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The It List

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IT Crossover
MANDY MOORE

AGE 19
WHY HER? Legions of too-cool Gen-Yers no doubt have at least one album by Kelly Osbourne's bosom buddy (and MTV's favorite daughter) hiding in their White Stripes-infested record collections. And -- sorry, Ms. Spears -- Moore is a promising actress with no fewer than five films lined up for release.
ROLE MODEL Bette Midler. ''She's a household name who's stayed true to who she is. And Beaches! I mean...I'm gonna, like, tie my boyfriend [tennis player Andy Roddick] down and make him watch it.''
BLOND UNAMBITION The natural blonde garnered plenty of attention -- and a career boost -- with her brown-out for last year's A Walk to Remember. ''I'll never go blond again.... As cheesy and insignificant as it is to say that you've found yourself in a new hair color, it's the truth.''
NEXT July's How to Deal and the Michael Stipe-produced Saved, along with a pivotal role in Wes Craven's latest horror flick, Cursed. Plus there's a tribute to her musical forebears: Her October album, Coverage, features takes on songs by XTC and Cat Stevens.

IT Character Actor
PAUL GIAMATTI

AGE 36
WHY HIM? After years of specializing in supporting roles as rumpled sad-sack types (Private Parts' Pig Vomit, Man on the Moon's Bob Zmuda), he took a starring role as the rumpled sad-sack underground-comics artist Harvey Pekar in American Splendor and wound up becoming the talk of Sundance.
ON BEING HARVEY PEKAR ''You feel strange playing a real person, [but] Harvey was really laid-back about it.... He was able to realize it was a character based on him, which is difficult for some people.''
ON BEING PIG VOMIT ''I didn't know it was a real guy when I was playing it.... When I found out, I felt horrible.''
ON TYPECASTING Giamatti's wife writes screenplays, though even in her scripts, he doesn't get to play the dashing lead. ''I keep asking 'Where's the young handsome guy [for me to play]?' But no, it's the same goofy parts I always play.''
NEXT A supporting role in John Woo's Paycheck.

IT Remake
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

WHY IT? Okay, so the Psycho remake didn't pan out. But buzz on this updated gorefest, due in theaters Oct. 17, is starting to build.
AGES The movie stars, from left, Eric Balfour, 26; Jessica Biel, 21; Andrew Bryniarski, 34; and Erica Leerhsen, 27.
ROLE MODEL Biel: Christina Ricci. ''She doesn't care about being in a huge commercial movie. She doesn't care about being a huge superstar. She just cares about doing good work.''
WORST JOBS Balfour, who's had recurring roles on 24 and Six Feet Under, filled in for a friend, manning the craft service table at a rap concert. ''The producers were yelling at us, saying 'Where's the fresh fruit? There's not enough green M&M's in this bowl! Our artists only drink Courvoisier!'... And people would come up to me while I'm cleaning off the table and be like, 'Aren't you on that TV show?''' Leerhsen, meanwhile, was a lifeguard at a psychiatric hospital, where the patients ''would try and drown themselves and stuff.... They were just really bored and trying to get attention.''
ON TYPECASTING Bryniarski professes himself unconcerned about falling into the Robert Englund trap of being thought of only as a disfigured serial killer: ''If there's more Leatherface work in the future, I wouldn't say I'm not going to do it. [There's a] difference between beating a dead horse and milking a golden goose.'' We'll raise a glass of goose milk to that.

IT Movie Improver
KATHY BATES

AGE 55
WHY HER? It took a now-infamous hot tub scene in About Schmidt to convince some people of what many of us already knew: When Bates enters a film, it's better for her presence; when she exits, it's never quite as good again. She's also an inspired director (Six Feet Under, Oz, the A&E movie Dash and Lilly).
ON FULL-FRONTAL NUDITY (OTHERS', NOT HERS) ''Directing Oz was totally surreal. I remember thinking, What the hell have I gotten myself into? In one episode a character had to touch another's penis. I said to [creator] Tom Fontana, 'Can you really show this on HBO?'''
BEST OSCAR STORY After not winning for Best Supporting Actress this year, fellow nominee (and loser) ''Meryl Streep sailed by, grabbed my arm, and said, 'Let's go have a drink.' We slammed our bags onto the bar and she said, 'Two vodkas.' It was a real Bette Davis/Joan Crawford moment -- it just took the sting out of losing. It's hard to sit and lose in front of millions. I think we both wanted it -- you want it a lot.''
NEXT Playing an eccentric marquesa (yes, really) in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, due in 2004.

