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Whether it was pop stars, athletes and Hollywood A-listers baring all or real-life heroes and fearless campaigners … Guardian photographers captured the people behind this year’s biggest stories and most revealing profiles
‘Matt being hot is problematic’ ... Nick Cave and Matt Smith for What’s On magazine Photograph: Linda Nylind/The GuardianFri 26 Dec 2025 09.30 CET
Miss Frisky by Murdo MacLeod
Miss Frisky, the Edinburgh festival fringe’s power-diva, reflects on her success at the Camera Obscura and World of Illusions on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Buy a print. You can see more of Murdo’s fringe photographs here
Jamie Lee Curtis by Mary Rozzi
Generations of women have been disfigured by ‘the cosmeceutical industrial complex’, said Jamie Lee Curtis in an interview by Emma Brockes for Saturday magazine, as she railed against plastic surgery and Hollywood’s age problem – and explained how, having finally found freedom at 66, she was fighting back. Mary Rozzi’s portrait of the actor earned the issue the British Society of Magazine Editors’ cover of the year (newspaper supplements) award. Read the piece
Penn Badgley by Benedict Evans
‘I hated my body and wanted a different one’: the actor Penn Badgley spoke about dysmorphia, sex scenes and playing a serial killer, in an interview with Emine Saner. He starred as the psychopath Joe Goldberg in the hit Netflix show You throughout his 30s. And as he said goodbye to the role, he opened up about celebrity, controversy and masculinity. Read the piece
CMAT (Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson) by Suki Dhanda
‘Everyone else in music needs a kick up the hole!’ said the forthright Irish pop star when she was interviewed by Alexis Petridis in June, and shared her views on trans rights, body shaming, capitalism and more. Read the piece
Rami Malek by Hollie Fernando
The actor, who became a star after his turns as Freddie Mercury and a Bond villain, talked to Charlotte Edwardes in January about why he was turning to Greek tragedy on the London stage. He also spoke about his unruly youth in 90s Los Angeles, his experiences of racism, and still feeling like an outsider: ‘I’m white passing, but growing up in LA, we definitely didn’t fit in.’ Read the piece
Adrien Brody by Antonio Olmos
Twenty-two years after his Oscar-winning performance in The Pianist, Adrien Brody earned his second Academy Award for his starring role in the post-Holocaust epic The Brutalist. When it was released in January this year, he talked to Danny Leigh about the film as well as renovating a castle, unfulfilled yearnings, and making his parents happy. Read the piece
Pearly Phillis by Owen Harvey
This shot comes from a picture essay by Owen Harvey about the pearly kings and queens of London, in their 150th year. Read the piece
Ocean Vuong by Anselm Ebulue
The On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous author Ocean Vuong talked to Alex Needham about exploring his working-class roots for the ambitious followup, The Emperor of Gladness, and revealed how Buddhism – and Björk – have helped him handle his literary fame and grief’ Read the piece
Leslie Jones by David Levene
‘You think God didn’t make gay men?’ asked comedian Leslie Jones in an interview with Zoe Williams in July, before going on tour in the US. She spoke about religion, grief, getting famous at 47 (she was Saturday Night Live’s oldest hire), and the torrent of abuse she received for her role in the Ghostbusters reboot. Read the piece
Nick Cave and Matt Smith by Linda Nylind
‘Matt Smith being hot is quite problematic,’ said Nick Cave, about the TV adaptation of his scandalous novel The Death of Bunny Munro, in which Smith stars as a sex addict on the run with his son. They spoke with Shaad D’Souza in November about Kylie regrets, bad dads, and how to do a strip club scene with a nine-year-old. Read the piece
Fabio Wardley by Tom Jenkins
‘My Netflix show would be White Collar to World Champion,’ the boxer (and former Ipswich academy footballer) Fabio Wardley told Don McRae, opening up about his boxing journey ahead of his fight with Joseph Parker in October. Wardley won that match, and is now the WBO heavyweight world champion. Read the piece
Bryony Kimmings by Peter Flude
The performance artist and theatre-maker Bryony Kimmings talked to Miriam Gillinson in October about confronting climate catastrophe while also wanting to provide ‘a great night out’ for theatre-goers. She produced three arresting projects for stage and screen this year, each cultivating hope for the condition of the planet. Read the piece
Lukas Gage by Maria Spann
