Which actor portrays Orson Welles in David Fincher's 2020 film Mank?

Tom Burke portrays Orson Welles in David Fincher’s 2020 film Mank. Burke’s Welles appears as the powerful young director preparing Citizen Kane while Herman J. Mankiewicz writes the screenplay that would become the center of the film’s creative and credit dispute.

Mank alternates between 1940, when Mankiewicz is recovering from a car accident and dictating the script in Victorville, and earlier Hollywood flashbacks. Burke’s performance presents Welles as charismatic, ambitious, and sharply aware of the power dynamics surrounding the project. Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz, while Charles Dance portrays newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.

The casting is easy to confuse because Mank has several prominent actors playing real Hollywood figures. Arliss Howard plays studio executive Louis B. Mayer, and Dance plays Hearst—not Welles. The film dramatizes the disputed authorship of Citizen Kane, although historians generally regard the screenplay as a collaborative work by Mankiewicz and Welles.