By the slimmest of margins! James McAvoy is our big winner in the recent tMF poll where we asked our viewers to choose the best young actor for 2007. One vote away are Ryan Gosling (Lars and the real Girl) and Sam Riley (Control). Earlier on it was Sam Riley who led the pack.

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McAvoy, who starred in a number of awesome movies this year, won for Atonement, one of the year's biggest contenders for Best Picture.The Scottish actor also made waves in a number of other high-profile movies this year, including Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway, and Starter for 10.

"McAvoy, 28, who first made his mark in the U.S. playing the otherworldly Mr. Tumnus, the Faun in 2005's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and attracted acclaim as a young doctor (opposite Oscar winner Forest Whitaker) in 2006's "The Last King of Scotland," is slightly stunned by a breakthrough that includes being featured on People magazine's "Sexiest Men" list and generating early Oscar buzz for "Atonement."

He's more about brains than brawn and admits it's "daunting" to play leading-man roles opposite first Knightley and then Angelina Jolie in his upcoming action movie "Wanted."

"They're considered to be the most beautiful people in the world, and I'm clearly not," McAvoy says. "I don't think I've been hit by the ugly stick or anything. I think I'm a fairly decent-looking guy, but I'm not up there with that." He describes himself a "non-alpha male."

But Wright thinks he's just being modest. "From the women I speak to ... he's got a lot of fans," says Wright. " [ read more ]

Last year's most celebrated young actor and this year's most controversial, Ryan Gosling placed second for Lars and the Real Girl.

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Says Fred Schruers:

"Gosling, who won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor for Half Nelson (and was nominated for an Oscar), and would be nominated just a day after the screening by the Broadcast Critics for Best Actor for his Lars performance, clearly takes pride in his work but doesn't seem to let ego or the crasser kind of ambition get in his own way. He's feisty in service of his brand of acting truths. He said all the correct things about Peter Jackson and his upcoming The Lovely Bones, but the bottom line was they parted ways over what was apparently a shared opinion that Gosling, even with a beard and a weight gain, couldn't convincingly play the character's age in the prestigious project. And he was said to have had conflicts with co-star Rachel MacAdams while shooting The Notebook before they became, for a while, a couple.

It's a measure of his contrarian streak that he would even essay the Lars role. Gosling says he knew from his first meeting with Gillespie, who announced he planned to treat the sex doll with total respect - "I said, `I'll shoot her like an actress who has a nudity clause in her contract,' Gillespie told me - that such respect would enable his performance. Says Gosling: "There was a real reverence, she was never manipulated, never made the butt of a joke. I saw some of the crew sidle up and talk to her, but " -here he demonstrated by half turning away and muttering - "so gently." "

Another young actor who made waves this year is Sam Riley for his leading role in Anton Corbijn's award-winning Control. Riley has become one of Britain's most sought-after actor, with a lead role in Frankyln, opposite Ryan Philippe.

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Having originally dabbled in TV and theatre acting in his youth, Leeds-based Sam Riley’s energies had been focused on music. The band he fronted, 10,000 Things, secured a major label for the release of its first album, but after the band suffered at the hands of major label politics, its release stalled for a year, and the band were soon without a contract. As a result, Riley found himself taking a job in a local warehouse to make ends meet. Disillusioned, Riley reluctantly decided to give acting another shot.

“When I first did acting I was auditioning for TV parts, so it gave me a bit of crisis to be a musician with integrity and auditioning for TV parts. It doesn’t really go together,” says Riley. “But I rang up my old agent and Control was the first thing that came up, which was pretty incredible”.

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