From the beginning of his career, casting has been Wes Anderson’s greatest strength. He’s had an incredible trajectory, graduating from his roots of simply using the performers available to him within a three block radius of the flop house on Throckmorton Street in Dallas he was sharing with similarly broke friends (including Owen Wilson, and occasionally his little brother Luke) when he made a short film about two Texas s***heels suffering from terminal ennui who half-heartedly take up a life of crime.

Anderson is a filmmaker who historically seems most comfortable around familiar faces, returning to the same actors over and over again, occasionally indoctrinating new faces into the fold and making them a part of the team. For the criticisms he’s faced as an icy and impersonal writer, he clearly has forged loyalty and enduring love among a community of actors.

The most notable omission from this set, of course, is Jason Schwartzman, who has a long list of film and television credits (including eight Anderson films) but somehow has never appeared on a trading card.

(The first two paragraphs above, and most of the notes are from the August 2023 GQ article The Definitive Ranking of Wes Anderson’s Players at https://www.gq.com/story/wes-anderson-movies-actors-ranked-asteroid-city.)