IT Dead Guy
ALEXANDER THE GREAT

AGE Dead
WHY HIM? The general who conquered the Persian Empire is conquering megaplexes with two big-budget biopics: one starring Colin Farrell for 2004, the other with Leonardo DiCaprio.
DOUBLE TAKE This showdown may seem like Hollywood myopia (Wyatt Earp vs. Tombstone) but Alexander's past is interesting enough for a trilogy. He was schooled by Aristotle, marched his army from Gibraltar to the Punjab, considered himself divine, and bought the farm at 32.

IT Elf
ORLANDO BLOOM

AGE 26
WHY HIM? As The Lord of the Rings' flowy-haired archer elf Legolas, he managed to spear the hearts of thousands of teenage maidens around the world...even though he was sharing most of his scenes with babe magnet Viggo Mortensen. And although his breakthrough role came just two years ago, he's already had the opportunity to work with such heavyweights as Peter O'Toole, Julie Christie, and Geoffrey Rush. (Did we mention that fabulous hair?)
INFLUENCES Paul Newman, Daniel Day-Lewis, and his Pirates of the Caribbean costar Johnny Depp. ''They raise the bar, do you know what I mean?'' says Bloom. ''I admire how they've developed their careers.''
IF HE WEREN'T ACTING, HE'D BE... Sculpting. Sculpting? ''I did better in sculpture exams for A-levels than I did in theater studies,'' he says. ''My mum is always going, 'Just keep up the sculpture, darling' -- she's convinced she's gonna have a little shop somewhere and sell my sculptures someday.''
AND WHEN HE ISN'T SCULPTING OR ACTING, HE'S... Indulging his inner news junkie. ''You go into a bit of a cocoon when you work and you kind of forget about the world outside.''
WORST JOB ''I was a clay [pigeon] trapper,'' he says. ''You know when you go shooting and the ceramic disks fly out and you shoot them? I was the guy who pulled the trap and let it go...I always wanted to be the shooter.''
NEXT This summer Bloom is featured in Pirates of the Caribbean; next year he'll work opposite Heath Ledger and Rush in the Australian crime drama Ned Kelly and with Brad Pitt in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy.

IT Recovering Band Geek
ALYSON HANNIGAN

AGE 29
WHY HER? Hannigan first made an impression as Willow, the sweet witch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then she took her flute to band camp and came back a changed woman -- smart, tart, girl-next-door sexy -- proving that she could do more than back up Buffy. Her spell-casting days now in syndication, the funny girl with flaming hair stakes her claim as a leading lady in the third slice of the American Pie franchise, American Wedding.
WHEN SHE KNEW SHE WANTED TO BE AN ACTRESS ''Birth,'' laughs Hannigan, who started doing commercials when she was 4.
ROLE MODEL ''I used to really admire Jodie Foster's career. Now it's not that I don't admire it, it's just that since she doesn't work as much, there's less to admire.'' She pauses. ''How do I say that without pissing her off?''
HOW SHE SAID ''SAY MY NAME, BITCH'' Nothing wilted her Willowy image more than this kinky, ad-libbed line in the first American Pie. ''I must've been channeling a demon from Buffy. Now I walk down the street, and people shout it at me.''
WORST JOB A video store that did a booming porn business. ''Every Saturday, I'd get these sweaty videos returned.''
NEXT After Wedding, she'd love to do a sitcom.

