For Nicola Peltz, it was the kind of career moment she had been waiting to claim in her own name.
After years of headlines casting her first as Brooklyn Beckham’s wife and as the daughter of billionaire food magnate Nelson Peltz, the actress was finally being recognised for her work on screen.
Wearing a dark purple Balenciaga dress and beaming at Casa Cinema Giovani last Saturday night, Nicola was named Rising Star at a Venice Film Festival-time ceremony, with Brooklyn, her mother Claudia, father Nelson and brother Bradley watching proudly from the audience.
For the Peltz-Beckham brand, the honour marked a notable boost — especially as the same event also celebrated legendary Oscar-winning actress Faye Dunaway, 85, with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
‘Thank you so much for this immense honour,’ Nicola said as she accepted the award. ‘To receive an award at the Venice Film Festival is something I will carry with me for the rest of my career.’
But away from the spotlight, the accolade has raised eyebrows among some film industry insiders. Privately, they have questioned what Nicola has achieved to warrant the prize from Kinéo, an independent organisation that holds its annual awards in Venice during the city’s celebrated film festival.
After years of being described as Brooklyn Beckham’s wife, Nicola Peltz was recognised for her acting work during a ceremony in Venice
Wearing a dark purple Balenciaga dress, she was named Rising Star at an event attended by Brooklyn, her mother Claudia, father Nelson and brother Bradley
After all, Nicola first appeared on screen, in a Danny DeVito comedy as we shall see, when she was 11. She is now 31 years old.
‘It is unbelievable that anyone would give Nicola a Rising Star award when she’s in her 30s,’ scoffed an industry insider.
‘That aside though, some of her films have never been released. Her super-rich father has bankrolled her career for years; it is nepotism at its absolute worst. You have to wonder whether Nelson has got something to do with this, or else family connections.’
‘Nicola has no shame though, none at all,’ the source adds. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any humility or any embarrassment at all. It’s so cringeworthy.’
It is perhaps not a surprise that the chiefs of both the Venice Film Festival and Kinéo are keeping quiet about the award.
I approached both Kinéo and the Venice Film Festival on three separate occasions within 24 hours, asking them to explain their reasons for choosing Nicola for the gong, how the decision was reached and whether she or the Peltz family had any involvement in her selection or the event.
On all occasions, both refused to comment.
Nicola’s last film Lola, which she also wrote and directed, was given only a limited theatrical and digital release, with Box Office Mojo recording a worldwide cinema gross of $648
Billionaire food tycoon Nelson spent the wait fanning himself in the heat and periodically retreating indoors, before returning to his seat to watch his daughter’s acceptance speech
Their silence has done little to quell the astonishment surrounding the award.
It is not helpful to her cause that Nicola’s acting career has so far featured two Razzie nominations – the spoof awards honouring Hollywood’s worst performances – a succession of critically savaged projects and a directorial debut which recorded a worldwide theatrical gross of just $648.
And she first received a ‘Rising Star’ award from CinemaCon back in 2014, when she was 19 and preparing for the release of Transformers: Age Of Extinction.
More than a decade later, with no recent cinematic hit and her latest film still awaiting a release date, it seems she is rising all over again!
By comparison, Jodie Foster had won two Best Actress Oscars before turning 30. Jennifer Lawrence had collected four Academy Award nominations and one win by 25, while Natalie Portman was 29 when she won for Black Swan.
By 30, Emma Stone had an Oscar and three nominations to her name.
Kinéo says its winners are chosen through a combination of public voting and an international industry jury. Yet ‘Rising Star’ does not appear among its regular listed categories, and Nicola was not included on its public ballot.
No shortlist, vote tally or particular performance behind her selection has been disclosed.
Ahead of the ceremony, Kinéo praised her on Instagram, writing: ‘In recent years, the American actress, screenwriter and producer has attracted growing international attention thanks to increasingly multifaceted roles both in front of and behind the camera.’
It was a glowing tribute, but it stopped short of naming any of those roles.
