Noah Schnapp
Noah Schnapp is an actor, born 2004.
Noah Cameron Schnapp arrived on screen twice in the same year. Born in New York City in 2004, he played Roger Donovan in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies in 2015 and voiced Charlie Brown in The Peanuts Movie the same year, an absurd pair of first jobs for a child barely into double figures and a fair indication of how quickly he was taken seriously.
Everything since orbits Will Byers in Stranger Things, which he played from 2016 until the show finished in 2025, growing from a child into an adult inside the role. He shares a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award for it. The part is a genuinely awkward assignment: Will is the character the series does things to rather than the one who drives it, so the acting is mostly reaction, and Schnapp's strongest work is silent and in close-up, watching something arrive that he cannot describe. When the show finally gave him dialogue that mattered, in the later seasons, he handled it without the strain you often hear from young actors promoted out of the reaction shot.
The work outside it has been modest and mostly light: Tommy in Hubie Halloween, Jo in Waiting for Anya, the title role in Abe, a lead in the thriller The Tutor, the voice of Kai in an animated feature, plus the documentary about Charles Schulz and the Stranger Things retrospectives. Thirteen credits is a small catalogue for someone this widely recognised, which is the honest shape of a career built almost entirely on one very large show.
Movies (9)
TV (4)
Where to start with Noah Schnapp
The obvious answer is also the correct one, though Stranger Things rewards being watched with his job in mind rather than the plot. Will spends long stretches unable to explain what is happening to him, and Schnapp has to make incomprehension legible without ever tipping into mugging. Seasons two and four are where he is given the most and repays it.
Bridge of Spies is the other essential, and it takes about four minutes: a boy at a kitchen table in a Cold War panic, directed by Spielberg, played completely straight. The Peanuts Movie from the same year is worth a listen because Charlie Brown is a voice that has defeated plenty of child actors.
After that the pickings thin. The Tutor is the most grown-up thing he has attempted, Abe the most personal, and Hubie Halloween purely a bit of fun. Who Are You, Charlie Brown? closes the loop nicely.