Remember back in 2001, when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was first in theaters, and no one could stop talking about what a big star Daniel Radcliffe was going to be? The same level of buzz is now swirling around Logan Lerman, who helms a big, new fantasy franchise, the Percy Jackson series, from the young adult books by Rick Riordan. Like Harry Potter before it, the first installment has a larger-than-life title, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Lerman is playing the title character, a teen who learns he is the son of Poseidon and possesses godlike powers. The 18 year old is Beverly Hills born and has been acting for some time—he started out as Mel Gibson’s youngest son in 2000’s The Patriot, and even landed a starring role on the short-lived WB series Jack & Bobby in 2004—but Percy Jackson will make him a national star, complete with action figures, a multi-film contract, and teen mag hearts-and-stars doodles.
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We predicted Mia’s breakout last year, when Tim Burton’s 3-D Alice in Wonderland was set for a 2009 release. But it was pushed back, and now it looks like 2010 will be her year to step through the looking glass and into America’s hearts. The 20-year-old Australian became familiar to a small segment of American audiences when she starred in the first season of HBO’s In Treatment as the suicidal gymnast, Sophie. But her role as Alice in Burton’s twisted confection—co-starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anne Hathaway—will be her big debut, and it won't stop there. She just signed on to play Jane in a sweeping new remake of Jane Eyre, and will appear in Gus Van Sant’s new secret project—and we all know from Good Will Hunting what Van Sant can do for young, talented actors.
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It’s no surprise Chloe Moretz’s role as “Hit Girl” in the upcoming action flick Kick-Ass is already generating talk—an 11-year-old assassin killing grown men is nothing if not controversial. But what is surprising is how skillfully Moretz nails the character and holds her own opposite Nicolas Cage, who plays her father, Big Daddy. The 13-year-old actress tosses around dirty language like a demented sailor, stabs people in the neck, and manages to make it look like more than just child’s play. Moretz will appear in the anticipated Diary of a Wimpy Kid later this year, adapted from the bestselling children’s book series, and also in the super-scary Let Me In, a remake of a Norwegian vampire thriller.
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It’s hard to say whether Chris or his younger brother, Liam, will have a better year. (Liam will appear opposite Miley Cyrus in The Last Song and is rumored to be her new off-screen beau.) But we’re betting on Chris as this year’s breakout leading man. The 26-year-old got his start last year in Star Trek, but will get a big boost this year when he stars in the remake of Red Dawn playing Jed Eckert, a role originated by Patrick Swayze. He will also star in the Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor—alongside the likes of Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anthony Hopkins—as the title character, a part that could rocket Hemsworth leagues ahead of his baby brother.
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You may have seen Winstead before—she has become something of a scream queen for her roles in B-grade horror movies ( The Ring Two, Final Destination 3, Black Christmas), but this year the former soap star will branch out into a blockbuster comedy. Winstead stars opposite Hollywood’s awkward prince, Michael Cera, in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, based on the comic series by Bryan Lee O’Malley. In the film, Cera has fallen for his dream girl, Ramona Flowers (Winstead), but must defeat seven of her deadly ex-boyfriends if he is to win her over. Pilgrim comes out in August, and stars other hot young names, like Up in the Air’s Anna Kendrick and Bored to Death’s Jason Schwartzman.
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New York theatergoers have already been enjoying Groff’s work for a few years. The 24-year-old starred in the 2006 Broadway musical, Spring Awakening, and led the Central Park Summerstage revival of Hair before it moved to Broadway. He had a small part in last year’s Ang Lee sleeper, Taking Woodstock, but it's his upcoming guest turn on Glee that will make Groff’s face instantly recognizable to the show's millions of viewers. When the Fox hit returns in April, Groff will star for six episodes as the lead singer of the rival glee club, and as a potential love interest for Rachel (Lea Michele). Fun fact: Michele and Groff both starred in Spring Awakening—the power of Broadway is strong in the Glee universe. The show’s creator Ryan Murphy told EW that Groff would be playing “a male diva...a miva.”
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The 29-year-old actress has been kicking around the industry since she was 14—she was in the minor-league '90s family sitcom Step by Step, and most recently played Nina on the now-dead CW horror series Reaper. But this could be Wade’s big year on television, given two high-profile projects (though only one will make it to air). She starred in the pilot for Body Politic, a show about Washington staffers (with Minka Kelly, Gabrielle Union, and Brian Austin Green) that many critics regarded as one of the year’s strongest contenders. The CW opted at the last minute not to pick it up, but Wade had already made an impact in the press. Now, she'll show the CW what they missed as a fiery assistant D.A. in Fox’s Jack and Dan, the upcoming show from Matt Nix, creator of USA’s wildly popular Burn Notice. The drama will follow two downtrodden L.A. cops (Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford), and if Nix’s cable success is any indication, promises to be one of Fox’s strongest offerings in 2010.
