Of the following young stars who seem to be popping out of the woodwork, do any of them have a shot of being around in 10 years? 20 years?
The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are plastered all over Nickelodeon and Disney Channel:
Amanda Bynes
Hillary Duff
Lindsay Lohan
Feel free to add your own nominees, and I didn’t intend to limit it to females, it’s just that no young men come to mind.
Kristen Stewart from Panic Room. The features shared by her and Jodie Foster were eery.
Alison Lohman of White Oleander and Matchstick Men. She’s a cutester.
Scarlett Johansson had a very big 2003. (But her first film of 2004 stank.) And she’s only 19. She could be a major star for decades. Or she could do the Tara Reid thing and party her career to death.
The Duffs and such have no chance of reaching the level Johansson is currently at, let alone lasting at such a level.
Yeah, young guy nominees are hard to think of.
(IMDB is not responding now, no links.)
Only 18 when she broke out playing a 26 year old woman in Lost in Translation. Tons of sucessful roles as a kid actor, too. Looks like she has a lot of work going right now, too.
Interesting thread, tho I need to know your definition of “young”. I’d nominate Elijah Wood as a young actor who will last, but he is around 23 or so now, so he may be older than what you were thinking of.
Lots of lovely young hunks in those movies with the Disney girls the original post mentioned (I’ve seen them cause I have a 12 year old daughter) but none with any acting ability that was memorable.
EVan Rachel Wood. Played Jessie on Once & Again, and was recently in Thirteen and The Missing. She also has a black belt in tae kwon do and has the most beautiful singing voice–and she is barely in her teens.
Haley Joel Osment springs to mind. That kid is freakishly precocious.
Then again, the cuteness may wear off with age.
I don’t think Osment’s appeal is limited to “cuteness” – he can act and he has a pretty broad range.
I’ve been pretty impressed by Dakota Fanning, so far.
D’oh! You beat me to it!
Cuteness is hardly the sole reason he’s gotten as far as he has. And anyway, now he’s morphing into handsome. (Read the article, if you like. I’m telling you, he’s not going to crash and burn, the way so many people are gleefully anticipating.
Haley Joel Osment will first have to overcome Secondhand Lions. Good lord, what a horrible acting job by him.
Kieren Culkin showed some great promise in Igby Goes Down.
Michelle Trachtenberg looked awefully grown up in Eurotrip. I’d like to see her try a more serious role though.
I think Haley Joel Osment has more potential than some other child stars because his first and most memorable work for most people (Sixth Sense) is a very serious role where cuteness wasn’t the only reason people looked at him when he was onscreen. Although I agree it has yet to be seen if he can morph from a darn good child actor to a better-than-average adult actor.
I should amend my post… It’s not that he has more potential, he merely has better chances, because people won’t look at him 20 years down and just think of a wise-cracking youngster from some sitcom or teeny movie. This will make him viable for a larger range of parts.
Since I just saw In America last weekend, I’ll cast my votes for Sarah Bolger and Emma Bolger. Of course I really have no idea.
No one’s mentioned her but that girl in Whale Rider was freaking amazing. Just thinking about that recital scene makes me want to start bawling right now.
Scarlett Johanson’s ‘crappy’ movies have probably helped her so far. She hasn’t starred in any real bombs. The Horse Whisperer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Lost in Translation have won her a lot of critical respect at an early age. Movies that aren’t as good but probably made more money, like Eight Legged Freaks and The Perfect Score, help establish that she’s a box-office draw. So she’s got the art cinema respectable movie crowd pretty well won over, it looks like she’s on the road to being bankable as well (this all at 20). That spells longevity to me.
The girls the OP mentions are all really popular as teens and they’ve done Disney/pop stuff so far. They haven’t done anything to prove they can keep going when they’re too old for that.
When I first saw the thread title I thought ‘Orlando Bloom’. He’s got 4 hit movies under his belt in TLOTR and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and he’s clearly being groomed as a male action/romantic lead. That’s a good place for a guy to be in.
But he’s already 26 so he may be too old for the definition.
I was thinking from preteens to very early 20s, with not much in the way of movie experience. Osment (what show was he on with Ed Asner?) and Elijah Wood (Radio Flyer was great!) have too much film experience, IMO, to be considered, although they are fine nominees on the male side.
What I had in mind was, say, a thread like this back in the late 80’s entitled “Are The Olsen Twins A Flash In The Pan?”
Just throwing out names for speculation, so that in 2025, we can look back and say “Wasn’t she the chick I first heard about on SDMB? I wonder if my reply to that thread posted yet…damn hamsters.”
I think Kirsten Dunst has a shot. She’s mostly done the perky cute type roles but has shown some range in movies like “The Cat’s Meow” and even “Spider-Man.” As she gets a little older I can see her doing things with some more depth.
I’d say the Castor C twins. Being a pair of small M types, they are going to keep their cool and shine for a long long time, and according to this site they are very very young (even assuming the author made a typo and left off a word in the next to last sentence ;)), so they should be around for several billion more years easily.
I’d say it’s hard to tell as a general thing. The girl who played Dinah Lord (the younger sister) in The Philadelphia Story had a fine comic sense and stole practically every scene she was in. I looked her up in allmovie.com expecting to see a lengthy adult career, but it turns out that she ended up doing very little and didn’t even merit a “star” entry.
