Tom Holland
Tom Holland, best known for playing Peter Parking in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would make a good Link for the same reasons that Timothée Chalamet would. To start, he’s a good actor. He’s charismatic and likable, all things Link should be. Second, he just has that Link look. He’s slim and young in the face. Maybe it’s just cause I’m used to seeing Holland as Peter Parker, but there’s something of the innocent teenager hanging around him, even though both he and Chalamet are pushing 30.
There’s another word we could use for Link’s look: it’s somewhat androgenous, meaning that he toes the line between male and female, visually speaking. And that’s not just me saying that. Speaking to TIME in 2016, ahead of the release of the landmark Zelda game Breath of the Wild, producer Eiji Aonuma — who’s been in charge of The Legend of Zelda games for decades — said that Link looks “gender neutral” by design:
"I wanted Link to be gender neutral. I wanted the player to think ‘Maybe Link is a boy or a girl.’ If you saw Link as a guy, he’d have more of a feminine touch. Or vice versa, if you related to Link as a girl, it was with more of a masculine aspect. I really wanted the designer to encompass more of a gender-neutral figure. So I’ve always thought that for either female or male players, I wanted them to be able to relate to Link…As far as gender goes, Link is definitely a male, but I wanted to create a character where anybody would be able to relate to the character."
So Link’s androgyny serves the same function as his muteness: it helps people in the audience relate to him, excluding as few fans as possible. That’s why actors who look like Chalamet and Holland — slim, softer, twinkish — seem like good fits. They look approachable, open, friendly, but they’re good enough actors to put some steel into Link’s spine when the story calls for it.
Personally, I think Chalamet would make a better Link than Holland; I think he brings a mild current of danger that could be interesting onscreen. But both come with the baggage of being big stars. What if we looked at someone with a bit less name recognition?