IT 'SNL' Veteran Who Deserves a Movie Career
CHERI OTERI

AGE ''Thirtysomething, like that show.''
WHY HER? She's not afraid to go over the top -- most recently, with her turn as the evil lunch lady in Dumb and Dumberer.
DUMBEST CAREER GAFFE ''The hairstylist [for Liar Liar] did all these braids in my hair that stuck straight up and I'm like, 'Whatever, it's just one day.' Little did I know that it was going to be the same hairstyle throughout the whole movie.''
NEXT Writing a semiautobiographical TV series.

IT Heartthrob
JOSH LUCAS

AGE 31
WHY HIM? With the bluest eyes since Paul Newman and charisma to match, the Arkansas native has managed to steal his scenes in A Beautiful Mind and Sweet Home Alabama away from his more famous costars. It's no wonder A-list directors (Ron Howard, Ang Lee, Lasse Hallstrom) are lining up to work with the guy.
WHY HE LIKES HIS DARK SIDE ''I can be a somewhat prickly person,'' says Lucas, who plays the heavy in The Hulk and an ex-con in Undertow, directed by heralded young auteur David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls). ''I think I work a lot of that stuff out in my characters so I don't have to have it as strongly in my life.''
FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE His antinuke-activist parents traveled from town to town, setting up organizations and protests. Consequently, young Josh evolved into a chameleon. ''I'd lie in bed the night before starting a new school and literally choose who I wanted to be -- jock, nerd, whatever. I'm not terribly comfortable about that, looking back on it,'' says Lucas. Getting into acting gave him an outlet for his self-diagnosed ''schizophrenia.''
HOBBIES Soccer, sailing, and a weekly card game with some Southern friends. ''But I feel hobby-weak,'' he laughs.
NEXT After criminal turns in Undertow and Wonderland, Lucas will play a romantic leading man opposite J. Lo in Hallstrom's An Unfinished Life, due next year.

IT Scene-Stealer
CATHERINE O'HARA

AGE 49
WHY HER? The Second City and SCTV alum brings gloriously smart comic zap to Christopher Guest improvs (A Mighty Wind, Best in Show), over-the-top comedies (Orange County), and last season's Six Feet Under.
COLLABORATIVE HIGH Working with Guest & Co. ''One of the beauties of his movies is you get all those different sensibilities because nobody's writing the dialogue. Everybody is doing what they want to do [and deciding] the best and funniest way that they want their characters to be.''
ONE FOR THE AGES ''My mom always told me, 'Don't tell your real age,' and I'm saying 'I'm 19, why wouldn't I tell my real age?' But now I know why because it's on the record. On Entertainment Tonight... it's like, 'Catherine O'Hara turning 49, Faye Dunaway turning 37...'''
NEXT The comedy Surviving Christmas, with Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini; a comedy show she's pitching to HBO.

IT Royalty
QUEEN LATIFAH

AGE 33
WHY HER? After more than a decade in TV and movies, the rap artist took command of the screen in Chicago and -- in the time it took to belt out ''When You're Good to Mama'' -- forced audiences to see her again for the first time. An Oscar nomination and a leading role in Bringing Down the House were just icing on the cake.
BEST JOB ''Saturday Night Live. You have no idea how intense it is to do that show. You've got a minute and 30 seconds to change from one costume to the next. You've got four people tugging on you, putting a wig on you, and then you're running to another set.''
WORST ADVICE ''Anytime somebody told me I had to take my clothes off to do something, that's bulls -- -. Maybe I'll show a little cleave, but I'm not getting naked.... And anyone who told me to lose weight, they can pretty much kiss my ass, because I look like real people. When I look at the rooms I've been in, the Golden Globes and the Oscars, I feel like I've come a long way to be a normal girl in this business.''
NEXT An album due this year, First Love; a cameo in Barbershop 2, which will be a launching pad for her own movie, Beauty Shop.

