Young British Film Talent: Is Sam the new Orlando, and will Jessica be the next Keira?

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Patricia Dobson10 April 2012

Film industry trade paper Screen International will this week unveil its 2010 UK Stars Of Tomorrow, an annual list of 30 actors, writers and directors singled out for future stardom on the big screen. The annual line-up is whittled down after months of research involving consultation with casting directors, development executives and talent agents and hours of watching shorts, student films, plays and episodes of TV.

Now entering its seventh year, the Stars Of Tomorrow project has tipped names in the past such as Robert Pattinson, Dev Patel, Emily Blunt, Carey Mulligan, Gemma Arterton, Rebecca Hall, Aaron Johnson and James McAvoy long before they were on the public radar.

This year's anointed future stars assembled for the traditional photo-shoot at The Club At The Ivy in Covent Garden early one Tuesday morning last month.

The doorman and waiting staff barely gave them a second look as they made their way upstairs but chances are that many of them may shortly be gracing the pages of glossy magazines, gossip sites and red carpets.

Already on the cusp of fame is Emilia Clarke. One year out of the Drama Centre London, this actress who grew up in Oxford landed the role of Daenerys in Game of Thrones, the big-budget HBO adaptation of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, which is now shooting. Clarke replaced original choice Tamzin Merchant and has already got the online fan boys in a state of excitement.

Obi Abili, meanwhile, saw his profile skyrocket after he starred as the man who dupes New York high society into believing he is Sidney Poitier's son in Six Degrees of Separation at The Old Vic in January. The Londoner was subsequently cast in the BBC's Nativity and says he now wants to "prove he can play anything".

The actors also include Gwyneth Keyworth, who was recently in Royal Wedding on TV, Harry Lloyd, who gave a stand-out theatre performance opposite Rupert Friend and Gemma Arterton in The Little Dog Laughed, Nikesh Patel, who was so impressive in his first professional role in Disconnect at The Royal Court in February, and Ophelia Lovibond, currently filming a comedy in LA with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.

Young directors being tipped include Jonathan van Tulleken, who picked up a Bafta nomination earlier this year for his sinister short Off Season, Jonathan Entwistle, who has the ability to attract top actors such as Maxine Peake, with whom he is working on a short, and Luke Snellin, who picked up a Bafta short nomination for the Bill Milner-starring Mixtape. All three are writer-directors.

"It's a very exciting moment to bring all the future stars together for the photo-shoot each year," says Screen International editor Mike Goodridge. "It's also impressive to see how some of them show natural star power when they walk in a room. Sam Claflin and Jessica Brown Findlay, for example, really turned heads, and you can sense that they have very bright futures ahead of them."

UK Stars Of Tomorrow is in the July issue of Screen International

SAM CLAFLIN, Actor
Currently in Hawaii shooting the young male lead role in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Claflin is being hailed as the next Orlando Bloom. In his final year at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda), he nabbed a major role beside Hayley Atwell, Eddie Redmayne and Donald Sutherland in mini-series Pillars of the Earth and went straight onto the Syfy Channel's post-apocalyptic film The Lost Future and then to Channel 4's adaptation of William Boyd's Any Human Heart.

JESSICA BROWN FINDLAY, Actress
She began acting at Central Saint Martins College, and soon won plum roles in two upscale productions due out this year. First is Niall MacCormick's Albatross, a coming-of-age drama in which she takes the lead as a headstrong teenager with writing ambitions. And she has just wrapped Downton Abbey, the Julian Fellowes-created ITV series about an aristocratic family and their servants, as the convention-defying, politically engaged younger daughter.

ELLA PURNELL, Actress
Having spent a year on stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane as part of the chorus in Oliver!, Ella Purnell is moving seriously into film. She plays the young version of Keira Knightley's character in Mark Romanek's forthcoming Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, and is next starring alongside Clive Owen in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's The Intruder. Just 13, Purnell has also shot Gustavo Ron's Ways to Live Forever.

JONATHAN VAN TULLEKEN, writer-director
Jonathan van Tulleken scored a Bafta best short nomination earlier this year with Off Season, a sinister horror that showcases the writer-director's instincts for cranking up the tension and exploiting the aesthetic and narrative possibilities of a very chilly landscape. He recently completed an MFA at Columbia Film School in New York and is now developing a feature version of Off Season with Big Talk Productions as well as a number of other projects.

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