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If anyone can write a movie about Facebook and make it work, it’s Aaron Sorkin. And that’s exactly what’s happening next year with The Social Network. Directed by heavyweight David Fincher, the film about the Internet’s little site that could stars The Squid and the Whale’s Jesse Eisenberg as founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Justin Timberlake as founding president Sean Parker (also known as “the dude who invented Napster”). As the third founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin (who eventually left the company over “internal conflicts"), Fincher cast 26-year-old Andrew Garfield of England, already considered a rising star in the U.K. Garfield will have another big film this year, the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let Me Go, co-starring fellow Brits Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan (who was herself a breakout star of 2009).
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Rooney’s older sister, Kate, was considered a breakout star in 2005 when she played Heath Ledger’s comely daughter in Brokeback Mountain (and is now starring in huge films, like next year’s Iron Man 2), so Rooney has breakout in her blood. The littler Mara will star as Nancy in a much-hyped remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street in April, opposite the smartly cast Jackie Earle Haley as Freddie Kruger. And in October, she appears in The Social Network. We sense some healthy sibling rivalry coming on.
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Judging from Haley Joel Osment’s rollercoaster of a career, being selected by M. Night Shyamalan at a young age doesn’t always guarantee success, but it can’t hurt. Noah Ringer is the newest kid to earn a spot in the Shyamalan camp—he will star as the 12-year-old martial-arts expert Aang in The Last Airbender, the director’s blockbuster offering for next summer (adapted from the popular animated show, Avatar: The Last Airbender). Ringer’s character embodies the physical re-incarnation of Air, and he can control all four elements in order to maintain world peace. A big task for a kid who has never been in a movie before, but Shyamalan has known how to pick ‘em in the past.
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At only 15 years old, Ennenga has landed the role of any actor’s dream—as a leading player on a new HBO series, directed by The Wire’s David Simon. Ennenga will play Melissa Leo’s troubled daughter in Treme, a new drama about musicians and bureaucrats living in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In addition to being cast in one of the year’s most anticipated shows, Ennenga will also appear in Multiple Sarcasms, a quirky drama starring Timothy Hutton and Mira Sorvino about a man who suddenly decides to write a play about his life in the wake of a midlife crisis, alienating his wife and devoted daughter.
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As anyone who watches Friday Night Lights knows, Kitsch, a.k.a. Riggins, is one of the show’s most dynamic (and chiseled) characters. But as the Lights has been relegated to the dark caverns of DirecTV, Kitsch’s face hasn’t been seen by major audiences for a while. That will change this year, when he stars in The Bang Bang Club alongside Ryan Phillippe and Malin Akerman. The film follows a team of combat photographers as they capture the final days of apartheid in South Africa. Kitsch is also set to begin filming the title role in John Carter of Mars, in which a Civil War veteran suddenly finds himself living on the red planet. John Carter will be Wall-E director Andrew Stanton’s live-action debut, so the industry already has high hopes (and high buzz) for the film.
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While we're on the subject of breakout stars from the Friday Night Lights farm team, Adrianne Palicki is set to have a big year as more than just a small-town dreamer. In January, Palicki stars in Legion, an intense thriller about a biblical apocalypse. (Hint: She's pregnant and her womb becomes very important.) Then in November, she appears opposite Chris Hemsworth (also on our list) in Red Dawn, one of the more hotly anticipated remakes of 2010. The 26-year-old Ohioan will also star with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Electra Luxx in October, a comedy about a porn star who must reevaluate her life after becoming pregnant.
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Yes, Baruchel has been named a breakout star just about every year for the last five, or even seven. But we have a good feeling that 2010 could be the year the prognostication finally becomes true. The former star of Judd Apatow’s under-appreciated but hilarious college comedy series Undeclared and a frequent side player in big comedies ( Tropic Thunder, A Night at the Museum, Knocked Up), Baruchel will finally get his big turn as leading man this year in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, where he will learn magic tricks from Nicolas Cage in July’s blockbuster adaptation of the famous scene from Disney’s Fantasia. The 27 year old will return to comedy as well, but this time as the romantic lead, in March’s She’s Out of My League, about a dopey guy who meets the perfect woman (the fast-rising Alice Eve) but cannot keep her because of his own insecurity.
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The 23-year-old blonde is set to have a huge 2010. She stars alongside Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary, an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s trippy novel about a freewheeling Caribbean journalist—and that’s just one of four films she will star in this year. Rum director Bruce Robinson paid Heard quite the compliment when he told Details that he cast her after “looking for the American dream girl, a kind of young Catherine Deneuve with a lascivious edge.”
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One word: Tron. The 25-year-old will play opposite Jeff Bridges as Sam Flynn, a main character in Tron Legacy, the highly anticipated December release from new nerd-director king Joseph Kosinski (he is also daring to remake Logan’s Run in 2012). Hedlund will go the drama route this year, as well, in Love Don’t Let Me Down, alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Leighton Meester. In the musical film (produced by actor Tobey Maguire), Hedlund plays a rising young singer-songwriter who becomes romantically involved with an older country singer (Paltrow), but meets conflict with her current husband/manager (Tim McGraw). Yeehaw.
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