The actress has picked up a Bafta nomination for her debut film role in One Battle After Another
First films do not come much higher profile than One Battle After Another. But Chase Infiniti says she did not quite grasp what it meant to make her feature debut on the epic Warner Bros action drama – nominated for 13 Oscars and 14 Baftas – “until I was in the car pulling up to the LA premiere”.
Even now, says the big-screen neophyte, acting opposite the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, with Paul Thomas Anderson directing, is “something I’m still trying to wrap my head around”.
To land the role of Willa – the plucky but confused teenage daughter of the film’s central character, a washed-up revolutionary played by DiCaprio – Infiniti went through a six-month audition process involving multiple callbacks and camera tests as well as chemistry reads with DiCaprio and co-star Regina Hall.
The reads were designed to gauge the rapport between the newcomer and her potential castmates but, says Infiniti: “They felt like the coolest kind of masterclass. I remember leaving the room thinking, ‘I would love this part, but even if I don’t get it, I’ll take that with me forever.’”
The audition process also featured a series of solo and group karate classes that tested Infiniti’s readiness to do her own stunts and handle some intense scenes with Penn, who plays the story’s manic military antagonist.
Connecting with Anderson came easily, according to Infiniti. “He gave me direction when I needed it and there were times when he completely handed it over to me,” she explains. “He trusted me with Willa. He was like, ‘You know her. Whatever you think is for her is for her.’”
Acting from experience
That trust allowed the first-time feature actress to use her own experience as the child of a Black father and white mother to inform the character, whose mother in the story is a free-spirited Black revolutionary played by Teyana Taylor.
“The thing I touched on the most was growing up mixed race in an area where you’re the only one that looks like you. I remember what it was like being 16 and not feeling I fully fitted in. I used that to fuel Willa’s understanding of who she is and what her background is, not knowing her dad’s full story or her mom’s full story.”
Though she is on screen for less than a third of the film’s run time, Infiniti’s performance in One Battle has earned the 25-year-old nominations for the Bafta Film Awards’ leading actress prize, its rising star award, and the lead female category of SAG-AFTRA’s Actors Awards.
The recognition bodes well for the screen career of a former theatre kid who was born and raised in the Midwest US city of Indianapolis.
Infiniti first tread the boards at the tender age of 10, appearing in summer stock and local theatre productions throughout her high school years. She studied musical theatre at college in Chicago, and leant into her athletic nature by working after class as a kickboxing fitness trainer and forming a K-pop dance group.
She got her first screen credit (using her real first and middle names, the former taken from a character in Batman Forever, the latter from Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase) less than two years ago on Apple TV crime drama series Presumed Innocent. Besides getting her noticed for other roles, that performance, as the screen daughter to Jake Gyllenhaal’s embattled public prosecutor, won her a place in Bafta’s 2025 Breakthrough US line-up.
Rising profile
Infiniti’s growing reputation has already landed her two projects, filmed since she completed the One Battle shoot in mid-2024. The Testaments, set to stream on Hulu and Disney+ in April, sees her co-star in a coming-of-age story based on Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning follow-up novel to The Handmaid’s Tale (itself the basis for the eponymous Emmy-winning series).
The Julia Set is an independent feature with Infiniti playing closer to her own age as the title character, a clever undergraduate preparing for a highly competitive maths competition. Shot in the UK late last year, the drama (sold internationally by HanWay Films) has Niki Byrne directing a cast that also includes Christopher Briney, Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. “I fell in love with the script and I’ve been with it a long time,” says Infiniti, who also serves as one of the project’s executive producers.
Looking ahead, however, the One Battle breakthrough star is biding her time and keeping an open mind about where her career goes next.
“I don’t have any specific ideas about being in this type of film, playing this type of part,” she insists. “I just know I want to keep doing it if I have the opportunity. There’s things I’m reading. But I’m also a person who believes the things that are meant for me will find me. So I’m not in a place where I feel rushed to jump into the next thing.”
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