Meet the Mac pack: The new generation of young, savvy British actors

Once in a while, a celestial shift takes place in the Hollywood firmament. The leading men and women who have opened major studio films for the previous decade or so begin to lose their twinkle. These once-bright stars fade and, according to the script, audiences begin to tire of seeing their all-too-familiar faces in summer blockbusters and Oscar contenders, year in, year out. So the torch passes from one "maturing" generation to a new class of handsome young hunks and starlets.

Since the 1960s, for instance, it's passed from the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin et al) to Jack Nicholson andhis renegade friends in the 1970s, to the fresh-faced Brat Pack of the 1980s to the stars of the US indie films of the (omega) 1990s. But what about the Noughties? In this decade no discernible band of young actors has seized cinema-goers' imaginations. And that's the question the big studios are asking themselves - who will inherit the mantle from the likes of Brad Pitt (41) and Keanu Reeves (42), Julia Roberts (39) and Uma Thurman (37). As a Hollywood casting director told The Los Angeles Times recently: "This is a window that opens every decade for the stars we're going to be watching for the next 30 years."

The audience the studios are trying to lure is elusive, too. It is the so-called "Millennial Generation", born between 1982 and 2000, which is coming of age in an era of broadband internet and the mobile phone, of iPods and computer games. And to try to fathom which acting talent might appeal to these sophisticated young men and women, it's believed that the major studios are currently sinking more than a billion dollars into films featuring faces that are relatively unknown within Hollywood. And what is striking is where Hollywood thinks it should place its billion-dollar bet: the UK, and on a generation of new British stars who may just be the saviours of the Hollywood film industry. They include actors well on the way to becoming house-hold names, such as James McAvoy and Emily Blunt, and up-and-coming performers such as Sacha Dhawan and Hayley Atwell.

What, then, is it about these few-dozen young men and women that Hollywood believes will lure the Millennial Generation into cinemas around the world? Here's what we do know about them. Though Hollywood has its sights set on them, they aren't interested only in film but in theatre and television too. So you're just as likely to see them in an edgy comedy on BBC3 or on stage at London's tiny Bush Theatre as opening a new £20m film. What's more, rather than take off for a life in Los Angeles at the first whiff of success, it would seem that these British youngsters seem to believe that they can find international fame, fortune and career satisfaction by staying in the UK.

They are the Mac Pack. Why? Because the particular charisma that they exude is typified by the Scottish actor James McAvoy who has emerged as the front-runner in this band of highly sought after performers. Slightly built, without the requisite Hollywood tan or dazzling white teeth (one critic unkindly called him "pasty") McAvoy, 28, has always insisted he never set out to be an actor. 'I only did it because I was allowed to do it and I had to do something." He was discovered as a teenager by the director David Hayman when he came to speak at McAvoy's school. The other kids were being disruptive, but James went up at the end and said how much he'd enjoyed the talk and asked Hayman if could do some work experience on his next film, perhaps make the tea. Four months later Hayman called him to audition for a role...

It's this perspective that has in part led him to make intelligent career choices - appearing in Shameless, then putting in a mercurial turn in the TV conspiracy thriller State of Play and most recently taking a leading role in The Last King of Scotland, in which he more than held his own opposite the eventual Oscar winner Forest Whitaker; next up is a starring role in Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement (scheduled for release in September). And yet what characterises him and many of the Mac Pack is that he appears genuinely unstarry despite his success. McAvoy reads widely, he travels, he revels in being a bit of a geek. Keira Knightley (his Atonement co-star) recently credited him with advising her to take some time out trekking in the Himalayas. And McAvoy seems supremely uninterested in celebrity culture. As he observed splenetically earlier this year: "I don't give a shit if it's just Paris Hilton on her own, or Lindsay Lohan, or fucking I don't know who the British equivalents are . . . you know, Orlando Bloom and all that shit. I don't care." Arguably the appeal of McAvoy is that he could be one of us. He's handsome, but with a scruffy edge. " We feel we might know him, he might be our mate," says Channel 4's controller of film and drama, Tessa Ross. "The closer and truer he's got to himself, the more exciting he is as an actor."

