Rise to Fame
Taking the Star Trek reboot meant turning down White Jazz, a noir project he'd been circling, to step into William Shatner's command chair. That bet paid off. The 2009 film worked because J.J. Abrams let him play Kirk as a reckless kid rather than a monument, and Pine had the charisma to make the arrogance feel earned rather than obnoxious. Before that, he'd done Princess Diaries 2 and a few forgettable rom-coms. Star Trek was the line between background noise and movie star.
In the Spotlight
The Don't Worry Darling press conference at Venice became its own spectacle: a video appeared to show Harry Styles spitting on him, he went viral for visibly zoning out, and the circus overshadowed a movie that turned out to be decent but not worth the noise. He confirmed Styles didn't spit. He's attached to a Noah Hawley crime thriller, an Italian-language drama that debuted at Venice 2025, and a romantic comedy-drama with Jenny Slate. The meme outlasted the movie.
Side Notes
His maternal grandmother, Anne Gwynne, was a Universal scream queen in the 1940s, among the earliest actresses to build a career out of horror. His father Robert Pine played Sergeant Getraer on CHiPs and once appeared alongside William Shatner in a TV movie decades before his son would take Kirk's seat. That's either family destiny or a very good trivia answer. His mother left acting to become a psychotherapist. The whole family eventually found exits from the industry, except him.