Who is at least one of your favorite juvenile actors/actresses, and why?
I’ll start by saying that one of my favorites is a young lady by the name of Joey King. Why? Because, at least to me, she hits the bullseye both as herself and as Ramona. How, you might ask? Well, I have the Blu-Ray of Ramona, and there is a 5-min. feature on that by the name of “A Day In the Life of Joey King”; I’ve seen it quite a few times. Based on what I’ve seen from it, she seemed to have a lot of fun with the filmmaking process, especially WRT Ramona. I learned a couple of things about her too:
–Her Walkie-Talkie handle is “Pickle,” a nickname that her on-screen father (John Corbett) uses several times in the film as well.
–She has cat allergies (something that, until now, I never knew about her); based on what I heard from an interview snippet, it made the cat scenes very much of a challenge for her.
The other thing is, of course, her performance as Ramona, which, I strongly believe, was much better than Sarah Polley’s performance in the 1988 PBS series by that name.
Chloe Moretz, from Kick-Ass. She was good through the whole film, but it was when it seemed like she was actually defeated that her performance really won me over.
Good choice. I do think that a young Natalie Portman was great in Leon as well.
Thanks for the responses! Of what Joey did outside of Ramona, before or after, what would you recommend?
I’ve been on a Brit movie/old movie kick lately.
John Howard Davies - The Rocking Horse Winner
Gordon Gebert - Holiday Affair
Jonathan Ashmore - A Kid For Two Farthings
The best thing about all 3? All them went on to “normal” careers. Gebert is a City College architecture professor, Ashmore made that one film and is now a biophysics professor in London and Davies got out of the acting end of things and became a director/producer things such as Steptoe and Son, early Monty Python, and Fawlty Towers (apparently it was his idea to cast Prunella Scales as Sybil Fawlty).
UT
In my opinion, the greatest acting job ever done by a juvenile was… Hugh O’Conor as the young Christie Browne in My Left Foot.
O’Conor was at LEAST as good as Daniel Day-Lewis himself.
Seconded.
Also, Tatum O’Neal was terrific in Paper Moon (“I want my two hundred dollars!”), Jodie Foster likewise in the original Freaky Friday, and Lindsay Lohan was cute enough you just wanted to put her in your pocket in the Parent Trap remake. Nowadays… not so much.
The best performance by a child actor I ever saw was that of Linda Manz in Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven. Really. Her voice-over narration was the thread that tied the whole movie together. It’s her (her character’s) story way more than that of the ostensible main characters.
I kinda like Jenette McCurdy, aka Sam on iCarly. Funnier than hell. Miranda Cosgrove (Carly) had the most wicked comic timing as the evil little sister on Josh and Drake, but playing the straight man role on iCarly, doesn’t get as much chance to exercise it. Pity.
Also both are (I can say this now that they are of age) really good lookin’.
Elijah Wood was amazing in his child and teen roles, especially in Radio Flyer.
I think Bailee Madison is going to go places.
And AnnaSophia Robb is impressive too.
My current favorites are both young men:
Will Shadley from Dirty Sexy Money, and most recently on Alcatraz, and Ryan Wynott from Flashforward/The Cape.
As for the young ladies, I’d love to see Ariel Gade (Invasion) and Aryana Engineer (Orphan) in more.
Gah, I am becoming a one-trick pony lately. This is the third time in a week that I’ve mentioned The Middle.
But it’s a good show, dammit! And the two older kids Charlie McDermott (Axel) nd Eden Sher (Sue) are just terrific. They’re not afraid to do anything and they’re very expressive. McDermott is walking around in nothing but boxers half the time and Sher’s character is both enthusiastic and unfortunate.
Those kids just astound me, I think even more than Nolan Gould (Luke) from Modern Family.
ETA: Ok so those two actors are 20 and 21. So…retract my votes :-/
She’ll turn 18 in a few months, so she’s not a juvenile anymore, but I’ve liked Saoirse Ronan in everything I’ve seen her in. That most recently includes Hanna, The Lovely Bones, and City of Ember.