Do we like Julian Dennison?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record and some real good, but he is early in his career and there is not much public record on the big issues.
Julian Dennison is the Kiwi kid who became a proper screen name. He got into acting around age 11 and has now been at it for about 13 years. He is best known at home for Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Uproar, and abroad for working with Ryan Reynolds and Millie Bobby Brown.
The formative thread is identity. Te Ao Māori News reported that he grew up at a mostly Pākeha school and was still reconnecting with his Māori heritage when he made Uproar. In it he plays a part-Māori teenager caught up in the 1981 Springbok tour protests in Dunedin, and he said his mum was protesting at the 1981 Hamilton game.
On scandals, there is honestly nothing to tell. Searches for court cases, lawsuits, accusations and controversy turned up no reporting about him, just a lot of other celebrities' messes. That's a clean sheet, but also a short record for a bloke still in his early twenties.
The harm check came up empty too. Nothing he has said or done in the sources we read targets LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, people of colour or the planet. His recent credits, including A24's Y2K and the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, are mainstream studio work, and his next listed project is a Millie Bobby Brown rom-com. We found no pattern of working with people who push harm.
Nothing new on him lately that's a controversy. In January 2026 Te Ao Māori News reported he has started DJing, playing Rhythm and Vines in December, with the romantic comedy Just Picture It next. He is not a political animal on the evidence we found, so it's fair to say we don't know much about his views on the big issues.
The good stuff is real. In 2019 he was named the 40 Hour Famine ambassador for World Vision New Zealand and travelled to refugee settlements in northern Uganda to meet young South Sudanese refugees. He told Seven Sharp in 2018 he wanted to be seen as an actor who can change the world, and in 2023 he urged young people to be proud of who they are.