In a year where it seemed like everyone—from Jane Fonda and Geena Davis to Darth Vader and King Kong—was attempting a comeback, it was refreshing to discover those exciting, eye-grabbing new talents that we didn’t know inside and out before 2005.
Hollywood.com’s pick for 2005’s Breakout Star of the Year is actor Terrence Howard, who first captured our attention with his simmering portrayal of a black film director in Los Angeles struggling with forms of racism both subtle and overt in Crash, which he followed up with a stunning performance as a workaday pimp who follows his dream of becoming a hip-hop artist in Hustle & Flow. Howard, who also delivered eye-catching supporting turns in this year’s films Four Brothers and Get Rich or Die Tryin‘, made audiences sit up and take notice with a fresh film presence unlike any they’d seen before.
“It’s what we dream of as an actor—that one day people will be waiting to talk to us about what we love,” Howard exclusively told Hollywood.com about his year in the spotlight. “‘Hey, look at this great new piece of art I found,’ you know? Thank you for that.” Despite the torrent of offers pouring in, the actor pledged to keep looking for rich roles over fat paychecks. “The world is looking for real life experiences, and they don’t want to have their egos tickled anymore,” he said. “They want to be told the truth, and I’m gonna continue to try to do that. As long as there are people willing to hear the truth, I’m gonna try to speak it.”
Of course, Howard has no shortage of company among the list of performers whose names audiences might not have recognized a year earlier but couldn’t stop talking about in 2005.
We’d glimpsed Ellen Pompeo as Luke Wilson’s love interest in Old School and only gotten a hint of her charms. This year, thanks to Grey’s Anatomy, we realized that she was not only capable of heading up the ensemble of her own captivating medical drama, she was also the girl we wanted to root for as she tried to land the doc of her dreams.
You’ve got to be pretty sharp to swipe laughs from such veteran screen comics as Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson AND demonstrate enough perky sex appeal to give Rachel McAdams a run for her money, but playing what the actress called the “bunny-boiler” who obsesses over the towering Vaughn , tiny Isla Fisher—who just happens to be the fiancé of Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G—sprinted off with every scene she appeared in the smash comedy Wedding Crashers, even when she was speaking nothing but the gibberish language she herself invented.
His name is Craig, Daniel Craig‘s, and you’ll be hearing a lot more out of the Brit actor who shook audience with his performance as the ex-coke dealer who’s reluctantly pulled back into a life of crime, drugs and violence in Layer Cake, and stirred them with his intense supporting turn in Steven Spielberg’s Munich as part of the covert unit seeking vengeance for the terror attacks against Israel at the 1972 Olympics. But Craig got the lion’s share of press for a role he’s yet to play when after months of speculation he was cast as the new 007 in 2006’s Casino Royale.
Craig‘s co-star Sienna Miller, already well-known among style-watchers for her innovative, eclectic fashion sensibility, also landed squarely on the celebrity radar in 2005 for her sexy, seductive turn in Layer Cake and her role as an intellectual, independent-minded woman who captures the heart of the legendary lothario in Casanova. The blonde stunner also scored mega-publicity points off the screen, thanks to her on-and-off–and-on-again relationship with another notable cad, her nanny-shagging beau Jude Law.
He’s been turning in excellently etched performances for over a dozen years, but this 28-year-old Dubliner Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ profile was raised with the help of a pair of icons who couldn’t be further apart in the pop culture pantheon, Elvis Presley and Woody Allen. On the small screen Rhys Meyers made for a smoldering King of Rock and Roll in the CBS miniseries Elvis, while on the big screen he charted some morally murky waters as a social climbing tennis pro with a mistress he’s not sure he wants in Match Point, Allen’s best work in years. He’ll next go toe-to-toe with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 3. Also faring well was Rhys Meyers’ Match Point co-star Matthew Goode, who displayed the kind of effortless, witty and oh-so-handsome British charm that Hugh Grant once cornered the market in.
