RUARIDH MOLLICA WALKS through the front door of the Hearst Tower wide-eyed and wearing all black. His mood, however, is as bright as the building’s lobby, where the morning sun shines through the skyscraper’s oversized windows. For the 26-year-old Scottish actor, it seems like everything is exciting.
He marvels at the waterfalls that frame the escalators. The weather outside is perfect. How long has he been in New York?
Maybe he got here yesterday, he wonders out loud. Maybe it was the day before… He’s never been to Central Park, just a few blocks away, and he’s eager to see what it’s all about. Mollica has a busy day ahead of him, he says, but it’ll end with a jolt—New York Comic Con.
He’s excited to see all the costumes. Mollica plays Tommy Shepherd—the mysterious, immaculately conceived, and quick (both literally as his superpower and in terms of his wits) son of Wanda Maximoff and Vision on the Disney+ series VisionQuest. At 26, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has basically been around his entire life.
Iron Man came out when he was just 8 years old. And in an industry where getting a foot in the door without a famous or fame-adjacent parent feels more impossible than ever, Mollica seems to have found a way. He worked on a TV show as a child actor and loved it, but studied computer science in college, appearing in a short film in his final year.
Eventually, though, the acting bug reactivated. He still had the same agent from years back—and that led directly to VisionQuest. While in Los Angeles visiting friends, Mollica filmed a self-taped audition for what he knew of only as an untitled Marvel show, with lines stuck on the wall in front of him.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