IT Workaholic
PATRICIA CLARKSON

AGE 43
WHY HER? After years of subtly shining supporting roles, this redhead's gone full glow, earning an Emmy as Ruth's bohemian sis on Six Feet Under, and igniting this year's Sundance Film Festival with four wildly different films, two of which -- The Station Agent and Pieces of April -- boast Clarkson's sharpest performances to date.
INSPIRATION ''When I was young, oddly, the two people I most wanted to be were either Ingrid Bergman or Lucille Ball.''
DREAM COLLABORATORS Y Tu Mama Tambien director Alfonso Cuaron. ''And I'd kill to be in a Christopher Guest movie.''
FAVORITE AUTHOR ''I dearly love James Wilcox [Modern Baptists, Polite Sex],'' says the New Orleans native. ''He's a real Southern writer. Not that I don't love Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner. But he writes about the South I know, a very contemporary South.''
NEXT She plays Kurt Russell's wife in Miracle, based on the underdog win of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team.

IT LaBeouf Cake
SHIA LABEOUF

AGE 17
WHY HIM? LaBeouf won a Daytime Emmy for his starring role on Disney Channel fave Even Stevens. (A TV-movie version just aired.) Earlier this year, he made his big-screen debut as the star of the tween hit Holes, and has landed supporting roles in this summer's Dumb and Dumberer and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.
HOW HE TRANSLATES HIS YIDDISH/FRENCH NAME ''Thank God for the beef.''
WATCH OUT, GARY OLDMAN ''If I met him, I'd have an orgasm.''
A ROLE HE WON'T TAKE ''I'll never appear in some cheesy Cinderella movie.''
NEXT LaBeouf stars as a war-obsessed teenager in Miramax/Project Greenlight's The Battle of Shaker Heights.

IT Everywhere
KATE BOSWORTH

AGE 20
WHY HER? She may look like Malibu Barbie (which served her well when she starred in last summer's Blue Crush), but don't be fooled by the surfer-girl facade. This chick has the range to pull off playing a porn star's teenage girlfriend (opposite Val Kilmer in this summer's Wonderland), a horny coed in last fall's The Rules of Attraction... and will likely play squeaky-clean Sandra Dee to Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea.
IF SHE WEREN'T ACTING, SHE'D BE... A teacher. ''Making an impact on someone's life so young is so important,'' she says. Just don't ask her for help with algebra. ''I was really horrible at math.''
BEST PARTY TRICK ''I have this habit of rubbing my ears when I'm really tired or I'm thinking,'' she explains. ''So all the cartilage is sort of broken up in the top of my ear. It's really soft, so I can put my entire ear inside of my ear and it'll stay there for a minute and I can flick it out with my head.'' We're sure elfin beau Orlando Bloom appreciates that.
NEXT Shooting the romantic comedy Win a Date With Tad Hamilton.

IT Child Star
DAKOTA FANNING

AGE 9
WHY HER? Holding her own opposite Sean Penn in I Am Sam, Fanning, at 7, became the youngest actor to be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award. The attention has landed her plum roles in Uptown Girls and The Cat in the Hat.
HER FIRST SCREEN KISS As the young Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama, she bussed the actor playing the young Josh Lucas. ''I was 7 and he was 10,'' she recalls. ''A very nice guy. I'd worked with him four times before. We were so nervous. We were in school just doing our work and I'd look up, and he'd look at me...and then we'd go back to what we were doing. And he tries to be like, 'Oh, I'm not looking forward to it.' But I think he was.''
HOW YOU CAN TELL SHE'S ARRIVED She already has a Christopher Walken story (from filming the kidnapping drama Man on Fire with the actor): ''We had a little boy in one scene and this guy had a flaming red shirt. And Christopher goes [here Fanning speaks perfect Walkenese], That's a nice shirt.''

