emerald Falls. That same year, he nabbed his first theater role, in a production based on the popular Australian children’s book series, Lockie Leonard.

He’s kept busy in the 15 years since, including a recurring role in the family beach drama Home And Away in 2009, and as a major character in the series Dance Academy (which co-starred Keiynan Lonsdale) from 2010 to 2012. His first American production was 2012’s Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, a web series based on the popular video game.

Goran Stolevski

Filmmaker Goran Stolevski sits in a director's chair and holds a microphone, wearing a black leather jacket and talking to an unseen audience.
Goran Stolevski | Image Credit: Getty Images

And we’d be remiss if we didn’t again mention filmmaker Goran Stolevski. After his family moved to Australia when he was a teenager, he began to study film, writing and directing 25 narrative shorts between 2007 and 2018. (Fun fact: He also worked in the writer’s room for the miniseries Barracuda—which stars Anton.)

His feature debut, You Won’t Be Alone, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022 in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section. Co-starring Noomi Rapace (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), it’s an artful folk horror about a young peasant girl who is turned into a witch, and learns about the world for the first time while shapeshifting and exploring other people’s lives.

While promoting Of An Age, Stolevski has revealed he’s already in post-production on his third feature, Housekeeping For Beginners, about a queer woman who reluctantly becomes a mother to her partner’s child.

Of An Age represents a great, global introduction to Stolevski, Anton, and Green—three names we anticipate we’ll be hearing a lot more about in the year to come.

Of An Age opens in theaters everywhere on February 17.

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