The Peltz family, meanwhile, had ample time to prepare for her big moment.
Nicola’s award was reportedly announced five times before she finally appeared, prompting one presenter to call out: ‘Where is our beautiful star?’
Brooklyn, 27, was later seen clasping his wife by the arm and guiding her towards the small podium in the gardens of the Casa Cinema Giovani.
Nelson, 84, had spent the wait fanning himself in the 30-degree heat and periodically retreating indoors, but he returned to his seat in time to watch his daughter’s acceptance speech.
Nicola’s last film was Lola, released in 2024, which she wrote, directed and starred in.
Despite being born into almost unimaginable wealth, she cast herself as an impoverished young woman working as a stripper and battling drug addiction while desperately attempting to protect her younger brother from their abusive family background.
It was given only a limited theatrical and digital release, with Box Office Mojo recording a worldwide cinema gross of $648.
The project was criticised as ‘poverty porn’ and branded a ‘vanity project’ by viewers who questioned Nicola’s understanding of the deprived world she was attempting to portray.
‘I felt like the whole movie was based around her looking pretty and giving her flattering close ups,’ said one critic, while another slammed her ‘dead-eyed’ acting.
One Instagram user told Nicola: ‘I wish rich people like yourself would stay away from trying to tell stories like this. You have no idea what this character’s reality is like.
‘I find it offensive to the working-class women who are truly living this reality that have to see a billionaire indulge themselves into a dream acting role.’
Indeed, even this deeply personal passion project arrived with an impeccable family connection.
Legendary 28-time Grammy winner Quincy Jones, the producer behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller, worked on the film’s music.
His daughter, model Kenya Kinski-Jones, 33, is married to Nicola’s elder brother Will Peltz, 40.
Nelson, meanwhile, attended the film’s Los Angeles premiere, where he was joined by his friend, controversial tech billionaire Elon Musk, 55.
The actress’s most recent television appearance came in the final episode of Ryan Murphy’s body-horror series The Beauty, which premiered in January.
The 11-part series boasted a sprawling cast including Bella Hadid, Ashton Kutcher, Evan Peters, Rebecca Hall and Meghan Trainor, but received some blistering reviews.
Metro critic Rebecca Cook awarded it one star beneath the headline: ‘Ryan Murphy’s offensive new TV show is nearly unwatchable.’
‘I was not prepared for the endurance challenge that was soldiering through these 11 episodes,’ she added.
Other reviewers accused the series of borrowing heavily from the Oscar-winning body-horror film The Substance, while describing it as ‘excessive’, ‘dumbed down’ and ‘unhinged’.
And the reception was merely the latest in a series of difficult critical encounters during Nicola’s career.
The film she made her debut in opposite Danny DeVito in the 2006 Christmas comedy Deck The Halls, currently holds a paltry 6 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Four years later, she played Katara in M Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, which was dismissed by one critic as an ‘abomination of cinema’ and has a 5 per cent rating on the review-aggregation website.
Nicola received a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Supporting Actress for her performance.
Her biggest role came in 2014 when she appeared alongside Mark Wahlberg in Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age Of Extinction.
The blockbuster made more than $1.1billion worldwide but proved significantly less popular with critics, earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 18 per cent.
Nicola was again nominated for Worst Supporting Actress at the Razzies.
It was during the promotional campaign for Transformers that she and co-star Jack Reynor were named CinemaCon’s Rising Stars of 2014.
Then aged 19, Nicola was being positioned as one of Hollywood’s most promising new actresses.
In the 12 years since, her credits have included supporting roles in Youth In Oregon, Back Roads, Our House and Netflix romantic comedy Holidate.
She also appeared in Bates Motel between 2013 and 2015 and had single-episode roles in Marvel series Inhumans and drama Welcome to Chippendales.
Yet despite her repeated attempts to make it in the film industry, Nicola is arguably now better known for being Nelson’s youngest daughter and for her highly publicised marriage to Brooklyn, the eldest son of Sir David and Lady Beckham. And that’s the truth whether she likes it or not.