He is also the role model for a new generation who are coming up fast behind thirtysomething Brit actors such as Paul Bettany, Cillian Murphy, Kate Winslet and Ioan Gruffudd: actors such as Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall, Emily Blunt, Dominic Cooper and Hayley Atwell. If not all these names are familiar, they soon will be (see accompanying biographies). Atwell and Hall are the new Woody Allen "muses". Whishaw is in the new big-screen version of Brideshead Revisited with Matthew Goode and Atwell. Cooper jets off to Greece this summer to star opposite Meryl Streep in the film version of Mamma Mia!. This August former teen star Jamie Bell comes of age in the widely anticipated new British film, Hallam Foe. Newcomer Sam Riley has just made a name for himself in Cannes thanks to his performance in the Ian Curtis biopic, Control.

And it's not just middle-class white actors who are getting the breaks. Riz Ahmed, who shot to attention in Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo, plays the lead in new Channel 4 Peter Kosminsky drama Britz this autumn. Scottish-born Khalid Abdalla, who shone in United 93, has been handpicked by Marc Forester for his film of The Kite Runner.

Of course, there have been successive generations of high-profile British actors, many of whom have gone to supply Hollywood with memorable screen villains (Steven Berkoff, Alan Rickman) or "character" turns (Denholm Elliott, Rupert Everett) . But what's interesting is how many bona fide movie stars that the UK can currently boast. In the past, each generation might provide one or two - Albert Finney and Julie Christie in the 1960s, say, or Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet in the 1990s.

Today it would seem that we're spoilt for choice - a fact which has not bypassed Hollywood. The transatlantic traffic of high-quality film and television has not, recently, been entirely one way. This year alone, the US has embraced British films such as The Queen, The Last King of Scotland and Notes on a Scandal. Sitcoms such as The Office have won awards in America. Stephen Poliakoff's Gideon's Daughter and Channel 4's Elizabeth I swept the board at the Golden Globes. Sacha Baron Cohen is now an A-list comic performer. (No wonder the artsy London members' club Soho House is setting up a third venue in Los Angeles.)

Yet, despite the lure of big Hollywood films, the Mac Pack are often choosing to do an edgy bit of theatre first. Atwell has just finished a run in Man of Mode at the National. Whishaw took a pay-drop to star in Philip Ridley's Leaves of Glass at the Soho Theatre. "James McAvoy is absolutely someone who will do a big lead in a US movie, but then will do a piece of theatre, whether at the Donmar or the Almeida or the National," says agent Angharad Wood of Tavistock Wood, who is currently guiding the careers of Bond girl Eva Green and Sam Riley. "Theatre seems to feed the soul of young British film actors," says casting director Jina Jay, "it's a huge mutual exchange." Ross agrees: "The big studios understand that taking six months in the theatre is not going to stop these young actors getting the next great bit of British telly or film," says Ross. "It's all part of the same circle."

Dominic Cooper, a star of both the stage and film version(omega) of The History Boys, says he owes everything to his theatre training. "I was incredibly lucky," he tells The Independent on Sunday. "I started my acting career with a brilliant agent, Markham & Froggatt. They got me the casting for my first big play, Mother Clap's Molly House, written by Mark Ravenhill, who I later went on to work with more. It was a new piece of writing, developed at my drama school, Lamda, before it transferred to the National. I think that first role helped to lead me in the right way in my career." Quite apart from the dramatic training that theatrical work can offer, there is the obvious point, not to be underestimated, that we and the US more or less share the same language. "We speak English, we're very well trained," says Jeremy Thomas, producer of, among many films, The Last Emperor, Sexy Beast and The Dreamers. "The brightest and the best actors from other countries have an accent to deal with, whether it be the next Antonio Banderas or the next Penélope Cruz." Even our own Orlando Bloom has just accepted his first West End role in a revival of David Storey's 1969 play Celebration - after a slew of blockbusters, he may well be seeking some credibility.

Many of our new movie stars are also TV "finds". Hayley Atwell impressed many in the small-screen adaptation of The Line of Beauty. McAvoy's big break came in Shameless and then State of Play. "You can move very speedily from the small screen to the big screen these days," says Ross. "It's fantastic when you see someone who has come through British telly acknowledged in Hollywood, and able to take the pick of things on offer. It seems to me that because the drama and film departments at Channel 4 and the BBC are much more intertwined, you have that fantastic overview of the development of certain writing, directing and acting talent. It means you can use the best of what you know to support those individual talents in whatever medium is valuable at that moment." Jeremy Thomas agrees: "Actors here can become very, very seasoned by doing a few TV films and theatre before they embark on film acting. They get a chance to really flex themselves in many more disciplines."