IT Heartbreaker
ZOOEY DESCHANEL

AGE 23
WHY HER? She defied Ubermom Frances McDormand in Almost Famous and gently broke Paul Schneider's heart in the delicate, devastating All the Real Girls. And she has the power to seduce a magazine journalist in the course of a brief telephone interview.
HOW SHE HANDLED HER IMPROV AUDITION FOR GIRLS ''I'd heard the story about Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando during On the Waterfront -- how Brando kept...improvising, and Steiger just went right back at him. And I was like, 'I'm not gonna be no schmuck. I'm gonna be Rod Steiger.'''
WHEN SHE'S NOT ACTING... She's in a band, If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies, which plays ''old standards: Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Gershwin, that sort of thing. It's a side project: a garage big band. We have nine pieces.... We do country songs, too.''
MORE IMPORTANT She plays the ukulele. But don't make a fuss about it. ''Everyone keeps making this big deal out of it, but that's not my main thing.''
AND SO MODEST! MIGHT SHE MARRY A LOVESICK JOURNALIST? ''Hey, I'll think it over, okay?''
NEXT Mourning a dead Italian patriarch in the dark comedy Eulogy, due in October, and finding common ground with Will Ferrell (she's a department-store elf, he was raised by real ones) in the November romp Elf.

IT Auteur
JUSTIN LIN

AGE 31
WHY HIM? His breakout film, Better Luck Tomorrow -- about overachieving Asian-American teens gone bad, made for just $250,000 -- scored a distribution deal with MTV Films at Sundance and has grossed $4 million so far in limited release.
INFLUENCES Robert Altman, Terrence Malick, Akira Kurosawa. ''I appreciate filmmakers who are able to put their stamp on a project but at the same time get studio funding.''
SPEAKING OF FUNDING... While making the film, Lin maxed out 10 credit cards -- and still came up short. ''I needed MTV to write me a note to say we had a future deal in order to get a car.''
WORST JOB ''I was a front-desk clerk at a hotel next to UCLA Medical Center. A lot of patients who couldn't afford to stay at the hospital stayed at the hotel,'' says Lin, who was responsible for doing wake-up calls. ''If they don't answer the second time, it's your job to [check on them]. And they could potentially be, well, dead. So that was a big fear.'' (Luckily, an unrealized one.)
NEXT Adapting the novel Tenth Justice for Fox 2000.

IT In a Class of Her Own
KERRY WASHINGTON

AGE 26
WHY HER? She's appearing in four big movies this year, including The Human Stain and the Meg Ryan flick Against the Ropes.
IT DIDN'T COME OVERNIGHT Despite a showy role as single mom Chenille in Save the Last Dance, she made a living substitute-teaching in New York. ''Being recognized as Chenille and trying to be somebody's math teacher was a challenge.''
NEXT Unchain My Heart, the Ray Charles biopic.

IT Clotheshorse
SOPHIE DE RAKOFF CARBONELL

AGE 34
WHY HER? Her adorably chic outfits put the candy-coated shell on Reese Witherspoon's Legally Blonde films. And she even manages to make pup Bruiser look fabulous in Fifi & Romeo sweaters.
INSPIRATION ''I watch a lot of old movies.... Breakfast at Tiffany's and Some Like It Hot are my favorites,'' she says. ''I'm not a big person for looking at fashion magazines.''
STYLE PHILOSOPHY ''You're never gonna be the skinniest, youngest, or wealthiest person in the room. There's always...somebody who can outdo you. So dress for yourself and make yourself happy.''
WORST JOB ''Standing in front of Barneys for three hours on a hot, humid New York day, waiting for an R&B singer to show up for a fitting.''
NEXT Dressing J. Lo and Richard Gere in Shall We Dance.

IT Documentary Film Festival
FULL FRAME

AGE 6
WHY IT? Certified as an Oscar qualifier, Full Frame this year received more documentary submissions (730) than Sundance. The Scorsese-endorsed fest in Durham, N.C., has hosted premieres and early screenings of work by Abbas Kiarostami and Jonathan Demme.
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL ''I wanted the public to feel they had a home here,'' says founder Nancy Buirski. ''Without the interaction with the public, the filmmaker suffers.''
NEXT Buirski hopes to launch an all-documentary cable channel.

