Kate's Break

Whenever I hear that I'm on the brink of stardom, I feel like I want to run into a cave,'' says Kate Bosworth, a flicker of fear flashing across her soon-to-be-famous (maybe) dual-colored eyes (one hazel, one blue). ''It's a scary place to be, the pinnacle.''

At this most promising -- and treacherous -- stage of her career, she won't be running anywhere without a publicist, agent, hairstylist, and a flock of studio executives rushing after her. Every so often, Hollywood scans the teeming masses of unheralded actors who toil in this city and -- seemingly at random -- picks one as the Next Big Thing. This time, it's Bosworth's turn, and the swirl of buzz surrounding her is already approaching tsunami proportions. The 20-year-old actress has precisely one starring credit to her name -- playing a babe-acious surfer chick in last year's Blue Crush -- and yet here she is, strolling onto the set of the romantic comedy Win a Date With Tad Hamilton for her second high-profile role of the year. (She just finished costarring with Val Kilmer in the sure-to-be-controversial John Holmes biopicture, Wonderland; later this year she'll play 1950s ingenue Sandra Dee opposite Kevin Spacey in Beyond the Sea.)

In her case, at least, there does seem to be more happening here than hype. ''Kate Bosworth is a movie star in every sense of the word,'' believes director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde), watching his new starlet prepare for a scene in which her character, a naive West Virginia girl who wins a date with fictional movie star Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel), first arrives at LAX. ''There is something incredibly paper-thin about some of these Next Big Things, but Kate has the talent to back the fame up. The notice she's getting is not a result of some publicity machine. It's the result of the quality of her work.''

The blond hair and freshly scrubbed good looks don't hurt either. Still, Bosworth has valid reasons to be scared: Stunning NBTs of arguably equal talent have come and gone before her (see Gretchen Mol). ''There's definitely a lot of stuff coming at her,'' says Duhamel. ''She knows her mistakes count more right now. That causes a lot of anxiety.'' How to deal with that anxiety is something Bosworth is still trying to figure out. ''It's making me slightly more aware,'' she says. ''When someone says something nice, I wonder about their real motive. It's a horrible way to be, but if you're a hundred percent innocent in this business, you're going to be eaten alive.''

She's already learned Lesson No. 1.