tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Not only are they capable of lighting up the silver screen, they are also some of today's most talented young actresses, commanding huge fees - in some cases, in the millions. Many have won multiple awards, while others have starred in some of today's biggest box office hits. In short, we're listing down the cream of the crop!

Just like our recent Top 50 hottest young actors, we've narrowed down our list from 88 to 50, and set an age limit. If you miss seeing some of your favorites, so do we - including Maggie Gyllenhaal (31 years old) and Amy Adams (34 years old). Definitely some of the names you'll see on the list are emerging talents - the ones you will see getting the big roles in the near future - and some of them already have, with awards and nominations to boot.

# 20 - Emma Roberts - Acting runs in the family. While Emma Roberts got her introduction into the movie industry via her relationship with Julia Roberts (who happens to be her aunt), her talent and determination to play diverse roles ultimately gave her the recognition she deserves. Her transition from playing young characters to adult roles can only be described as 'smooth sailing' - graduating from youthful roles towards more challenging, matured and enduring characters - as the young detective Nancy Drew, as Adriana in the acclaimed Derick Martini film, Lymelife, as the spoiled brat Poppy in Wild Child and as the orphaned Andi in Hotel for Dogs, among others.

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Says Emma on her role in Lymelife:

I had just finished Hotel for Dogs, and I wanted to do something just completely different. So the script [for Lymelife] kind of just came out of nowhere, and I read it and I really liked it. I met Derick and I really, really liked him. For the most part the cast was set, and I thought the cast they had chosen was brilliant. It was something I really wanted to be a part of; when you want to be a part of something like that, you'll do whatever they want you to do. [ read more ]

Emma was reported to be inclined towards indie films, which she confirmed in the Collider interview:

I just feel like with independent movies... they're really free to do whatever they want. They're not afraid to make a statement about anything, and there's not a huge studio behind them making sure that everything is wholesome and politically correct and all that. In mainstream movies, they want everything to make perfect sense, and in independents, it can be all over the place. People can just have fun with it.

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# 19 - Kat Dennings - She started in television - making appearances in shows like CSI, ER and Sex and the City. But it was in Charlie Bartlett that she really made such a good impression. As Susan, she plays the love interest of Anton Yelchin, who is playing the title role. Kendra @Jake Weird posted a review of the film, and was quite specific on Denning's role, exactly what I remember!

A pretty drama student, Susan Gardner (Kat Dennings), mistakes Charlie for a teacher when she sees him wearing a tie, and she is immediately attracted by his quirky manners, offhand remarks, and his skills in improvising theatre comedy. She is the daughter of the school's principal Nathan Gardner (Robert Downey Jr.), with whom she has a difficult relationship.

Maybe this unsatisfactory family bond is one of the reasons for the mutual attraction between Susan and Charlie. [ read more ]

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I have to agree. That scene alone was enough for me to remember Dennings, and it's just a supporting role. In her more high-profile movie, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Dennings plays Norah opposite Michael Cera who plays Nick.My favorite reviewer, Karina Longworth @Spout said:

From its animated notebook-scrawl opening credits to a final scene in which two people finally, effortlessly unburden themselves of a MacGuffin and just decide to be together, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (based on the young adult novel by Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan) seems to have been packaged in the hopes that the lightning that made Juno an unignorable commodity a cultural phenomena will strike twice. Nick and Norah isn't quite the assault to the teen romance genre that Juno was, and that's both good and bad. Michael Cera's Nick, Kat Denning's Norah, and their assorted pals drift fluidly between irony-as-defense and taking both themselves, and the idea of love, very seriously. The result is a film that's much more of a traditional teen romance, but also a more honest one.

I was amused and tried to maintain an open mind with Juno, but in Nick and Norah, I was simply enjoying myself.

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# 18 - Juno Temple - Remember the young woman at the center of the controversy involving the major characters in Atonement? Yes, she's the one who accused Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) of rape. That's not all - she also played the daughter of Cate Blanchett's character in Notes on a Scandal. Check out Ms. Temple's photo from Drama Magazine!

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She has won critical praise for playing these supporting roles. One reviewer said that she played her part in Notes on a Scandal with "petulance and angst," (from Miranda K. Pennington @ Ithacan Online) while her performance in Atonement has been called "impressive" by Variety.