IT 'Carnivale' Attraction
CLEA DUVALL

AGE 25
WHY HER? She brings an intense focus to every role she plays, elevating and transcending even the most hackneyed material -- a skill she's deployed depressingly often, in The Faculty, The Astronaut's Wife, Ghosts of Mars, and this spring's Identity. Her luck may be improving, with roles in the HBO circus-freak series, Carnivale, and 21 Grams, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's follow-up to Amores Perros.
WHAT'S WITH ALL THE HORROR FLICKS? ''I don't know. I guess I scream well.''
A BORN SKEPTIC Since it's set in a sideshow, Carnivale features some, uh, human anomalies -- giants and little people and the like. ''There was a guy who claimed he was a giant, but when I tried to measure him, he got really freaked out. I managed to [figure out] that he's only, like, 6 foot 7. He's not 7 foot 1. He thinks that we don't know the difference. We know the difference.''
NEXT Carnivale, debuting in September, and 21 Grams, due in theaters in December.

IT Drummer Boy
NICK CANNON

AGE 22
WHY HIM? He may have been a star for the juice-box set in The Nick Cannon Show on Nickelodeon, but with his role in last December's sleeper hit Drumline, Cannon crossed over to a much wider fan base.
TOUGH CROWD Cannon did stand-up at age 11 on his father's public-access ministry show. ''I was trying to do real Christian-friendly material...I still try and keep it as clean as I possibly can.'' He pauses. ''The key word is try.''
SCARIEST CAREER MOMENT For a bit on his TV show, ''I was hanging upside down from a hot-air balloon, 30 feet in the air, with a rope tied to my ankle. I was, like, 'There's so many things that can go wrong right now.'''
ROLE MODEL Will Smith, who discovered Cannon five years ago and executive-produced a TV pilot for him at The WB. ''It's a cool relationship, like a big brother thing, ever since we first met.''
HELLO, LADIES! As a result of Drumline, his ''fans are older now. Instead of the young high school girls, now it's grown women. And I'm with that.''
NEXT Starring in Warner Bros.' Love Don't Cost a Thing -- a remake of 1987's Can't Buy Me Love -- due in December.
AND ALSO His self-titled debut album hits stores in August.
AND ALSO Performing on a 41-city tour with B2K this summer.
AND ALSO He's sold a treatment for a comedy called Underclassman -- about a cop posing as a high school student -- to Miramax, and plans to star in it later this year.
AND ALSO Performing on a 41-city tour with B2K this summer.
ANYTHING ELSE? ''I'm writing some poetry books, and my autobiography thus far. It's called Raising the Cannon.''

IT Script
'KINSEY'

WHY IT? Cross A Beautiful Mind with Henry & June, and you've got writer-director Bill Condon's upcoming biopic of Alfred Kinsey, author of the 1948 study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
THE CAST Liam Neeson as Kinsey, Laura Linney as his wife.
NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT The script (excerpted below) delves into Kinsey's infidelity and bisexuality. Says Condon: ''There will be people who'll be horrified by his behavior and others who'll be moved by it.''
KINSEY We'll be taking the sex histories of artists, writers, and actors, including the entire cast of ''A Streetcar Named Desire.''
REPORTER #1 How 'bout you, Mrs. Kinsey? Has your life changed much?
CLARA My husband's busier than ever. I hardly ever see him since he took up sex.

IT Fonda
TROY GARITY

AGE 29
WHY HIM? His wannabe-black hairdresser in last year's Barbershop was stomach-grabbingly funny, and his Army private in this year's Showtime movie Soldier's Girl was heartachingly true. Oh, and his parents are Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.
CREATIVE CRUTCH ''I try and define who the character's heroes are. Picture postcards of Muhammad Ali on my wall for [the 2001 Bruce Willis comedy] Bandits. KRS-One for Barbershop.''
SO...ABOUT THE FOLKS The focus on his famous parents, Garity says, ''can be annoying.... [But] they've provided me with so many opportunities and a lot of wisdom.''
NEXT Barbershop 2.

