The Must List 2006: Movies

RR Mine's a zombie movie called Planet Terror. It feels like a John Carpenter movie that took place between Escape From New York and The Thing.

EW The two of you have collaborated in the past on Sin City and From Dusk Till Dawn — how important is it to have a friend in the business?
RR I almost just make movies now so I can see them at Quentin's house.

DANNY HUSTON
Must Late Bloomer

AGE 44
WHY HIM In an industry obsessed with youth, Huston is proof that careers can be marathons, too. After toiling for years as a director of forgettable movies (1987's telepic Bigfoot vaguely comes to mind), Huston switched to acting in his mid-30s. He's a natural. One look at his snake-oil smile in The Constant Gardener or his psychopathic squint in the Aussie Western The Proposition and your blood turns ice-cold.
HIS SECRET ''I actually don't mind playing creeps.''
GROWING UP HUSTON Tinseltown royalty doesn't get more royal: His grandfather was Oscar-winning actor Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), his father was legendary director John Huston (The African Queen), and his half sister is Anjelica. ''I was conceived during Freud, born during preproduction of The Bible, and teethed on The Night of the Iguana, '' he says.
NEXT This fall, Huston will costar with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore in the sci-fi thriller Children of Men (Sept. 29) and play Emperor Joseph II in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (Oct. 20), plus a gig as Orson Welles in the period whodunit Fade to Black (Welles, by the way, was a regular guest at the Hustons' home when Danny was a kid). Next year, he'll appear as the lover of his real-life ex-wife, Virginia Madsen, in the Jim Carrey mystery The Number 23. ''That was weird,'' he admits with a laugh. ''Just a bit awkward.''

JESSICA BIEL
Must Art-House Ingenue

AGE 24
WHY HER She's been a mildly rebellious preacher's daughter (TV's 7th Heaven) and skimpily clad slasher bait (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), a pouty vampire slayer (Blade: Trinity) and a top-gun fighter pilot (Stealth). Now, with the indie drama The Illusionist, costarring Edward Norton as a subversive magician, Biel pulls off her most impressive trick yet: transforming herself into a turn-of-the-century Austrian duchess — and a serious art-house actress.
COSTUME DRAMA ''For the audition, I dressed up like the character, in a corset and a giant gown, to kind of push it over the edge,'' says Biel. ''If you'd seen me walking down the street, you'd have been like, 'Oh, loony bin.'''
SPEAKING OF MAGIC, HOW ABOUT THAT DAVID BLAINE? ''That thing where he was in the tank? I didn't watch it, but I heard that his fingers were, like, peeling off. That's craziness!''
'STEALTH' BOMBER ''That experience was hard,'' says the actress of the 2005 action film's monumental failure at the box office. ''I had a good cry about it after I heard the reviews and saw the numbers. But you have to pull yourself up and say, It's not the end of the world — I will work again.''
DREAM PROJECT ''I'd like to do a romantic comedy or a dark comedy — something funny, something quirky and weird,'' says Biel. ''That's definitely not what I'm getting sent right away, so you just have to go in there and fight to the death for it.''
NEXT The Illusionist opens Aug. 18, followed by the Iraq war drama Home of the Brave (Dec. 15).