With a population of about 1.8 million, comparable to that of West Virginia, the Baltic country of Latvia is punching well above its weight in terms of cinematic breakouts. Case in point: Flow‘s Oscar for best animated feature in 2025. Now, an emerging actor from Latvia is taking an increasingly global spotlight and is gearing up for his Cannes debut: Kārlis Arnolds Avots.

You may have seen him in the dramedy series Soviet Jeans as protagonist Renārs, a rock’n’roll fan who sets up a secret underground jeans factory in a psychiatric hospital in 1979. He won the best actor honor in the international section of the 2024 edition of Series Mania for the role. Or you may have caught him in January, which won the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival award for best international narrative feature and saw him play an aspiring filmmaker in the capital Riga, who finds himself caught up in the political turbulence of the January 1991 struggle for Latvian independence.

If not, his Cannes debut should do it. The 29-year-old leads Ulya, from January director Viesturs Kairišs, which world premieres in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section on May 21. Avots, who had the idea for and co-wrote the film, portrays legendary female Latvian basketball player Uļjana “Ulya” Semjonova in her journey from a rural life and feeling awkward about her height and confused about her identity to becoming a basketball star. She ended up winning the Soviet Union’s national championship and the European Champions Cup 15 times each, the Olympic Gold medal with the USSR in 1976 and 1980, and she became the first non-U.S. woman in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Avots didn’t have to look far for his subject. After all, Avots knew Ulya, and more closely than many people. “I’ve known her all my life, and when I moved to Riga, she became my neighbor,” the actor tells THR. “Her story moved me so much, and I just realized that this is my Hamlet. Actors are always searching for stories that can emotionally disarm them. And for me, this was the one where I could be as honest as possible.”

What drew him in was not the trophies but the person behind them. “Before she became this champion of the world, she became the champion of her inner world,” Avots explains. “I’ve always been moved by stories about misfits, about square pegs in round holes. Among my favorite films of all time are Werner Herzog’s [The Enigma of] Kaspar Hauser and David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. I felt like an outcast, like all of us who are too skinny, too broad, or way too tall or short, or just too different from the standard format. So I could empathize with Ulya and feel the film is really universal.”

At 197 centimeters, or about 6’5″, the actor is not quite as tall as Semjonova’s 213 centimeters, or 7′. But he had a different challenge in portraying her awkward movements early in her career. “I’m quite an athletic guy,” Avots shares with THR. “I can dunk. So, I had to find her different rhythm and get my body closer to hers. For two years, I didn’t lift any weights. That helped me to move away from myself and into the character.” The fact that she was left-handed and he is right-handed also helped a bit, he notes.

Playing a woman was never something he dwelt on. “I don’t believe an actor acts with their gender,” he explains. “They act with their soul.” The stars he mentions as role models come as no surprise in that context. “In recent years, I have been really inspired by Sandra Hüller, who is a very exciting actor to watch. Seeing Jessie Buckley in Hamnet also inspired me so much. And Joaquin Phoenix has always been a great role model because he can get into that zone where you can feel there is no acting at all. You get thrilled and stunned for a moment by this complete honesty.”

Research was equally vital. Avots spoke at length with Semjonova herself and her teammates to have “the backstory ingrained in my skin” and printed out pictures of the basketballer in various body positions and with different facial expressions. “I just tried to mirror the pictures and collect these positions, states and expressions,” he emphasizes. “I wanted to be as authentic as possible, because I felt enormous responsibility in portraying her because she was putting her trust in me.”

The legendary athlete died this January, so she never got to see the film. “I was thinking about that a lot,” Avots says. “But I feel what’s most important is that she knew there was a film being made about her by someone who truly loves her. And she saw how my eyes lit up when I spoke about her story, and with how much love I wanted to tell it.”

Speaking of love. Acting wasn’t Avots’ first love. “I tried to become a sportsman, but I was constantly changing sports, from basketball to volleyball, from volleyball to snowboarding, changing sports like clothes,” he says with a smile. “I understood this would lead nowhere. And I realized that acting always starts all over again with any new role, and that works with my urge to constantly change. With acting, that’s everything.”

Avots was ready to start as a puppet actor student at the Latvian Academy of Culture when there were no classical acting spots available, but he was told he was too tall. “Man, we can’t hide you” behind the puppet stage, he recalls being told. “We can see your head all the time.” He stuck to his dream and sat in on classes, though. “I was so desperate to act, so I somehow made my way in,” he shares. “I always go through windows, not doors. I’m an idea-driven guy who really desperately goes after something if my mind gets occupied by it.”

The industry has taken note. In 2025, the actor was among the 10 up-and-coming European acting talents selected for the European Shooting Stars showcase at the Berlin Film Festival. Now, he is ready for his Cannes close-up, sharing that he couldn’t sleep until 4 a.m. after finding out that Ulya was selected. “It has been a dream of mine,” Avots tells THR. “I felt I that it could land somewhere special. So I’m very happy.”

There is plenty more ahead for the rising Latvian star. Avots is excited for Amazon Prime Video’s series Bloodaxe from Vikings creator Michael Hirst, which is expected to be released this year and will give a global audience a chance to see him in action. What can he share about his role of Egil Skallagrímsson? “It’s a crazy character,” he says with a laugh. “It’s one of those roles an actor wants to play, a great addition to the company of anti-heroes in film and TV series history. He is a Joker-type of viking who is a poet and a killer and a ladies’ man and a sociopath, all at the same time. He’s a misfit, once again –  an outcast.”

Avots also has a role in Honey, an upcoming BBC and ZDF Cold War spy thriller from producer Sid Gentle Films that has been described as a prequel to its hit show Killing Eve. He portrays a young Konstantin, the role played in Killing Eve by Kim Bodnia.

And then there is Kill Jackie, a Prime Video thriller series starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Daniel Ings, expected to premiere this year. “That experience was amazing,” Avots tells THR about the shoot. “Being alongside these actors was quite nerve-racking. But at the same time, I found that I could work on that level. And it felt like a big, friendly community.” Among the things he got to do on the set was walking around Bilbao, Spain in 40-degree heat with a gun. “I am the anti-hero, but with a heart,” says Avots about his role. “Playing the bad guy with a heart seems to be my cup of tea.”

In the case of his Cannes film Ulya, though, he slips into the role of a real-life star who overcame the odds. “If you call one person a freak, then we are all freaks,” Avots tells THR. “Instead of pointing fingers, I think we have to celebrate our differences more.”