If proof were needed that London is a hotbed of first-rate young acting talent, it's worth noting who is relocating here. French-born Bond Girl, Eva Green, moved here because she knows it is the best place to find work. Not only do we have the finest theatre in the world, we have arguably the best drama schools (why else did American actress Mischa Barton choose to spend the summer at Rada?). And it's no coincidence that the casting directors for some of the most interesting film directors are based in London.

"The casting directors have a lot of power," says Wood, ' they are the gatekeepers to great directors who they work with project after project. Leo Davis is always casting for Stephen Frears' movies; Celestia Fox is always working with Roman Polanksi, Jina Jay was incredible for Eva Green when Ridley Scott was casting Kingdom of Heaven. She was instrumental in telling me what was required of Eva to get the part. The casting directors here have been in this business a long time and they guide directors and producers on who is right for the part, and who is also going to be a big star six months down the line when the film comes out." The low-budget British film Starter for Ten is a case in point. By the time it was released in November last year its actors had all progressed leaps and bounds in their careers: McAvoy was Bafta-nominated for The Last King of Scotland; Rebecca Hall had appeared in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige; Dominic Cooper and James Corden were earning great reviews for The History Boys (Corden even had his own BBC3 comedy show, Gavin & Stacey).

Moreover, the cosmopolitan nature of London itself is a great pull to the more open-minded and intelligent talent. "LA is a great place to live if you're a writer, but as an actor, I think that you do need the theatre in London to feed you," says Wood. "I also think you do need to hop out and have a bookshop on every corner and an art gallery with interesting exhibitions. It's important to be living in a city where it's not just about film, it's not just about TV: there are obviously other things going on here. It's the financial capital of the world so you're mixing with lots of different people all the time."

"It's a mark of a very aware generation of acting talent that they want to work on the best material, and they know the best talent will follow the best material," says Ross. "Recognising where you'll do your best work - where you'll shine and be yourself - is a big part of having a great career. It also means acknowledging that it may not always come out of the biggest-financed movie." What you don't do, in other words, is as important as what you do. According to casting director Jina Jay: 'On the projects I work on, these are the actors who tell me to fuck off four out of five times." Jay is one of the most important casting directors in the film world (she has worked on films such as Billy Elliot, Harry Potter, The Last King of Scotland, Atonement and is currently casting Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones), and yet even she gets turned down by members of the Mac Pack. "They're extraordinary young actors who are also very purposeful and need to completely connect with the material and the director, and that collaboration has to be meaningful. So many of these actors like James McAvoy have a remarkable work ethic but they won't just do anything. Look at Jamie Bell, he's very clever, he's not done a lot but everything he has done has been very, very interesting and sometimes wonderful."

Bell's career famously began with his appearance in Billy Elliot. He has had the same manager since the age of 13 and has painstakingly avoided the mistakes of a typical child-performer career. As he told The Independent on Sunday: "I think that world can swallow you up in one big gulp and you'll never get it again. I don't know how close I came to that. I had great people to throw me a rope, and I've kept those people around me. Even now I still have those same people advising me, reading scripts for me and telling me what I should do."

The advice that actors receive at the start of their careers is vital, too. Even media-shy actors such as Ben Whishaw and James McAvoy have publicists. So far they appear, by and large, to be learning from mistakes made by previous generations - more established performers such as Kate Beckinsale and Ewan MacGregor found that a bad Hollywood rom-com or vampire flick could set you back years. "Careers can be 'She's so hot... oops, she's so not'," says Wood. "As an agent one has to be much more proactive about how to create these careers for people, how to make them longer and successful."

These days it is possible for actors to combine TV, theatre and film, without selling out. But as Wood stresses, "It does involve a strategy - you really need to work with someone and plan so that you keep variety in your choices. Partly because you don't want to get typecast, but also because London does provide the ability to move between every medium: we've got great television here that is seen in America, such as The Gathering Storm and Gideon's Daughter, which won Emily Blunt the Golden Globe. That came out at the same time as The Devil Wears Prada [in which Blunt appeared] and suddenly everyone sat up and took notice of her." "The world has definitely got smaller" agrees Ross. "We used to feel we were miles apart from the Americans, and now they're not just buying our TV formats,(omega) they're buying the programmes themselves." (As evidence of this, Channel 4's next big drama, Cape Wrath is a co-production with Showtime, so will automatically get a major US audience.)