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The Telegraph did a profile of Ms. Temple and one part talked about how she became an actress:

...at 15, she realised she wanted to be an actress. 'I just had to turn around to my parents and say, "I really want to do this."' It was then that her mum suggested she attend the audition for Notes on a Scandal: '"You know what Juno?" she said, "If you want to do this, go and see your competition."' Richard Eyre remembers the sweet girl he met back then. 'None of Juno's personal qualities was required in the part,' he says. But even though she had never really worked before, Eyre knew she could do it. Already 'she was an actress. I knew she could play it without having to be it.' Now Juno Temple is one of our best new acting talents... [ read more ]

Ms. Temple has five new feature films to be shown this year and the next - including the historical-drama-thriller Glorious 39 (with Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, among others), Cracks (with Eva Green) and Noah Baumbach's latest feature, Greenberg, where she plays a lead role.

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But Seyfried is not simply into supporting roles, no matter the acclaim. This year and the next are going to be Ms. Seyfried's years as she is regarded as one of the young actresses to dominate the movie scene.

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Here's the breakdown why that seems to be the case:

At the moment it looks like her chances of being taken more seriously are steadily increasing. She is currently filming Jennifer's Body - a movie scripted by Diablo Cody, the Oscar-winning stripper-turned-screenwriter who wrote this year's surprise Academy darling, Juno. ‘Diablo's a great girl,' says Amanda, ‘not wild at all but very ambitious. She was telling me about the way people treated her when she worked in strip clubs and we even went to one together here in Toronto. After that I never want to step into one of those clubs again.'

She has also completed work on the movie Boogie Woogie, shot in London with Joanna Lumley, Alan Cumming and Stellan Skarsgård - one of her potential Mamma Mia! fathers, this time playing her lover (‘but that was cool because he's very sexy').

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# 16 - Rebecca Hall - She plays Vicky in Woody Allen's more recent feature, Vicky Christina Barcelona, which also stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson. For her performance, she was nominated for a Golden Globe- Best Actress - Musical or Comedy. But is Rebecca Hall, just suddenly arrived on the scene without any warning or introduction whatsoever? Actually, the British actress can also be seen in Starter for Ten (with James McAvoy on the lead) and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, so her acclaim is not really a surprise. In fact, she already earned quite a distinction in theater - In 2003, Hall won the Ian Charleson Award for her debut stage performance in a production of Mrs Warren's Profession.

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The first thing you notice about Rebecca Hall - on stage, as in person - is her sheer loftiness. There may be taller women, but she is serenely, aristocratically vertical. In her own words, she is "a giant" - disablingly so, given the half-pint proportions of so many actors. In the cauldron of performance, she has had to compromise. "I've got really good at dropping my hip and drooping my shoulders, and making myself look small," she says. No amount of folding herself into creases will stop her from towering over Simon Russell Beale, opposite whom she is now playing at the Old Vic in two great classical roles. But there is another side effect of being 5ft 10in - and not blonde - in her line of work. Or so she reckons. You get typecast as a brainbox. "I'm often cast as clever people. It doesn't mean I necessarily am."

She recently played Emily Dickinson in Brian Crano's Official Selection and will next star in the highly-anticipated Dorian Gray.

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# 15 - (Tie) - Emma Watson and Kristen Stewart

I am inclined to consider the stylish, fashionable and charming Miss Emma Watson simply as one of cinema's most refreshing and exciting young actresses, while the intense and highly-dedicated Kristen Stewart as the next most important Hollywood leading lady. Many would probably disagree with having a tie, but that's just it. Of course, Stewart and Watson are two different, unique individuals capable of performing well on the big screen.

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Let's take a closer look:

Kristen Stewart - She'll be Isabella Swan to all Twilight fans and will always be Edward Cullen's most beloved. But she has played a number of movie roles worth mentioning, among them as the unassuming Tracy Tatro, a country girl who fell in love with Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild, as the troubled and lonely teenager Martine in The Yellow Handerchief, and as Sam, the older and tomboyish daughter of Patricia Clarkson in The Safety of Objects, her debut film.