You already knew who Jason Lee was when he told you My Name Is Earl but were you prepared for him to introduce you to polar-opposite hotties Jaime Pressly and Nadine Velasquez who help make the show so much easier on the eyes? After laboring as the best thing in too many obscure film and TV projects, Pressly amped up her trailer-trash-sex appeal shtick for her hilarious turn as Earl’s ex, the joyless Joy, while Velasquez came out of nowhere to capture viewers’ (and Earl’s brother Randy’s) hearts as the sweet-natured but sultry hotel maid Cataline who helps Earl equal out his karma.
He was the virgin who figured out who to penetrate to pop consciousness: we’d caught glimpses of Steve Carell’s scene-stealing, laugh-out-loud brilliance in everything from The Daily Show to Bruce Almighty to Anchorman, but in 2005 he showed us he could carry the comedic load on his own, both on the small screen as the hilariously obtuse boss of The Office and on the big screen as sweetly relatable (if in need of waxing) untouched hero of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. We’ll be losin’ it to Carell again next year in a slew of films, including the sequel Evan Almighty in which his newscaster emerges as the new Noah.
Diversity was the name if the game for actress Michelle Monaghan, who showed her dramatic chops opposite Charlize Theron as one of the sexually harassed female miners of North Country, while demonstrating a flair for striking romantic sparks with Robert Downey Jr. in the action-comedy Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Next, she, too, will be jumping couches, or whatever other obstacles arise, opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 3.
Wentworth Miller’s pre-fame resume has run the gamut, from playing the younger version of Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain to stealing Mariah Carey from Eric Roberts at the alter in her We Belong Together music video to voicing the artificial intelligence-gone-haywire in this year’s big-budget bomb Stealth. But in the fall Miller finally took on the role that would make him a star when he appeared as Prison Break’s Michael Scofield, the structural engineer who commits a crime to join his brother behind bars and help him escape. There was a breakout, indeed—Miller’s, as he became one of TV’s top leading men.
Behind the Scenes
Not all of 2005’s breakthroughs took place on-screen: it was a big year for many of the folks who work behind the scenes as well. Director David Dobkin had previously shown an adroit hand with buddy-buddy bonding in Shanghai Knights, but he unexpectedly but assuredly delivered the funniest, smartest, most adult comedy of the year with Wedding Crashers. Screenwriter Paul Haggis, previously a veteran TV scribe, struck gold on the big screen in late 2004 with his script for Million Dollar Baby, then showed himself as a deft director of sensitive, edgy material when he helmed his own co-penned script for the racially charged ensemble drama Crash.
Writer-director Noah Baumbach previously had a hand in the script of Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, but this year he emerged a filmmaker to watch with his painful, semiautobiographical divorce drama The Squid and the Whale. And another up-and-coming director and co-screenwriter who had showed some early promise involved audiences with his sophomore outing Good Night, and Good Luck and its issues that were far from black and white. Make a note of the newbie helmer’s name: George Clooney. We predict big things.
In a year where such established digital effects houses such as Industrial Light & Magic and Weta Workshop were turning out occasionally uneven work, one movie magic maker delivered on the WOW factor in spades: Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios, in concert with the digital outlets like The Orphanage, Hybride and Café FX, emerged as the most cutting-edge emporium for FX both sensational and seamless with the nearly all-green screen production of Frank Miller’s comic book noir Sin City.
And finally, superheroes continue to provide ample fodder for cinematic adventures, but it wasn’t Batman or the Fantastic Four who enjoyed the biggest comic book buzz of the year. It was the Undersea Ace himself, Aquaman, who not only surfaced as part of the plotline of this season’s Entourage arc, with the king of the seas played by Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) in film directed by no less a titanic presence than James Cameron. He could also be glimpsed among the action figure collection of The 40 Year-Old Virgin, and if all that wasn’t enough, the stalwart Justice Leaguer also has his own pilot in development for The WB from the writer-producers behind Smallville. That’s what we call making a big splash!