As if to emphasise how carefully constructed the careers of the Mac Pack are once in a while, an actor appears to bypass the entire process - this year that actor is 27-year-old Sam Riley. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month, Riley got reviews that actors dream of for his role as Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division in Control, directed by Dutch photographer, Anton Corbijn. A year ago Riley was a struggling rock musician who had been dropped by his record label; now he's the lead in possibly the coolest British movie of the year. "I think the only way Anton could get away with casting me was to put his own money into it. It was a labour of love for everyone. For all the guys playing members of the band [Joy Division] it was only our first or second role. I think it makes it easier for people to believe in me as Ian because they've not seen me as a hobbit before!"

Riley's life has changed overnight. "It's incredible to meet the same casting directors and see they're looking at you in a different way all of a sudden." But he is the first to acknowledge that McAvoy and Emily Blunt spent years doing TV work before their meteoric rise in Hollywood. " I've just jumped up the food chain somehow," he adds apologetically.

The recent commercial success of foreign films such as Hidden and The Lives of Others proves there is an appetite for among cinema-goers to see more challenging films featuring a wider range of faces. "We share all of our clients with US agents," says Wood, "so a lot of information comes our way. On the other hand we are also the gateway to Europe. I share clients with French agents, German agents, Spanish and Italian agents, and that's a great source of talent that can be helped to get through to big US movies. I don't think you can contain yourself to just looking for projects in London, you have to look further afield. When you see The Lives of Others, Downfall, The Edukators, you realise that really interesting directors are coming out of Germany, for instance."

Our new Hollywood Britpack isn't just made up of actors, of course. We have screenwriters of the calibre of Peter Morgan and Patrick Marber. Joe Wright who directed Pride and Prejudice and now Atonement always works with the same crew. "Joe Wright is young," says Ross. "He's not waited 30 years to make his first film. He's gone from making three pieces of telly to the most fantastic first feature film. And his taste would be much more in tune with a young audience, much more aware of what he believes in and what's truthful."

But what of the leader of the Mac Pack? Now that he can pick and choose his roles, and Hollywood is clamouring for him, McAvoy retains a healthy scepticism about the profession. As he said earlier this year, "Where it gets difficult is when you get two or three jobs back to back where you're playing leads and doing 13, 14 hours a day, six days a week, and you suddenly think, hang on a minute, how can you have a life like this? Do I work to live, or live to work?"

Additional reporting by Nicholas Barber and Leni Rowles

James McAvoy

Age: 28
Greatest hits: 'Shameless', 'The Last King of Scotland'
Coming soon: 'Atonement'

He made his name in Channel 4's 'Shameless' playing the middle-class student with a secret - but McAvoy is very much a working-class Glasgow boy. He grew up in the tough Drumchapel area and trained as a baker at Sainsbury's before drama school. TV roles in 'Lorna Doone' and 'White Teeth' led to him being cast in Spielberg's 'Band of Brothers', when Tom Hanks took a personal interest in his career. With his choirboy good looks, he was dubbed the new Hugh Grant. But then his unsentimental performance as a young Irishman living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy in 'Inside I'm Dancing', won universal acclaim. He also did some interesting theatre ('Privates on Parade' at the Donmar, Jonathan Harvey's 'Out in the Open', playing a gay rent boy). Witty and self-deprecating, McAvoy has strong views on everything from global economics to fantasy fiction. "I care about work, I care about art and it may be an industrialised form of art, but it's art. I care about that, but I don't really care about what you are wearing or what fucking nightclub you go to, or who your pals are, or who you are snogging today."

McAvoy, who was Bafta-nominated for his role in 'The Last King Of Scotland', stars as Robbie in the forthcoming Ian McEwan adaptation 'Atonement' and is currently filming opposite Angelina Jolie in 'Wanted'. He may be Scotland's new golden boy in Hollywood but McAvoy is keen to demystify his new celebrity status. "The biggest myth about acting is that we get paid extraordinarily well, do drugs, have sex all the time, that we're all vain, and that we are all super-confident," he says. "We're really not... Who we are isn't important. What we do is." Last year he married his 'Shameless' co-star, Anne-Marie Duff, nine years his senior and a formidable actress in her own right.

