Fresh Face: Nicole Beharie 
Her Current Gig: A new generation's Erin Brockovich! Nicole Beharie plays the brassy yet gracious, justice-fighting, real-life heroine Dee Roberts in American Violet. During the 2000 election, Roberts -- an innocent 24-year-old single mom of four who's dragged from her job and accused of dealing drugs -- battles government corruption and repeated drug sweeps in her small Texas town, where the poor and people of color are brazenly targeted.
You Know This Face … because Beharie, whose magnetic air is arresting, appeared in The Express with Dennis Quaid and her American Violet co-star Charles Dutton. She plays Sarah Ward, the brainy love interest of driven football player Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy, in 1961.
Why So Fresh? Now press touring with the unflinching Dee Roberts herself and Violet's keen director Tim Disney (Walt's grandnephew) -- to promote awareness and activism -- the sparky, rising starlet is doin'-it-for-herself as she climbs the industry ladder: "I got a grant from the Annenberg foundation through Julliard [her alma mater] in 2008, so I’m working on my own material for some stage -- and employing some of my own fellow actors and musicians to work on a piece … and I just shot a CBS pilot hospital drama … I'm a social worker."
In Her Own Words ... “The thing that was daunting about getting on set were the actors. Being in there with Charles Dutton, Alfre Woodard, Tim Blake Nelson ... and Anthony Mackie; Xzibit -- all people that I’ve been watching, gone to school with [Mackie], seen their work and now I’m on set with them. And I have far less experience; but -- something to do [finally] … And I’m missing simple things like, 'Where’s my eyeline?' [Laughs] I did not know to ask that question. So, I’m just like acting the scene [Reenacting fluster] and they're like, 'Wait -- you’re off! Move to the side.' And I’m like, 'OK, I don’t know this, so ...?' I’d never taken a basic camera class ... now they have it [at Julliard]. Now that I've left."
The Last Word: A foreign servicemen's daughter, who moved about from Nigeria to Panama and got the acting bug while performing for her isolated family -- then "fell in love" with the craft at performing arts school in South Carolina -- already notes, hers is not the traditional trail: "My path has been very different from the plan. 'Cause the plan was: You graduate from Julliard … you do Law & Order … you hold some [tribal] spears at the Public Theater ... And, it’s just been like: I skipped graduation ... and did The Express and then did this [Violet]. And I've been skirting around, trying to figure out my own way at this [acting] thing." LAST WEEK'S FRESH FACE: Hannah Montana's Lucas Till
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