The List: Hot Actors Under 30

We profile these talented young up-and-comers of the acting world. 

Mia Wasikowska

For many, Mia Wasikowska arrived overnight with a bang as the lead in Tim Burton’s hallucinogenic Alice in Wonderland.

But this talented twenty year old Australian native was already making quite a name for herself in Australian films like Paul Goldman’s Suburban Mayhem and most notably in the acclaimed HBO drama series In Treatment as Sophie, a troubled patient of Gabriel Byrne’s psychiatrist.

Throw in turns as a Jewish refugee in the Holocaust drama Defiance alongside Daniel Craig, a pilot in competition with Hilary Swank’s Amelia Earhart in biopic, Amelia, the daughter to Annette Bening and Julianne Moore’s lesbian parents in the upcoming comedy drama The Kids Are Alright. With up-coming role as Charlotte Brontë’s classic character Jane Eyre and as a terminally ill teen in Gus Van Sant’s Restless and it’s clear this is one diverse actress to watch.

 

David Kross

For a young actor, making your international and English language film debut opposite the likes of Kate Winslet would seem daunting enough, let alone in a film dealing with intergenerational love involving ample sex and nudity and a controversial Nazi storyline. That’s what faced Germany’s David Kross, 20, in 2008’s The Reader in which he portrayed a 15 year old (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes) infatuated with Winslet’s much older Nazi collaborator. It was a powerful performance which garnered Kross the 2009 Shooting Star Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Before that though, Kross had appeared in a swag of German features including TV movie Help, I’m a Boy (at the age of 12), comedy/romance Adam and Eva, bully drama Tough Enough and as the eponymous young sorcerer’s apprentice Krabat opposite Daniel Bruhl. The actor followed The Reader with Germany’s interracial romance/drama Same Same But Different. Kross’s rising star status has been cemented with the news he has been cast in Steven Spielberg’s WW1 drama War Horse.  

 

Emma Stone

Emma Stone has packed a lot into her career since she made her film debut as a popular teen queen in the Judd Apatow produced Superbad in 2007. Her most recent role was that of zombie slayer Wichita in last year’s Zombieland alongside Woody Harrelson and before that as a nerdy sorority sister in the Anna Farris comedy The House Bunny and last year as the unlikely teenage confidant to Jeff Daniel’s hallucinatory writer in Paper Man. But it’s her upcoming role as a supposedly scarlet woman in the upcoming teen comedy Easy A that sees her take centre stage and looks set to truly showcase Stone’s ample sass and comedic skills. The 21 year old will follow that with an untitled comedy of marital crisis alongside Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, lend her voice to the caveman animation The Croods and is to star in the 1960’s set domestic drama The Help.

Jesse Eisenberg

Since his film debut in 2002, Jesse Eisenberg, 26, has proved a prolific talent with just short of 20 feature film credits to his name and is one of Hollywood’s most diverse up and comers. His best known role to date is as zombie hunter Columbus in Zombieland but that’s about to change this year as he gives what could be the defining performance of his career so far as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the anticipated The Social Network. Eisenberg’s credits to date include The Emperor’s Club alongside Kevin Kline, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale in which he played son to Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels’ dysfunctional parents. This year he diversifies again as a Hasidic Jewish drug mule in Holy Rollers, next year lends his voice as a macaw in the animated Rio and will continue his revolving door of roles as a pizza delivery man-cum-bank robber in 30 Minutes or Less, a Beat Generation poet in Kill Your Darlings and will appear in The Stanford Prison Experiment.

First Published online at Trespass Magazine, July 2010.