Ben Whishaw

Age: 26
Greatest hits: 'Perfume', 'Nathan Barley'
Coming soon: 'I'm Not There'

Soon to play Sebastian Flyte in 'Brideshead Revisited', Whishaw is anything but posh. He grew up in Hitchin, Bedfordshire. His father works in IT, his mother at John Lewis. On stage, he's carved out a reputation for playing doomed youths ('Hamlet' for Trevor Nunn, Konstantin in 'The Seagull') and he got great notices for 'Perfume'.

Next we'll see him play Bob Dylan (as one of seven actors, including Cate Blanchett) in Todd Haynes's 'I'm Not Here'. He's just finished shooting Pawel Pawlikowski's 'The Restraint of Beasts', and Jane Campion has cast him as Keats in 'Dark Star'.

His performance as Hamlet won him comparisons with Olivier, but TV audiences know him best for his roles in 'Rome' and 'Nathan Barley'.

Sacha Dhawan

Age: 23
Greatest hit: 'The History Boys'
Coming Soon: 'Pretend You Have Big Buildings' at Manchester Royal Exchange

Sacha Dhawan shot to attention playing Akthar in Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys' at the National Theatre. Originally, it was not written as an ethnic role, but Bennett reworked it after meeting the young actor.

Dhawan is from Bramhall, Stockport. He started acting at the age of 12. He had roles in children's TV ('Weirdsister College', 'Out of Sight') and has appeared in 'EastEnders' and 'Altogether Now'.

In between taking 'The History Boys' to Broadway and making the film version, Dhawan played the lead in the Channel 4 drama 'Bradford Riots', which won him the Royal Television Society Award for On-Screen Breakthrough.Today he lives in Camden Town and is determined not to get typecast: 'As an actor you want to prove to people that you're versatile.'

Emily Blunt

Age: 24
Greatest hits: 'My Summer of Love', 'The Devil Wears Prada'
Coming soon: 'Dan in Real Life'

On screen she embodies a fierce sexuality and powerful intelligence, but the sensual English beauty can also play great character roles. As the bitchy fashionista in 'The Devil Wears Prada', she gave Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep a run for their money - 'Entertainment Weekly' voted her the Best Female Scene-Stealer. And in March she won Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her role in Stephen Poliakoff's 'Gideon's Daughter', playing the troubled daughter of Bill Nighy's New Labour spin doctor.

Blunt is from Roehampton. She is one of four children born to a barrister father and teacher mother. Her uncle is Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP for Reigate.

She dropped out of drama school in 2001 to make her West End debut in 'The Royal Family' directed by Peter Hall, which won her the Evening Standard Theatre Award for best newcomer. In 2003, she appeared in TV drama 'Boudica' and won considerable praise for her performance as Catherine Howard in 'Henry VIII'.

Blunt's breakout role was as seductive rich girl Tamsin in Pawel Pawlikowski's 'My Summer of Love' in 2004, opposite Nathalie Press (they were jointly awarded the Evening Standard British Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer). But Blunt insists that playing the femme fatale doesn't come naturally. "I'm quite an open person. I'm not mysterious at all."

What's next? 'The Jane Austen Book Club', 'Dan in Real Life' (opposite Steve Carrell and Juliet Binoche), and 'Charlie Wilson's War' with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Blunt lives in London and Vancouver, where she shares a home with her boyfriend, the singer Michael Bublé.

Rebecca Hall

Age: 24
Greatest hits: 'Starter for Ten', 'The Prestige'
Coming soon: 'Joe's Palace'

She is English theatre aristocracy - her father is Sir Peter Hall, her mother is opera singer Maria Ewing, and her stepbrother is director Edward Hall. But Rebecca has carved out her own unique film and stage career.

Last year she appeared in 'Starter for Ten' opposite James McAvoy, and Christopher Nolan's 'The Prestige', as Christian Bale's wife. Critics raved over her performance as Antoinette Cosway in BBC4's adaptation of Jean Rhys's 'Wide Sargasso Sea'.

Hall attended Roedean School, where she was head girl. Her first role came in 1992 when she appeared as Young Sophy in her father's television adaptation of Mary Wesley's 'The Camomile Lawn'. She later read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge for two years before dropping out.

In 2003, she won the Ian Charleston award for her stage debut in a production of 'Mrs Warren's Profession', directed by her father. She also appeared as Rosalind in his production of 'As You Like It', which gained her a second Charleston nomination.

