If I were a betting man, I might put a little cash down on Jennifer Lawrence, who's hotly tipped to take home a special acting prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival for her work in Debra Granik's Ozark drama Winter's Bone. The 19-year-old Lawrence has put in good work before in little-seen films like The Burning Plain and The Poker House, but Winter's Bone immediately announces her as a major new actress. As Ree, who struggles to provide for her brother and sister while investigating her father's disappearance, the magnetically somnambulant actress suggests Scarlett Johansson gone hillbilly.
Ree may be quiet, dirty and opaque, but in real life, Lawrence is an energetic stunner. Movieline sat down with her shortly after Winter's Bone premiered at the festival.
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Playing that other Salmon girl in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones, Kiwi actress Rose McIver turned Lindsey -- older sister to Saoirse Ronan's Susie -- into one of the film's more grounded and enjoyable elements: part Nancy Drew, part budding action hero, and always convincing in her transformation from gawky tweendom through young adulthood. We spoke with the young actress, who might be familiar to your kids as one of the stars of Power Rangers Racing Performance Machines, on a recent visit to L.A. for Bones's U.S. premiere.
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Shawn Ashmore just can't help it -- he's drawn to the cold. (Perhaps it's because he's Canadian?) The 30-year-old actor first gained notice as Iceman in the first three X-Men films, but he'll have the opportunity to take the lead in the buzzed-about Sundance entry Frozen later this month. In director Adam Green's thriller, Ashmore plays Lynch, a skiier who is mistakenly stranded fifty feet in the air on a chair lift along with two of his friends (Kevin Zegers and Emma Bell), then must dig deep to survive and escape or stay and freeze.
Ashmore talked to Movieline about how brutally real the shooting of the movie was, the pact he and his fellow actors made for verisimilitude, and his thoughts on Bryan Singer returning to the X-Men franchise.
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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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At least until the Weinstein Company moved its terrific comedy Youth in Revolt to Jan. 8, Portia Doubleday was shaping up to be have one of the biggest breakthroughs of 2009. That's fine, though -- now she can have 2010 to herself for a while. Adapted from novelist CD Payne's cult classic about the mischievous misadventures of Nick Twisp (played here by Michael Cera), the film features Doubleday as Sheeni Saunders, the captivating Francophile object of Nick's geek lust. Shielded from Nick's advances by fundamentalist parents who dispatch her to school or anywhere else her paramour (and his wicked alter ego Francois) can't track her down, Sheeni represents both a bad influence and perfect muse. In her first feature film role, Doubleday demonstrates a knack for merging those qualities; Sheeni's kittenish warmth radiates even when she wields her sex appeal and unattainability like the weapon it is. It's a neat trick Doubleday attributes in large part to the guidance of Cera and director Miguel Arteta; the 21-year-old actress sat down with Movieline a while back to discuss their crash course in acting and her road to Revolt.
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Believe Zoe Kazan when she says she didn't mean to be so prolific. After first gaining notice last year in Revolutionary Road, the 26-year-old actress has appeared in film after film (after film!) this year, and this holiday season most of all. Kazan spent the early part of 2009 in I Hate Valentine's Day and the Tribeca entry The Exploding Girl, then sparked to Zac Efron in Me and Orson Welles and sparred with Robin Wright in Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. She'll next be seen as the youngest daughter of exes Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin in the Nancy Meyers comedy It's Complicated.
In the meantime, Kazan is busy writing and trying to line up her next theater role while scheduling a trip to Sundance in January to support another film she appears in. With all that on her plate, it's a miracle that she carved out twenty minutes to talk to Movieline about Meryl, mandalas, and female directors.
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When the 12-year-old Nicholas Hoult first made an impression in 2002's About a Boy, Hugh Grant was playing opposite him as an overgrown adolescent living off his family's residuals -- basically, the nightmare of any child actor. Hoult's own coming-of-age has been the furthest thing from lazy, and after recapturing attention two years ago in the rude UK teen soap Skins, he landed the role of Kenny, who admires and longs for Colin Firth in Tom Ford's A Single Man.
Newly twenty and on the cusp of more adult roles (he'll next be seen in Louis Leterrier's remake of Clash of the Titans), Hoult talked to Movieline about navigating that transition, learning how to swing a sword, and that angora sweater from A Single Man.
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Ryan Bingham describes his existence touring the country with his backing outfit the Dead Horses as that of "just another band with a van." But the handsome, 28-year-old country rocker from New Mexico is about to see his profile catapulted onto a much broader stage with the release of Crazy Heart, the Jeff Bridges film about a faded bluegrass legend that features his wistful song, "The Weary Kind," as its main theme. Director Scott Cooper also put Ryan, who had never acted before, in a small but pivotal role as a local musician forced to rouse Bridges' character Bad Blake from his alcoholic stupor in a motel room. We caught up with Ryan -- every bit the humble, good-humored and soft-spoken cowboy -- about the craft of songwriting, all the Oscar talk, and the significance of the bold tattoos on his hands and arms. (Trust us -- it's a story you'll not want to miss.)