IT 'Pirates' Beauty
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY

AGE 18
WHY HER? After taking headers in the sleeper hit Bend It Like Beckham, the English actress traded in her soccer shorts for something more, uh, constricting -- that corset she keeps griping about in the trailer for July's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
CRIMES OF FASHION While she had to don ridiculous headgear to play Queen Amidala's doppelganger in The Phantom Menace, Knightley says the tummy tightener she tied on in Pirates was particularly obnoxious. ''I nearly passed out,'' she says. ''There was one scene I had to walk down some stairs and Gore [Verbinski], the director, started seeing my eyes rolling back in my head. He told me to go outside and take the corset off and get some air.''
WHO SHOULD PLAY HER IN THE KEIRA KNIGHTLEY STORY? ''Jim Carrey,'' she deadpans. ''He'd look great as me in drag. I mean, he can play everything so well...and he has great legs.''
FAVORITE ACT OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ''I paint boots,'' she says. Seriously. ''I think my brother's not very happy with me at the moment because he stupidly left a pair lying about, and I've painted sunflowers all over them.''
NEXT A supporting role in November's Hugh Grant romantic comedy Love Actually; sharpening her sword-fighting skills to play Guinevere in the upcoming King Arthur.

IT Lord of 'The Ring'
MARTIN HENDERSON

AGE 28
WHY HIM? Range: Last seen in The Ring, he'll next appear as a biker feuding with Ice Cube in Torque and later as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice: The Bollywood Musical.
HOW DID HE MANAGE TO AVOID BEING IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS? ''I came halfway around the world to go to Hollywood.... I could've saved myself money and just hung out in New Zealand,'' says the Kiwi, who was studying acting in New York when the film was being cast.
NEXT See above -- bike riding, singing, and dancing.

IT Game Boy
KEITH BOESKY

AGE 38
WHY HIM? As founder of ICM's videogame department and former head of Eidos Interactive (where he took Tomb Raider to the big screen), Boesky is mining today's interactive entertainment for tomorrow's blockbusters.
BAD HABIT Boesky is usually playing a videogame with the sound off while talking on the phone -- he played Midnight Club II throughout his interview with EW.
DREAM COLLABORATOR Apple CEO Steve Jobs. ''He's so smart,'' says Boesky, ''that planets orbit around his head.''
NEXT Boesky will spearhead the launch of The Last Apostle, a game and feature film about a converted assassin who fights evil forces to regain control of an anarchic city.

IT Director
LYNNE RAMSAY

AGE 33
WHY HER? In the five years since she won numerous festival prizes for her visually poetic short film, Gasman, Ramsay has directed a pair of captivating, hauntingly downbeat features, Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar -- the latter of which won her the Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes. This sensibility made her a perfect match for Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones, which she had started adapting before it became a best-seller.
ADAPTATION INFORMATION Bones is a tough novel to translate to film -- not least because its narrator is a murdered 14-year-old who tells the story from the afterlife. ''For me the story is really about the father and his connection to his daughter,'' says Ramsay. ''You know he's gone quite crazy, and needs resolution, which hasn't been easy because no one knows where his daughter is buried.''
NEXT The Lovely Bones begins shooting later this year.

IT Hot-Rodder
EVA MENDES

AGE 26
WHY HER? The Miami-born actress revs Paul Walker's engine as an undercover agent in this summer's adrenaline-fest 2 Fast 2 Furious, and then speeds into three films this fall.
ON RISK TAKING ''I do nothing extreme,'' she says. ''For some reason, bungee jumping and that kind of stuff just looks stupid.''
ROLE MODEL Jack Nicholson. ''When you're his age and you still have younger girls thinking you're hot, I mean, that's sexy,'' says the Revlon model.
DREAM COLLABORATOR George Clooney. ''He's opinionated, cerebral, and witty...not to mention incredibly handsome!''
NEXT Starring roles in Once Upon a Time in Mexico with Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp (September), Out of Time alongside her Training Day costar Denzel Washington (October), and the Farrelly brothers' Stuck on You (December).

IT Eisenberg
JESSE EISENBERG

AGE 19
WHY HIM? His little sis (and Pepsi shiller), Hallie, may be better known, but Jesse won fans with his performance in last year's Roger Dodger.
IF HE WEREN'T ACTING, HE'D BE... Writing screenplays, like the one that brought him thisclose to being sued by Woody Allen. ''He's my idol.... The first script I wrote was about him at 17. I sent a letter [to inform him], and I got a letter from his lawyers: 'Cease and desist.'''
NEXT Wes Craven's Cursed, which Eisenberg calls ''a post-modern werewolf movie.''