Hall has just finished Stephen Poliakoff's forthcoming TV drama 'Joe's Palace' with Kelly Reilly, Michael Gambon and Rupert Penry-Jones, and she has also been cast in Woody Allen's next film, opposite Scarlett Johansson, set to shoot this summer.

Eva Green

Age: 26
Greatest hits: 'The Dreamers', 'Casino Royale'
Coming soon: 'His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass'

The most interesting Bond girl in years, French-born Green lives in London and is an honorary Brit. She shot to fame in 2003 in Bernard Bertolucci's 'The Dreamers' - her performance brought her critical acclaim, as well as some notoriety for her full-frontal nudity.

In 2006, 'Maxim' named her No 20 in its annual Hot 100 list, and this year she won the Bafta Rising Star award. Not that Green is by any means a conventional babe: she has won a reputation in fashion circles for her dramatic, edgy style.

She's just shot 'His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass' opposite Nicole Kidman, and she's playing an art student in 'Franklyn', a fantasy noir by first-time director, Gerald McMorrow.

Jamie Bell

Age: 21
Greatest hits: 'Billy Elliot', 'King Kong'
Coming soon: 'Jumpers'

At the age of 13, Stephen Daldry cast him in 'Billy Elliot'. Since then, Bell has been working with such major-league directors as Clint Eastwood and Peter Jackson, as well as indie auteurs Thomas Vinterberg and David Gordon Green.

Bell was born in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, where he grew up with his mother and older sister. He was a pupil at the Stagecoach Theatre School, and took dance lessons from the age of six. Since 'Billy Elliot', Daldry has been a mentor and honorary second father.

In the years after he hung up the ballet shoes, he's played Smike in 'Nicholas Nickleby', a gun-toting pacifist in 'Dear Wendy', a young seaman in 'King Kong' and a marine in 'Flags of Our Fathers'. As film producer Tessa Ross puts it: "You can't take your eyes off him.'

Dominic Cooper

Age: 28
Greatest hits: 'The History Boys', 'Starter For Ten'
Coming soon: 'Sense & Sensibility'

Cooper cut his teeth at the National Theatre, with roles in Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials', and Mark Ravenhill's 'Mother Clap's Molly House'. But it was his standout turn as Dakin in Alan Bennett's play 'The History Boys' that caught international attention. He was nominated for a Drama Desk Award when 'The History Boys' went to Broadway, and Most Promising Newcomer for the film version at the Baftas.

Cooper is from Greenwich, London. Last seen in ' Starter for Ten' (alongside James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall) he is currently filming Andrew Davies' new BBC adaptation of 'Sense & Sensibility', playing Willoughby. Next, he moves into the major league with the big-screen adaptation of Abba musical 'Mamma Mia!' opposite Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan.

Hayley Atwell

Age: 25
Greatest hit: 'The Line of Beauty'
Coming soon: 'Cassandra's Dream'

After graduating from drama school a year ago, Atwell has carved out a reputation playing sexually magnetic, damaged women. Her role as Cat in the BBC adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's novel 'The Line of Beauty' won her rave reviews.

Last year she filmed Woody Allen's 'Cassandra's Dream' with Colin Firth and Ewan McGregor. Next, we'll see her in the feel-good British movie, 'How About You', playing a stroppy care assistant in an old folks' home opposite Vanessa Redgrave and Imelda Staunton. "For me, it was a masterclass of just watching these amazing actors," she sighs.

Hollywood can't be far off: next she's playing Julia Flyte opposite Ben Whishaw in 'Brideshead Revisited'.

Felicity Jones

Age: 23
Greatest hits: 'Northanger Abbey', 'The Archers'
Coming soon: 'Meadowlands'

"I adore Felicity Jones," says screenwriter Andrew Davies. " She's going to be a huge star. I'm convinced of it." Jones's breakthrough role was playing Catherine Morland in Davies' TV adaptation of 'Northanger Abbey' earlier this year. She's just appeared on stage in the Royal Court's 'That Face', but she is arguably best known for playing Emma Grundy in 'The Archers'.

Jones cut her teeth playing school bully Ethel Hallow in children's TV series 'The Worst Witch'. After finishing school she took a gap year and appeared in the BBC drama, 'Servants'. She read English at Oxford, graduating with a 2:1 in 2006.

Next we'll see her in Channel 4's witness protection drama, 'Meadowlands' and she's just bagged a role in 'Brideshead Revisited'.