Australia's Top 10 Rising Screen Stars Named, With a Few Surprises

Mark Coles Smith and Odessa Young head a new list of Australia’s top 10 emerging screen stars compiled by the Casting Guild of Australia.

Most of the names are probably unfamiliar in the U.S. - but that could  soon change if the guild’s talent spotting is on the money. U.S. viewers will see Coles Smith next April in the Syfy channel’s  Hunters,  a 13-part sci-fi series shot in Melbourne, written by Natalie Chaidez (Heroes, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and based on Whitley Strieber’s novel Alien Hunter.

Young, who is 17 and just finishing high school, stars in two upcoming Australian films, Simon Stone’s The Daughter and Sue Brooks’ Looking for Grace.  She is repped by WME in the U.S. and by Shanahan Management in Australia.

" We wanted to claim ownership of our rising stars before the U.S. does ," CGA president Greg Apps told Forbes  after the guild's inaugural Sirius award for emerging actors was presented to Coles Smith and Young. “Mark and Odessa were the stand-outs on the list of the next big things, actors whose careers will pop overseas in the very near future...These two epitomize where we think the other people will be going. Both have come so far in the last 12 months.”

Accepting the award, Young remarked with typical modesty, "It's nice to know that some people think I know what I am doing. The casting directors of this country have made my mediocre auditions into good ones."

In a similar vein, Coles Smith said, " When I look back on my life, I could never have imagined I would be in this position. I grew up in the Fitzroy River area of the Northern Territory. And now, here I am."

Dr George Miller presented the awards in Sydney at an event hosted by Sarah Snook  (The Dressmaker, Predestination, Jessabelle)  and Ewen Leslie (The Daughter, The Railway Man, Mule).

Miller recalled that as a young, aspiring director in Sydney he rang  U.S. casting director  Lynn Stalmaster to ask how much a lead actor would cost for a film he was planning.  Told the fee would amount to 50% of the budget, Miller decided to look for new talent locally. Thus he hired National Institute of Dramatic Art grad Mel Gibson for Mad Max.

Among the other  nominees for the Sirius award were Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road, Ruben Guthrie, Alex Proyas’ upcoming Gods of  Egypt),  Olivia de Jonge (M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, TV's Hiding), Alexander England (Gods of Egypt,  The Beautiful Lie) and  Andrea Demetriades (Alex & Eve,  Janet King, The Principal, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries). Rounding out the 10 were Rahel Romahn (Ali’s Wedding, Cleverman), Benedict Hardie (Hacksaw Ridge, The Water Diviner), Thomas Cocquerel (Otherlife, Blue Dog) and Zahra Newman (Truth, Childhood’s End).

The list  was culled from submissions from CGA members and the winners determined by the guild’s film committee comprising Nikki Barrett,  Christine Knight, Tom McSweeney, Faith Martin and Kirsty McGregor.

Apps observed, “The Sirius award has been created to congratulate actors before  they are snapped up  overseas. Our goal is to ensure Australia’s most prolific and successful export - our screen actors -  are honored at home."

Coles Smith has a recurring role in  Hunters, which stars  Nathan Phillips as a Philadelphia detective and former FBI agent suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder whose hallucinations get worse from the stress of his wife going missing. His investigation uncovers a secret government unit assembled to hunt a group of ruthless terrorists  who may or may not be from this world.  Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck) and  Britne Oldford (American Horror Story, Ravenswood) co-star. Among his screen credits are Jeremy Sims’ road movie Last Cab to Darwin, which has grossed a healthy $A7.3  million ($US5.2 million) in Australia, and the TV series Old School and The Gods of Wheat Street.

In  Looking for Grace Young  plays 16-year-old Grace, who  runs away from home. Her exasperated parents (Richard Roxburgh, Radha Mitchell) head to the West Australian wheat belt with a retired detective to try to get her back. The film had its world premiere in official competition at the Venice International Film Festival followed by the North American premiere in special presentations at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Producer Lizzette Atkins said, "Odessa is an extraordinary talent. She is a very intuitive actor and already exhibits a maturity way beyond her years. She brought a freshness and complexity to the role of Grace and captured perfectly a youthful innocence struggling to be taken seriously."

In The Daughter, a  re-imagining of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck,  Young co-stars with  Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill, Ewen Leslie, Paul Schneider , Anna Torv and Miranda Otto. Described as a contemporary portrait of family love, dysfunction, deception and denial, the film premiered at the Sydney Film Festival and then played in Venice and Toronto.

"Simon met Odessa at a script workshop that we held with some actors about four months before we were green lit," said Nicole O'Donohue, who produced the film with Jan Chapman.  "To our knowledge she hadn’t been cast in Looking For Grace at that stage.

"Odessa brought impressive emotional empathy and youthful energy to the role of Hedvig. We have no doubt she has a very promising career ahead of her."