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Terry Gilliam often likes to shoot his actors using a fisheye lens, but with new find Lily Cole, that embellishment is hardly needed. Cole's wide-set features and exotic beauty landed her high-profile modeling work on the pages of Vogue and the runways of Chanel and Versace, but Cole says her biggest career challenge was playing the ingenue Valentina opposite Heath Ledger and Christopher Plummer in Gilliam's upcoming fantasy The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Earlier this month, I spoke to the 21-year-old about her transition from model to actress, the tragedy of Ledger's death while filming, and the challenge of suddenly acting opposite the new actors (Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, and Jude Law) called in to finish out Ledger's role.
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"The key to Christian McKay," says Richard Linklater, "is that he is that four-year-old who was told he was a genius." Perhaps that's how McKay (who studied to be a world-class pianist before making the switch into acting) was able to embody Orson Welles so fully in Linklater's upcoming Me and Orson Welles, and perhaps it's also why McKay is eager to return the favor by doling out similar compliments to virtually everyone he meets. On a recent day in Los Angeles spent promoting the film, McKay was so determined to flatter everyone who crossed his path (to a CBS reporter who preceded me, he exclaimed, "I must call my parents to tell them I spoke to CBS News! You have made my day!") that he left most reporters swooning.
In between blandishments, I talked to the breakout actor about his vocal technique, the line in the film he concedes is badly-acted, and the unexpected perks of playing one of history's greatest filmmakers.
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Chosen from a pool of thousands by director John Hillcoat to play the part of The Boy in his adaptation of Cormack McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road, a then 11-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee was called upon to do things no normal kid from Australia should have been able to handle. But coached by his professional actor dad, Smit-McPhee was soon facing off opposite the likes of Viggo Mortenson -- "each the other world's entire" -- appearing in every scene of what amounts to both a father-son love story and post-apocalyptic survivalist two-hander. And Smit-McPhee is no one-hit wonder: Now 13, he'll next play the lead in Matt Reeves' remake of last year's Swedish vampire instant-classic, Let the Right One In.
We talked to Kodi before that news was announced, during which he gave us some insights into how he creates a character, told us about his bonding time with Viggo staring at freeze-dried cadavers, and scared our socks off with a ghost story from the set of The Road.
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When Hollywood casting directors have to cast the school nerd, they'll usually pick an actor who was the jock in real life and slap a pair of glasses on him. Ashley Springer is much closer to the real deal: though initially shy and self-effacing, he's thoughtful, quick, and possessed of an interesting backstory once you get to know him (as a teen, he was a professional magician). Springer first gained notice as one of Jess Weixler's victims in the Sundance-minted horror comedy Teeth, but he has his largest role to date in the new film Dare, where his geeky Ben comes alive when both he and best friend Alexa (Emmy Rossum) pursue the sexually confused Johnny (Zach Gilford).
On the verge of Dare's release this week, I talked to Springer about the film's adventurous nature, the unique way he snagged the role, and his magical past.
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In a great year for breakthroughs, Gabourey Sidibe may have the story to beat. Her film may not rake in $85 million like Paranormal Activity, nor announce a new It Girl a la An Education. But Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is an even more intriguing commodity: A searing, don't-look-back screen debut featuring Sidibe as an illiterate Harlem high schooler pregnant with her second child by her own father and trapped in a brutally abusive home with her mother Mary (played with predatory venom by Mo'Nique). Shipped off to a special educational program for high-risk teens, she comes into her own even as tragedy pursues her from all sides. It's as raw, tender and unprecedented a character as any this year, and Sidibe owns it as such -- her early, lumbering inelegance giving way to grace, her defiance alive with hope.
And the awards hunt is on: I met Sidibe for a chat earlier this month in New York, minutes after she and director Lee Daniels had concluded a screening of Precious for the National Board of Review.
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Over the past five weeks, Paranormal Activity's besieged couple Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat have gone from being virtually anonymous actors in a micro-budgeted horror movie to the stars of the top-grossing film in the country. Having found its cast via writer-director Oren Peli's cryptic Craigslist notices, the terrifying film works as well as it does thanks to the strength of their devilishly convincing and completely improvised performances. We spoke to the pair on Friday afternoon, just as Activity's snowball effect was about to turn Featherston and Sloat into the biggest movie stars in America. [Warning: Spoilers follow.]
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After scorching the screen in the film adaptation of The History Boys, Dominic Cooper could have parlayed his heat and good looks into generic leading man status. Instead, the 31-year-old actor has taken supporting roles in a series of interesting films (well, a series of interesting films and Mamma Mia!). Cooper's currently got two movies in theaters: Lone Scherfig's An Education, where he plays Peter Sarsgaard's wealthy best friend, and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, where director John Krasinski hands Cooper the script's juiciest monologue and lets him run with away with the entire movie.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with the London native to discuss both movies, though talk soon turned to the possibility of a Mamma Mia! sequel and a huge, hush-hush blockbuster he's currently auditioning for. Which one? Read on and see.
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