In 2008 Jim Sturgess was about to become a movie star, the kind of actor who combines good looks, talent, and the sort of cinema charisma that attracts audiences. The Englishman had starred in 21 as an American M.I.T. math whiz who wins a fortune counting cards and beating the system at blackjack in Las Vegas, as well as in Across the Universe, a brilliant ode to the Beatles, directed by Julie Taymor, in which he sang and played a cross between Lennon and McCartney. Quite a year. Loosely based on a true story, 21 made $160 million worldwide, and Sturgess, who is tall and handsome and makes smart look sexy, was poised to be, perhaps, the next great leading man. Movie stars—even potential movie stars—are rare; they can be great actors (think of Paul Newman or George Clooney or, more recently, Robert Downey Jr.), but, more elusively, they must be alluring to the paying public. Magically, a star is able to combine his own personality with the character’s, resulting in a melding of the familiar and the new.
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Ashes (2012)
Upside Down (2012)
