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Rising Star: Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is one of those actresses who just seem to come out of nowhere, and who then feature in every big movie that you are looking forward to. I had never heard her name before it was announced that she would be in Grindhouse, and when I heard she was signed for the movie, I shrugged my shoulders. Then she was announced as the daughter of John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard and I thought to myself: "hmm". Then I watched Bobby, wondering to myself who that actress playing the waitress was, and realised that it was her, and that I had actually also seen her before, in Sky High. And so, in a realitvely short amount of time, an actress can go from being an unknown, to being something you have seen in two pictures, and would love to see in two more that are upcoming.

Rising Star: Lulu Brud

It's not often that I interview an actress who has the ambition to become 'the female George Clooney'. Then again, Lulu Brud is very ambitious, and her dreams extend far beyond acting. "I want it all. I want to be the female George Clooney... Acting, directing, writing, producing. Acting will always be my main focus and passion—but I think that the more I understand every aspect of the craft and all the work it takes to make a movie, the more I will appreciate and love the acting itself." Click on to read more about Lulu, who you may have caught in Jim Carrey's recent Number 23, or in one of the independent movies she has starred in, like Coldblooded Canyon and The Gravedancers.

Rising Star: Evan Rachel Wood

It's weird: you've been acting for many years, in a lot of critically acclaimed movies, yet your biggest media exposure comes when somebody thinks up a rumor about you and a famous rock star. This is what has happened to Evan Rachel Wood, actress in movies as diverse as Thirteen, Down in the Valley and the upcoming King of California, who was recently mentioned as being the object of Marylin Manson's affection. Evan's fans freaked out at the news, and are still waiting for their favorite actress to confirm that it was all just a rumor. I'm pretty sure though, if this turns out to be a false rumor, that she just doesn't care. All throughout her career, she has been more interested in her acting, never paying much attention to the whole Hollywood-thing. "I just hate all that showbusiness mingling," she told in an interview. "I just have to come back to reality for a little bit, have a real life.I'm pretty laid-back. I hang out with my friends, read, go to concerts and try and travel as much as I can. I'm not a party girl, I don't eat at the Ivy and I'm not shopping on Rodeo Drive. It's pretty easy to stay out of that if you want to. There are other places. I really like being able to go out anywhere and nobody really cares."

Rising Star: Tina Majorino

And the Rising Star extravaganza continues this week, with already the fourth actress in the spotlights (don't worry, this is the last one for the week... I think). And again, I chose a young actress from popular TV-series Big Love (of which I finished the first season DVD-box yesterday night, anxious to see what will happen next). This time, we put the spotlights on Tina Majorina, an actress who wrote her own screenplay before she even acted in her first movie... At eight years old!

Rising Star: Ginnifer Goodwin

You can almost call this week Rising Star week, as here we have another young actress on the verge of big things! Well, actually, in the case of Ginnifer Goodwin it's hard to dismiss what she has done before as insignificant (Yes, I know, another actress from Big Love, I've been watching the DVD box set of season 1 this week). Ginnifer is cute, has a sweetness to her that makes most of her characters instantly lovable and is more than able to mix the smiles with the drama, while her interest in off beat material makes her the perfect choice for any director making a movie or TV-show outside of the norm.

Rising Star: Sophia Bush

Looks like the name Sophia Bush might be getting entered into Google quite a bit today. Website IESB.net has published a rumor that the actress is up for the role of Wonder Woman in Joss Whedon's adaptation, and even though it's nothing more than that, a rumor, it does mean that people who read the rumor will subconsciously keep connecting her to the movie, at least until the next actress is mentioned as being in the running for the role (which will probably happen plenty of times before a start date for production has been announced). Still, Bush would not look out of place in the role of Wonder Woman Donna Troy.

Rising Star: Amanda Seyfried

Every now and then, there are actresses who seem to be everywhere at once, while in the past you haven't see that much of them. While watching the season 1 box of HBO's brilliant Big Love with my wife over the weekend, I wondered for a second who that actress was playing Bill Paxton's daughter Sarah. I soon realised that I had seen her before in Mean Girls, where she plays the one of Lindsay Lohan's airheaded new friends, and then the one with the least brain mass in her head. Her character in Big Love is completely different, as her oldest daughter in a family of polygamists has a lot of inner struggles to get to grips with her feelings about what her father and mother's have more or less gotten her into. Or, as Amanda said herself in an interview with HBO: "My character is the only one that's forced into something she doesn't want to be in."

Rising Star: Ellen Page

Ellen Page has left a big impression in the first half of this year. First, the controversial Hard Candy, in which she plays a young girl who gets back at the much older man who seduced her on the web, left audiences divided in camps either loving or hating it. Then came her role as Kitty Pride in the box office behemoth X-Men: The Last Stand, which made her known to a big audience. In both movies, Ellen was one of the highlights, critics showering her with praise, with one critic even saying about Hard Candy that "there's really only one compelling reason to see this film and that is the extraordinary performance by young Ellen Page, a breakout if ever there was one." (Laura Clifford from Reeling Reviews) And for Page, this is clearly only the beginning.

Profile: Rachel McAdams

There’s a moment during Red Eye, and The Notebook, and Mean Girls, when you inevitably draw a conclusion. This conclusion has nothing to do with the movie itself, not with the director, the story, or the quality of the movie or anything like that. No, at some point during watching any of those movies, or The Family Stone, or The Wedding Crashers, you will inevitably realize that Rachel McAdams will one day be the greatest actress in movies.

Lindsay Lohan Profile

Fame can be a funny thing. How many young actresses make their debut in a big movie or television series, ride the wave of hype for a little while and then dissapear without a trace? And why do certain actresses (and actors too of course) stay popular, while others end up behind the counter of their local McDonalds or K-Mart? In the case of Lindsay Lohan, you don't have to dig deep for an explanation of her succes. Because not only has she got the looks, she also has the talent, which will probably ensure that we will keep seeing her in movies long after she has outgrown movies like Mean Girls and Herbie: Fully Loaded.