GUGU MBATHA-RAW

Having turned heads with arresting performances in two critically lauded stage productions, Romeo And Juliet at Manchester's Royal Exchange and Big White Fog at London's Almeida, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is now showing what she can do on the screen. In Ian Rickson's recently screened Fallout, adapted for Channel 4 from the play by Roy Williams about the aftermath of a young boy's murder on an inner-city estate, she stars alongside Lennie James and fellow Star of Tomorrow Charles Mnene. She plays a 16-year-old torn between loyalty to her boyfriend and doing what's right. The role was, she says, a 'huge responsibility' as well as a great challenge. The daughter of medics, Mbatha-Raw grew up in leafy Oxfordshire, but she gives a luminous performance that eschews cliche and gets to the core of her character's moral dilemmas. She will soon be seen in the BBC's six-part drama Bonekickers from the team behind the award-winning Life On Mars.