Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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VICTORIA BECKHAM
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MICHAEL GANDOLFINI
LUCIA BELL-EPSTEIN
Photography by LUCIA BELL-EPSTEIN

GRIFFIN DUNNE

ACTOR & WRITER

The actor, writer, and director was born into the lap of American literary and cinema lore. His recent offerings—last year’s memoir  The Friday Afternoon Club and this winter’s mid-life crisis dramedy,  Ex-Husbands—make lasting contributions to both fields.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? I don’t know about “trademark,” but I rarely leave home without wearing my extensive collection of T-shirts that bear artwork from old rock bands, heavyweight fights, and obscure beer brands from all over the world.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Sadly, I already hit it out of the park with two movies I made in the ’80s. An American Werewolf in London was the first film to alternate between humor and horror. Almost all horror flicks since are designed to scare the shit out of you and make you laugh for comic relief. After Hours invented a whole new genre I call “anxiety comedies,” which have paved the way for all the “worst day of your life” movies that followed.

"It is my hope that people will return to the box office to see the latest from filmmakers ... just as we used to before streaming and Covid chained our fat asses to a sofa."

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? It is my hope that people will return to the box office to see the latest from filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky, Sean Baker, and Brady Corbet, just as we used to before streaming and Covid chained our fat asses to a sofa.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? I ask myself to stop questioning and follow the instincts that made me want to work on the project in the first place.

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VICTORIA BECKHAM
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MICHAEL GANDOLFINI