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Breakout Stars of 2009
You haven’t heard of them…yet. But The Daily Beast predicts this promising crop of young actors will hit the big time this year. From Lenny Kravitz’ daughter to Michael Cera’s girlfriend, meet the class of 2009.
Chris Pizzello / AP Photo
Channing Tatum
Yes, you’ve seen Channing before. He was in the teen dance-off Step Up, the Queens indie A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and the Iraq soldier drama Stop-Loss. But 2009 is going to be the Year of Tatum. (You heard it here first.) He will star opposite Big Love’s Amanda Seyfried in Dear John, the latest adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel to transition to the big screen—basically, this year’s The Notebook. Then he appears in Michael Mann’s 1930s gangster noir, Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Billy Crudup. He will play an action figure in the fall’s big G.I. Joe film, and will star in Fighting, another indie about a New York scam artist who enters the world of underground street brawls. There will be a lot of Tatum without a shirt on in 2009. Happy New Year.
MORE: Channing Tatum Q&A
Mark Mainz / AP Photo
Carey Mulligan
It’s not often that a young actress is called “the next Audrey Hepburn” with no sense of irony by critics, but that’s exactly what the chattering crowds at Sundance are calling this British phenom. The 23-year-old was in two of the hottest films at the fest—An Education (the new Nick Hornby film about a teenager in swinging London who sleeps with a 35-year-old man played by a saucy Peter Sarsgaard) and The Greatest (a drama about a pregnant teen—Mulligan—who must deal with the traumatic accidental death of her boyfriend). She will also appear in Brothers, which stars Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal—pretty much all of young Hollywood. And then Public Enemies with Christian Bale, Johnny Depp, and Billy Crudup. By 24, she will have worked with almost every A-lister.
MORE: Carey Mulligan in New York Magazine
Matt Sayles / AP
Chris Pine
He has a familiar face—Princess Diaries 2, anyone, anyone?—but Chris Pine is going to venture where few others have gone before: William Shatner’s shoes. Pine’s playing the young Captain James T. Kirk in the highly anticipated J.J. Abrams remake of Star Trek, to be released this summer. We’ll be shocked if his face is not plastered all over the country by then.
MORE: Jump-starting a franchise
Matt Carr / Getty Images
Charlyne Yi
While comedy film fans may recognize Charlyne as one of the stoner friends in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up, after Paper Heart, the quirky love story she made with real-life boyfriend Michael Cera, drops later this year, her name will launch a thousand ships full of yearning hipsters. Heart is a documentary/comedy/improvisation that sends the 33-year-old Yi on a sweet and goofy trip around the US looking for the meaning of "love"—she starts out skeptical, but eventually ends up with (surprise!) the baby-faced Cera. As one half of the most darling, most sickeningly twee, and perhaps funniest power duo of the year, Charlyne need be known as a random pothead no more.
MORE: Charlyne’s Hilarious YouTube Channel
Editor's Note: Charlyne's age has been changed to 33. It was previously listed as 23.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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If it's all about the company you keep (and your resume, of course) then my money's on very few of these kids "breaking out" in the near future.
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I can see many of these kids "breaking out" in the near future. Fortunately, Proactive and Neutrogena will be there to help them with that.
Charlyne Yi is 33 (born Jan. 4, 1976).
Charlyne Yi is positively 22 or 23, she graduated 2004 high school with my best friend.
I'm wondering why Melanie Lynskey, who still has NZ citizenship, came back here to get married, and still maintains strong ties to this country, is described as a "New Zealand born actress" while Rachael Taylor is an "Aussie actress". Why is Lynskey not simply, and accurately described as a "New Zealand actress"?
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