IT Smart Blonde
JENNIFER COOLIDGE

AGE ''I went to college with Gina Gershon. How's that?''
WHY HER? Because she makes everything she's in 10 times better. Whether it's as the temptress known as Stifler's mom in the American Pie series, the beautician sidekick in the Legally Blonde movies, or the collagen-rich, brain-deficient types she's portrayed in Christopher Guest's Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, Coolidge has made a specialty out of playing the blowsy, ditsy-but-warmhearted seductress.
HOBBIES Collecting ugly paintings. ''They can't be sort of bad -- they have to be so bad they're great.''
THE DOWNSIDE OF LEGALLY BLONDE ''I've gotten fat. That's what happens when you do Legally Blonde: 'Hey, I'm the fat girl. Working out? Forget it! I'm the fat girl!' And then the movie ends and you realize you can't use that anymore.''
WORST DECISION ''Turning down the lead role in Pretty Woman.''
REALLY? ''No.''
NEXT ''I've auditioned for a couple things and I haven't heard. I don't know what this summer holds for me. I'm gonna have a big clambake at my house.''

IT Thousand-Ship Launcher
DIANE KRUGER

AGE 25
WHY HER? When the producers of next summer's epic Troy were looking for someone to play Helen of Troy, they chose this multilingual farm girl-turned-dancer-turned-model-turned-actress.
PSYCHIC FRIEND CONNECTION Her name is pronounced Dionne.
WORST JOB ''In Germany, when somebody dies, you have two children holding candles in front of the passed person,'' she says of her stint in a church when she was a child. ''I would have to do that twice a week, [watching] people cry. It was pretty horrible.''
TESTING HER DIPLOMACY SKILLS She's the love interest for Josh Hartnett in the upcoming Obsessed, and for Orlando Bloom in Troy. So, Diane: Josh or Orlando? ''Oh, that's a tie!'' she laughs. ''I rub it in to all my girlfriends: I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I got to kiss him today again.'''
NEXT Finishing up Troy. (Reenacting the Trojan War takes time.)

IT Set Designer
GUY HENDRIX DYAS

AGE 34
WHY HIM? After earning a rep as a concept illustrator for his work on The Matrix Reloaded and Planet of the Apes, the British-born Dyas leaped into production design with the little indie gem, X2. Yup, those eye-popping sets were the work of a first-timer.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR Dyas cooked up X rays of Deathstrike's claws (showing how those stiletto nails retract into Kelly Hu's hands) and circus posters for Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) to hang on his wall. ''I basically put digital shots of Alan into these period illustrations.''
NEXT Director Terry Gilliam's Euro-fantasy Brothers Grimm.

IT Ex-Teen Crush
WENTWORTH MILLER

AGE 31
WHY HIM? The Princeton alum has graduated from teen hottie on The WB's Popular and ABC miniseries Dinotopia to adult heartthrob.
CAR TROUBLE ''After Popular, I was waiting at a traffic light in L.A., [and] a horde of teenage girls spotted me in my '85 Toyota Corolla. They crowded around my car, grabbing through the windows. You know [Six Flags'] Wild Safari? It was like that.''
NEXT The Human Stain with Nicole Kidman.

IT Import
CHIAKI KURIYAMA

AGE 18
WHY HER? You may not know who Kuriyama is -- although that means you haven't rented Battle Royale yet; to the video store, please -- but when Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill hits theaters this fall, you sure will. As an assassin named Go-Go, the Japanese actress bashes heads and practically steals the movie's big showcase action scene.
ROLE MODEL ''In junior high I most admired [Japanese star] Yasuko Matsuyuki. Now I want to be the actress that everyone else wants to become.''
ON SECOND THOUGHT ''Ooh, but I really like Audrey Hepburn.''