The White Lotus and Companion actor Lukas Gage spoke about meds, trauma, abuse, family dysfunction and filming TV’s most sexually frank scene in an interview with Tim Jonze upon the publication of his ‘premature celebrity memoir’ in October. Read the piece
Karl Ove Knausgård by Kate Peters
‘I knew I was doing something I shouldn’t,’ said the author Karl Ove Knausgård about the moral implications of his autofictional epic My Struggle, in a wide-ranging interview with Chris Power in November. He also spoke about the dark side of ambition, his life since moving to London, and the psychopath at the heart of his new novel, The School of Night. Read the piece
Natalie Dormer by Christian Sinibaldi
Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer talked to Emine Saner about playing Anna Karenina on stage in June. From Anne Boleyn to Lady W to Game of Thrones, Dormer has played tough women who kick against society’s constraints. Read the piece
Ethan Hawke with Richard Linklater by Sarah Lee
Actor Ethan Hawke and director Richard Linklater spoke with Xan Brooks about their 11th film together, the biopic Blue Moon, when it was released last month. They talked about power, musicals, the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman, combovers and what being bald and 5ft tall does to your flirting skills. Read the piece
Darruy Briggs by Carly Earl
At Gumbaynggirr Giingana Freedom School – the first Aboriginal bilingual school in New South Wales in Australia – success is judged by an unconventional metric: happiness. Darruy, photographed for a story about the school by Ella Archibald-Binge, is in year six. Read the piece
Maddie Cowey by Alicia Canter
Maddie was 18 when she was diagnosed with alveolar soft part sarcoma, a rare and incurable form of cancer that attacks the soft tissues of the body. This photograph, taken in London’s Tooting Common, was part of photographer Alicia Canter’s four-month project on assisted dying. Read the piece
Nadya Tolokonnikova by Philip Cheung
‘I was thrilled when they put me in solitary,’ said Pussy Riot’s Nadya in an interview with Philip Oltermann, as her latest art show opened in Berlin in June. The artist has spent time at a penal colony for her work, and she spoke about Putin, turning her prison cell into art – and joining OnlyFans. Read the piecePhotograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian
Allen Jones by Sam Frost
‘I think my fetish furniture hampered my career,’ admitted the British pop artist and sculptor Allen Jones, when he looked back over his extraordinary career in an interview with Zoe Williams – from getting thrown out of art school to covering Kate Moss in fibreglassRead the piece
Sue Tilley by Graeme Robertson
Sue Tilley, also known as Big Sue, modelled for some of Lucian Freud’s most spectacular portraits. She talked to Jonathan Jones about sex, cash and clubbing with Leigh Bowery, when her book about the performance artist and fashion icon was published in February. Read the piece
Johnny Vegas by Christopher Thomond
‘You’ve got to be hungry for it, and right now, I’m hungry for sculpture,’ said the comedian Johnny Vegas in an interview with Emine Saner, as his work went on show in Stoke-on-Trent during the British Ceramics Biennial. He spoke about agoraphobia, ADHD and finding a new lease of life at 54 by embracing his first love, pottery. Read the piece
Pip Fallow by Ed Alcock
Pip Fallow is the son and grandson of miners, all born and bred in the village of Blackhall in northeast England. He left school, illiterate, on the very day the mine closed in 1981. Forty years later, he published his first book, Dragged Up Proppa, a memoir of growing up in the forgotten north. He founded the Proppa Jobs campaign in 2023 with the aim of bringing industry back to the north-east of England. See more shots in this gallery
Mindu Hornick by Joel Goodman
Holocaust survivor and Jewish refugee Mindu Hornick, 96, avoided execution in the gas chambers of Auschwitz concentration camp. She was one of three survivors who told their stories to Kate Connolly in January. Read the piece
Patrick Dougher by Magali Delporte
‘I marvel I have any brain cells left,’ confessed artist Patrick Dougher in an interview with Steve Rose when his memoir Concrete Dreamland was published in May. He spoke about drugs, drink, homelessness, blowing his big break with Sade – and his comeback. Read the piece
Esther Ghey by Fabio De Paola
‘I forgive the girl and boy for what they’ve done. If I didn’t, the hate would eat away at me,’ said Esther Ghey, speaking to Simon Hattenstone in February about life after the murder of her daughter Brianna, a transgender teenager who was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds. The killers had been radicalised on the dark web, while the victim was trapped in an online world of her own. Read the pieceExplore more on these topics
