- Kate Hudson, Bride Wars, 2008. A teen comedy for Roberts and Nikki Reed was churned into young adults’ fare with Hudson and Anne Hathaway. “Good actors and quick-witted women,” noted Chicago critic Roger Ebert, “here playing characters at a level of intelligence approximating HAL 9000 after he has had his chips pulled. No one can be this superficial and survive without professional care.”
- Ellen Page, Inception, 2009. Hard luck for Eric’s daughter… and Julia’s niece. But ffter Evan Rachel Wood turned him down, UK director Christopher Nolan rejected Emma, Emily Blunt, Carey Mulligan, Jessy Schram and Taylor Swift before settling upon a fifth Oscar nominee for his thriller in… the architecture of the mind.
- Emma Stone,The Amazing Spider-Man, 2010.
- Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games, 2011.
- Ashley Benson, Spring Breakers. 2011. Fled Harmony Korine’s first feature in three years upon realising that her Brit had to take part in a sexual threesome. Officially, her exit was marked: Creative differences. Like who goes where?
- Mia Wasikowska, Stoker, 2012. For his first English-language film, SouthKorean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy), was introduced to Hollywood casting. He had to sde Emma, Bella Heathcote, Rooney Mara, Cary Mulligan and, of course for a vampire number, Twilighters Ashley Greene and Kristen Stewart!What a choice for Nicole Kidman’s daughter, besotted with and fretting over the most mysterious Uncle Charlie since Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt some 60 years earlier.
- Addison Timlin, Odd Thomas, 2012. Lily Collins, Kat Dennings, Portia Doubleday, were also up for Stormy Lewellyn, feisty lover of the titular Anton Yelchin (his parents forgot to add T for Todd), a clairvoyant fry cook. Collins split to co-star with Emma’s aunt, Julia Roberts, in Mirror Mirror… going from Odd’s frying pan into the fire.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 7