After years on the hypercompetitive audition circuit (including one near-miss as McLovin in Superbad), 21-year-old actor Dustin Ingram finds himself breaking through this week as a leading man in the indie Meet Monica Velour. The film features Ingram as Tobe, a young film geek with a little more unusual interest than, say, Star Wars: Tobe instead obsesses over 1970s porn star Monica Velour (Kim Cattrall).
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In the four years since Canadian actor Reece Thompson starred in Jeffrey Blitz's crowd-pleasing Sundance entry Rocket Science, he's graduated from stuttering his way through a high school debate tourney to romancing Kat Dennings (in the forthcoming May indie Daydream Nation) and knocking up Hilary Duff (in the TBA indie Bloodworth). This April he joins forces with rising star Michael Angarano (Red State, Homework) to play Marshall, a straight-laced emotional cripple who accompanies best friend Sam (Angarano) on a weekend trip to win back the older woman of his dreams (Uma Thurman) in Max Winkler's offbeat feature debut, Ceremony.
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Brit Marling studied economics at Georgetown and might have been an environmental activist or banker in another life if she hadn't answered the siren call of Los Angeles and moved west to risk it all as an actor. And what a payoff: having co-written, produced, and starred in two critically acclaimed films at Sundance (the sci-fi romance Another Earth and the wonderfully hard-to-define cult drama Sound of My Voice), Marling's smack dab in the middle of her well-deserved breakout moment. Movieline caught up with Marling at SXSW to discuss borderline illegal guerrilla filmmaking tricks, taking professional risks, and avoiding the "morally-corrupt swamp" that is Hollywood.
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The most striking observation made during a recent chat with Shiloh Fernandez is that the 26-year-old is a gentle and thoughtful soul in person -- sincere, open, and regretful of comments he made recently about his run-in with Kristen Stewart years ago when reading for the role of Edward Cullen in Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight. Fernandez may not have been meant to play the famous sparkling vampire, but he got another shot at working with Hardwicke when she cast him as the village bad boy in Red Riding Hood, the first romantic lead role in his young career to date. (Plus, he's an avid Movieline reader. So, you know -- bonus points!)
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Beneath the wanton, CG-aided destruction caused by invading alien hordes in this week's sci-fi actioner Battle: Los Angeles there lies a deeply human core: the bond among soldiers under siege, banding together in the face of certain extinction. And as the naive Pfc. Shaun Lenihan, 26-year-old Canadian actor Noel Fisher is the face of Battle: LA's humanity -- a too-young Marine thrown into the harrowing chaos of war, separated from his unit, with only his rifle to cling to as terror sets in.
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When Ghostface starts picking off teens and townsfolk again in April's Scream 4, expect 22-year-old Chicago native Nico Tortorella to land somewhere near the top of your list of potential killers. Tortorella, who once compared his character Trevor to Skeet Ulrich in the original, played coy with his character's true nature with Movieline but was refreshingly candid when it came to addressing widespread rumors of behind-the-scenes drama, as well as his close ties to director Joel Schumacher and the appeal of dueling YA properties Mortal Instruments and The Hunger Games.
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Taylor Handley has been acting for exactly half of his life, but thanks to supporting turns in Columbia Pictures' alien invasion pic Battle: Los Angeles and the Texas-set Sundance indie Skateland -- both opening weeks apart in March -- he's in for the biggest month of his career. And with his profile on the rise as he builds on an already-comprehensive filmography, as the 26-year-old Southern California native put it to Movieline, "the heat is on."
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From where she's sitting -- literally, high above the rafters -- T.V. Carpio must finally feel like she's found her calling. The multitalented actress has taken a circuitous and almost accidental route to stardom, turning in stints as a would-be Olympian, a Law & Order guest star, and a professional dancer along the way, but currently she's poised to make her name in the biggest, riskiest manner imaginable: As the female lead in Julie Taymor's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
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If the breakout debuts of Ryan Kwanten, Chris and Liam Hemsworth, Isabel Lucas, and Teresa Palmer introduced a new generation of young Australian actors to Hollywood, the arrival of 22-year-old newcomer Rhys Wakefield marks the full-fledged Aussie Invasion. The young star of this week's 3D underwater actioner Sanctum, who plays a 17-year-old cave diver trying to survive and get along with his estranged father, moved to Los Angeles last week, has already worked with the highest-grossing filmmaker of all time (executive producer James Cameron), and, like a pro, has learned to keep mum on the high-profile scripts he's got piled up at home.
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First-time screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether had already earned fans among the New York art-kid scene with plays like Heddatron (Hedda Gabler meets - what else? - robots), but it was a television pilot entitled Sluts that got her on the fast track to a Hollywood screenwriting career. Sluts didn't get picked up, but it did bring her to the attention of filmmaker Ivan Reitman, who threw out an idea for her to expand into a script. The resulting F*ckbuddies hit the Black List and turned into last weekend's box office topper No Strings Attached -- not a bad way to make your Hollywood screenwriting debut.
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It's rare enough to have one film at the Sundance Film Festival, but youngster Kyle Gallner has two pretty high-profile affairs premiering in Park City, Utah later this week: Kevin Smith's horror film Red State and Elgin James' in-competition Little Birds. Not bad for a 24-year-old.
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It's one thing to have to learn the essence of a character when preparing for a role, but it's quite another to have to try and learn an entire language. That's the task Jay Chou faced when he took over as the ever-present sidekick Kato to Seth Rogen's titular superhero in Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet. Well, that and the fact that Chou -- already an internationally famous recording artist in eastern Asia -- is making his American debut in a role that also introduced the States to Bruce Lee.
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Will 2011 be the year of Claire Foy? She's getting an early-enough start: The 26-year-old British actress makes her big-screen debut this week in Season of the Witch, starring as a nameless, possibly accursed young woman whom a pair of 14th-century knights (Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman) must transport to an abbey in the hopes of curbing the Black Plague. If only it were that easy: One misfortune and suspicion after another befalls the knights' quest, threatening them, their cargo, and maybe the entirety of human civilization. All in a day's work, right?
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On the very first day of Movieline.com's launch last April, we introduced our weekly feature The Verge with the following spiel: "Ever watched a film and wondered, 'Who's that?' Now you'll know before you even have to ask. Welcome to The Verge, Movieline's weekly interview with up-and-coming actors on the verge of a serious career boost." Since that day, we've profiled 38 rising talents, and all of their profiles have only continued to surge. (Give yourself a pat on the back for getting in on the ground floor!) Here are ten of our favorites, who we can guarantee you'll be seeing more of soon:
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Barely a week past her 14th birthday, Hailee Steinfeld has accomplished a fistful of feats most of her Hollywood contemporaries would kill for. Starting with this week's True Grit, she makes in her feature-film debut as the female lead of a Coen Brothers movie. Grit's studio Paramount, meanwhile, has Steinfeld at the front of the Oscar pack in the Best Supporting Actress category. And then there's the little matter of whom she's supporting -- and whom Steinfeld matches scene for scene, tone for tone, line for dense line.
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