AARON JOHNSON

Aaron Johnson had an early taste of Hollywood, featuring as the younger version of Edward Norton's character in The Illusionist in 2006 and as a sidekick to Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in 2003's Shanghai Knights. This year he graduates to leading man status with two very different films. The first is Gurinder Chadha's Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging in which he plays the school heart-throb alongside fellow Star of Tomorrow Georgia Groome (see opposite). The second is Dummy, directed by Matthew Thompson (a 2004 Star of Tomorrow), which has just screened at Edinburgh and sees him as a teenager coping with his mother's death with the help of drugs and sex. 'I have a huge passion for acting but I'm interested in variety, both in the characters I play and the kinds of films I'm involved with,' says the 18-year-old. He has just been cast opposite Susan Sarandon in Shana Feste's The Greatest, produced by Pierce Brosnan's Irish DreamTime.