THE AWARDS EDITION 2011-2012

BAFTA Voters Pick Rising Stars ofActing and Directing, and HollywoodBy Tim AdlerIs Paying Close AttentionIt was an overcast morning in London last October, when, in the magisterialheadquarters of BAFTA, upstairs at 195 Piccadilly, 11 people were seated aroundthe heavy wooden boardroom table, getting ready to make a decision that could havea profound impact on some young actors’ future.Black and white photographs of previous BAFTA awardsceremonies – Britain’s closest equivalent to the Oscars ® –hung on the high-ceilinged walls. Sienna Miller, SimonPegg and Harry Potter director David Yates were amongthose deciding who should make it onto the shortlistof eight names being proposed for this year’s OrangeWednesdays Rising Star award. (It would be down tocustomers of UK telco Orange to decide on the final fiveyoung stars being groomed for stardom.) The public getsto vote for the winner, which will be announced with allBritish Academy of Film and Television Arts winners onFeb. 12, 2012 in London.The jurors spent the morning debating the merits of eachof the 20 young actors and actresses put forward. Manyof them had only appeared in a couple of movies, andthe jurors had spent the previous month watching theirperformances – sometimes at special screenings.James McAvoy, Tom Hardy and Noel Clarke have all wonthe Orange Rising Star in the past. That’s why the awardis important: It acts as a kind of early warning system forHollywood about talent coming its way. Hardy is now costarringin The Dark Knight Rises, while McAvoy was thelead in X-Men: First Class. Clarke will appear in the nextinstallment of Star Trek.“The Rising Star award is very useful in terms ofshining a light on actors who have done a couple ofroles but aren’t stars yet,” jury chairman Pippa Harris,producing partner of Sam Mendes, says. “Becauseit’s a public vote, it’s fantastic in terms of giving thema platform. The award is definitely something thatHollywood looks at for fresh talent.”Clarke is a case in point. WME picked him up, a multihyphenatewho got his first break in Doctor Who, for U.S.representation after he won the Rising Star in 2009.Kingsley, left, and sharpeconsidine, left, and olivia colemanOnly one of this year’s five Rising Star contenders,Adam Deacon, doesn’t already have U.S. representation.Deacon, who starred in urban dramas Adulthood andKidulthood, is repped by Troika in Britain. All the others –Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids),Eddie Redmayne (My Week With Marilyn) and TomHiddleston (War Horse) – have agents in the States. Theymay not be household names yet but Wilshire Boulevardknows who they are. Indeed, given that Hemsworth is costarringin Snow White and the Huntsman opposite KristenStewart before swinging his hammer again in Thor 2 --while Hiddleston co-stars with him in The Avengers -- andRedmayne starts filming Les Misérables opposite RussellCrowe and Hugh Jackman in March, you do wonderwhether any of them needs a push.It’s not only the Rising Star that is designed to promotenew talent. The Best Outstanding British Debut awardis also there to spotlight up-and-coming directors – andthis is the award whose previous contestants have includedwriter/director Steve McQueen (Shame), Duncan Jones(Source Code) and last year’s nominee Gareth Edwards(Monsters), now directing Godzilla for Warner Bros. Severalof those who have previously been up for this award suchas Sam Taylor-Wood (Nowhere Boy) and Lynne Ramsay(We Need to Talk About Kevin) have also been nominated forshort films. So there is a sense that BAFTA tracks talentright from the faintest blip on the radar. “For us, that’sincredibly satisfying,” Harris says.Again, out of this year’s five Outstanding BritishDebut nominees – Richard Ayoade (Submarine), PaddyConsidine (Tyrannosaur), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block),Ralph Fiennes (Coriolanus) and Will Sharpe/TomKingsley (Black Pond) – only one isn’t already repped byone of the big U.S. agencies.So, what are this year’s Outstanding British Debutcontenders working on next that will ping them onHollywood’s radar? Cornish, whose sci-fi comedy Attackthe Block won an audience award at SXSW, is decidingon a number of projects. Ayoade, star of cult UK TVsitcom The IT Crowd, plans to direct Jesse Eisenberg in anadaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Double – a dark comedyabout a man whose life is taken over by his doppelganger.Fiennes is acting in the new James Bond movie Skyfall,after which he hopes to direct The Invisible Woman – thestory of Charles Dickens’ secret teenage mistress – in thespring. Abi Morgan is polishing the script while financingis still being closed. Felicity Jones (Like Crazy), one of threewomen who didn’t make it through to the final five for thisyear’s Rising Star, will play the lead.Considine is debating what to direct next. In the meantime,he recently wrapped starring in Honour, a thriller about thecontroversial issue of Muslim honour killings, currentlyin post. Its producer, CinemaNX, will show the film tointernational distributors in the spring while also releasingthe film in the UK. The dark horse here is the directingteam of Sharpe and Kingsley who, along with producerSarah Brocklehurst, have been nominated for Black Pond,a deadpan no-budget comedy about a family accusedof murder. Kingsley and Sharpe are now developing amodern-day version of the classic French novel Candide.To paraphrase Voltaire, Candide’s author, for Sharpe andKingsley winning outstanding debut really would be thebest of all possible worlds. •