She also portrayed the young Melina Sordino, ostracized by her schoolmates, alienated by both her mother and father, and is a rape victim who decided not to utter a word in the official Sundance selection, Speak. Says critic Chris Parry on Kristen's performance:

As Melinda, Kristen Stewart doesn't just shine, she burns. In a role where most of what she says doesn't come in the form of words, the teen star of Panic Room and Cold Creek Manor shows that she's far more than just a 'teen actress', delivering a flawless performance. Of course it helps that the script is magnificent, the director at the top of her game and that the cast around her is actually made up of teenagers, rather than twenty-something actors dressed down to look like high school kids. [ read more ]

Of course, let us not forget her role as Jodie Foster's diabetic daughter Sarah in David Fincher's psychological thriller, Panic Room. It was in this hot-wired thriller that Kristen first received critical acclaim. Her latest as the alluringly sharp-tongued arcade girl, Em Lewin (opposite the talented Jesse Eisenberg) in Adventureland, is one of the first indication of her getting cast in more matured roles. Perhaps her next high-profile role - which maybe her most challenging yet - is playing the legendary Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways, a coming-of-age biopic about '70s teenage band The Runaways.

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Emma Watson - Born in France but very definitely known as a young British actress, Emma Watson has become an attractive, stylish and versatile talent. AskMen wrote an awesome profile of Emma, and below happens to be my favorite part:

Some actors never experience commercial success, and then there’s Emma Watson. The Oxford schoolgirl made her acting debut in 2001 in an intimate little film called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Based on the best-selling novel by J.K. Rowling, the blockbuster film went on to make $975 million worldwide en route to becoming one of the most lucrative movies of all time. Emma Watson has since shown off her impressive acting chops in the successful sequels...

Says the actress on her role in the hugely successful Hary Potter series:

I feel incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to be in such a fantastic film and worked with so many tons of people. I mean, my ambitions couldn't even dream of the scale and greatness that Harry Potter is, and so, I'm so very lucky about that. But as Dan said, I love performing, I love being creative. There's so many different aspects of the film world that even if I didn't pursue acting, then I... I mean, something, something in it I might end up doing. Whatever gets thrown at me, I'm just going to go with the flow and see what happens.

Glamour and Emma Watson: To prove she is up for the title 'Most Glamorous Young Actress', her shots in the latest Burberry campaign has been declared a winner, and it was no less than Vogue which reported:

THE biggest ego boost of my life," is how Emma Watson described her recent Burberry campaign shoot with Mario Testino - and now we can have an exclusive peek at just what that incredible day was like for the young actress.

"Emma is part of the Burberry family, we've worked with her on lots of different things," Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey revealed whilst on location in Westminster with Watson and Testino. "She is one of the great new British icons."

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# 14 - Sienna Miller - Being a fashion model is often considered a disadvantage for those aspiring to become an actress. Such is the case with Sienna Miller. Being involved with Jude Law didn't help either, or so it seems. Says Miller:

It was like best of times, worst of times. I don't want to talk about Jude out of respect to him, but at the point that it was happening I was falling madly in love with him. In one sense it was a really happy time. I'm not going to talk about what it was like, because it was really intense and really intimidating. Boring!

For now, relationships are definitely taking a backseat for Sienna Miller. Aside from being a finalist in BAFTA’s Orange Rising Star, the actress is one of the busiest with a string of back-to-back film projects.

After Factory Girl, Stardust and Interview, Miller was part of four highly-anticipated films: Hippie Hippie Shake (with Cillian Murphy), The Edge of Love (also with Murphy and Keira Knightley), A Woman of No Importance and Stephen Sommers’ GI Joe where she plays The Baroness.

Jealous and insecure critics have lambasted her for 'weak character portrayal' in her recent movies (well, mostly in Factory Girl), but the criticism is often related to the fact that they can't get over her being a former model. Why is that? Some people seem to find it hard to accept models as being capable of more than just posing for fashion photogs...

Given the proper acting vehicle, Miller can compete with anyone in the acting department.

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# 13 - Deborah Francois - When I think of the sensational Belgian actress, Deborah Francois, the first thing that register are her two powerful, unforgettable performances - as Bruno's (Jeremie Renier) girlfriend, Sonia, who got pregnant in Dardenne Brothers' Cannes big winner, L'Enfant and as Mélanie Prouvost, a gifted piano player out for revenge in The Page Turner (La tourneuse de pages). If there is anyone in European cinema today that ought to be considered as one of it's most talented performers, then it has to be Deborah Francois!

The 3-time Cesar awards nominee (and winner) for Most Promising Actress just recently won the 2009 Prix Romy Schneider - an award given since 1984 in memory of famous actress Romy Schneider in Paris, France. American audiences ought to watch out for Ms. Francois, she's simply stunning!

