The case for travelling talent

Watch Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and you understand that the Hollywood studios draw on a global talent pool to make their biggest movies. In this case, Sweden, Ireland and the UK, not to mention the film was shot in the UK and also starred Idris Elba, Rafe Spall, Guy Pearce, Sean Harris and Kate Dickie. Representing Hollywood proper, Charlize Theron was positively outnumbered - and even she’s originally from South Africa.

But then again, as we should remind ourselves more often, Hollywood has always trawled the world for talent and ideas. Too often the European film community sees Hollywood and the global distribution monopoly it represents as the enemy rather than a means to promote local talent and stories. Rapace and Fassbender will continue to make films in their own countries - they are both fiercely intelligent actors who want to tell daring stories as Beyond and Shame demonstrate amply - and the fact they are becoming bona-fide movie stars via Hollywood will only help them to get risk-taking films made in the future.

I bring this up because Screen has presented its annual Stars of Tomorrow feature, a parade of actors and film-makers who could one day go the way of Scott, Rapace and Fassbender. This highly curated feature, which celebrates its ninth edition this year focuses on new talent in the UK, arguably the territory that feeds the most into the Hollywood system.

Many young actors featured in Stars of Tomorrow have enjoyed huge success in the US, and this summer alone former Stars in the mix include Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man), Aaron Johnson (Savages) and Dominic Cooper (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), with Robert Pattinson (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2), Luke Evans (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), Eddie Redmayne (Les Misérables) and Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby) set for films at the end of the year.

These successes in Hollywood only benefit the UK industry where their stars were hatched, and all of these actors work fluidly between Europe and Los Angeles. It’s fascinating to see Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas return to Spain to appear together in Pedro Almodovar’s latest The Brief Lovers, signalling a continued loyalty to their native land and to the director who gave them their breakthrough parts.

It’s not just actors who benefit from a back and forth with Hollywood.

This year, Timur Bekmambetov, John Hillcoat, Andrew Dominik, Ole Bornedal, Pete Travis, Olivier Megaton, Sam Mendes, Roger Michell, Ang Lee, Peter Jackson, Tom Hooper, Baz Luhrmann and others are behind US movies that will open across the world.