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Says Marcy Media, who desribed Ms. Francois as the New Ingenue:

The Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals may be cinematic worlds apart, but 21-year-old Belgian actress Déborah François already has managed to conquer them both. She made her acting debut in Jean-Pierre Dardenne's "L'Enfant," which went on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2005. Now François' first English-speaking film - "Unmade Beds," by Argentine director-writer Alexis Dos Santos - is earning critical acclaim after screening at the recent Sundance festival. "Unmade Beds" uses an unconventional format, mixing still photography, live action and musical performances from underground British bands such as (We Are) Performance, Connan Mockasin and Plaster of Paris to narrate the intersecting lives of a group of young bohemians in a London loft.

"I kind of fell in love with the role of Vera on the spot - [it was the] kind of sex, drugs and music movie I had never done," explains François of her attraction to the project.

And perhaps a taste of a lifestyle she never got to explore. Though the ingenue hails from the university town of Liège, she has had little time for long nights out. Since being discovered at 16, at an open casting call for "L'Enfant," François has been launched headfirst into a string of French films. [ read more ]

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# 12 - Michelle Williams - Nobody can deny that Michelle Williams is one fine young actress. In fact, Ms. Williams maybe regarded as one of today's most sought-after actress. After her impressive portrayal of Jen Lindley in Dawson's Creek, she made the succesful transition into the big screen via a list of notable films.

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Let's take a closer look at William's acting career so far...

In 2006 she appeared in The Hawk Is Dying with Paul Giamatti. In 2007, she was in The Hottest State opposite Ethan Hawke; and in the Todd Haynes directed I'm Not There with Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Julianne Moore. In 2008, she starred with Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman in the Marcel Langenegger directed film Deception.

Williams has been noted to "repeatedly taken chances on under-the-radar indies", such as The Station Agent and The Hawk Is Dying, "while catching the attention of auteurs like Wim Wenders (Land of Plenty), Todd Haynes (I'm Not There); and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (based on the novel it adapts, Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane) - that will also star Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo.

Along with the Scorsese film, she shot four other films in succession. Independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy was shown on September 27 and 28, 2008 at the New York Film Festival and opened on December 10, 2008. Williams appears "in every scene as a young woman living hand to mouth on the road when her car breaks down and her dog goes missing in a blue-collar Oregon town. She is one of a "vivid ensemble cast orbiting around Philip Seymour Hoffman's harried theater director" in Synecdoche, New York, the first film directed by Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation.

Two other films include director Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth with Gael García Bernal; and Incendiary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. Williams recently said that she is "going to take a year off" as she "stopped feeling creative a little while ago, and ... [is] just realizing it now," and is also "feeling the strain of being a working single mom" and, the untimely death of her husband, Heath Ledger.

Williams can be seen in the upcoming romance film Blue Valentine with Ryan Gosling; the film is currently in pre-production and has a release date of 2010.

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# 11 - Scarlett Johanson - Some girls have all the luck, but apparently, Lady Luck can change her mind…If that seems ominous, it’s because it relates directly to how Scarlett Johansson has been treating her acting career of late.

Actress-turned-singer Scarlett Johansson's debut album has received a series of scathing reviews from music critics, who have branded the star's recordings "fussy and forgettable." The Lost In Translation star released her album Anywhere I Lay My Head, a collection of Tom Waits covers, this week. But several reviews of the 40-minute-long disc have been lukewarm, with commentators reserving their harshest criticism for Johansson's vocal abilities.

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I still can’t get over her awesome performances in Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring. She is such a terrific actress, but it seems her talent manager and those around her are taking her down.

After these two great films, it took three long years before Johansson was able to deliver another great performance courtesy of Match Point, directed by Woody Allen, the same filmmaker who once said that Johansson “will ruin her promising acting career by indulging in the party lifestyle - advising her to take inspiration from Meryl Streep instead.”

Ignoring her "singing aspirations blooper", she should have been ranked higher, perhaps even at the #2 spot. Her performances in Lost in Translation and Match Point are more than enough to satisfy the film critics in us, plus the fact that she's one of the most beautiful young actresses we have today...

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What's on your mind? Oh and yes, there are 10 more names on the list, and if your favorite young actress is not yet here, then perhaps she might be ranked higher or perhaps not at all, so please do tell us who she is and why she ought to be part of the list. Anyway, just fire away!