Heirs to the Throne

With performances ranging from the rib-splittingly hilarious to the heart-breakingly tender, these young Canadian actors have already made their mark – and they’re just getting started. The next generation of Hollywood royalty has arrived.

EMILY VANCAMP

The Go-Getter

 In 2005, when Emily VanCamp was starring in the series Everwood, she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.“Just before I went on,” recalls the native of Port Perry, Ontario, “a woman from the crew brought me this mirror and said, ‘Look in this and think of all the people who have looked in it before you.’ I almost cried.” After Everwood, VanCamp was handed a starring role on the ABC series Brothers and Sisters, but the 21-year-old is hungry for more: “Rejection doesn’t faze me.” 

JESSICA LUCAS

The Sensation

 For months, Lost producer J.J. Abrams’ much-hyped Cloverfield existed only as a trailer and a clutch of mysterious websites. But by the time you read this, it may have made Jessica Lucas a star. The 22-year-old Vancouver native has been performing since she was seven, shifting from musical theatre to film to television. Last year, she landed a role on CSI, playing the perky forensics scientist Ronnie Lake. “TV is more challenging than film,” she says. “It’s faster.” Cloverfield, however, was no walk in the apocalyptic park. Calling it “the most physically demanding movie I’ve ever done,” Lucas is wary of the success Cloverfield may bring. “If it gives me the ability to choose roles, then great,” she says. “But I’m a very private, shy person.”

JAY BARUCHEL

The Goofball

Like so many great Canadian actors before him, Jay Baruchel is coping with a harsh reality of a thriving film career: living part-time in Southern California. “L.A. is where I earn a living,” says the 25-year-old, who calls Montreal’s NDG neighbourhood home. “I’m homesick as hell.” Alongside his best pal, Seth Rogen, Baruchel played a charmingly hapless freshman on the critically adored Judd Apatow-produced television series Undeclared. In 2004, Baruchel appeared in Million Dollar Baby as aspiring boxer Danger Barch. Last year, he played Rogen’s roommate in Knocked Up, and this year, he’ll appear in the buddy film Fanboys and the Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder. Nonetheless, Baruchel’s real ambition is to write, and he’s currently devel­oping a script for a hockey film with Superbad co-writer Evan Goldberg. “Writing is all I want to do,” he says. “Acting has been really good to me, but it’s not my reason for getting up in the morning.”
 

ELLEN PAGE

The Prodigy

Meeting Ellen Page now is a bit like meeting Audrey Hepburn just after the premiere of Roman Holiday. Or Jodie Foster, with Taxi Driver still in theatres. Like the ingenues who preceded her, Page seems almost oblivious to her sudden fame. Or, more likely, the actress, who turned 21 in February, couldn’t care less. Authenticity and self-awareness are Page’s stock-in-trade, central to her roles in movies as diverse as X-Men: The Last Stand, The Tracey Fragments and, her biggest hit, Juno, in which she starred alongside Michael Cera as a precocious 16-year-old dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Page shares much with Juno MacGuff: she’s effortlessly cool, hyper-articulate, disarmingly sweet. The Halifax-born Page started acting at age 10, and roles on Trailer Park Boys and films like Marion Bridge quickly followed. 2005’s Hard Candy, in which Page’s character tortures a pedophile, showed her penchant for playing tough, complicated girls. “If I don’t feel passion about something,” she says of the scripts she chooses, “I’m going to suck.” After stints in Brooklyn, L.A. and Toronto, Page recently bought a place in her hometown. It’s a shrewdly self-protective move, given her rapid ascent. This year, she’ll appear in three more films: An American Crime, The Stone Angel and Smart People. But Page is blithe about her success: “Maybe it’s because I’m 20, and I’m like, is this even real?” Page giggles knowingly at the cliché. The answer is obvious. 
 

MICHAEL CERA

The Sweetheart

Fans of the sublimely funny and tragically short-lived series Arrested Development have known about Michael Cera’s understated comic genius for a while now. For three glorious seasons, Cera won over fans as the endearingly awkward George-Michael Bluth. But it wasn’t until last summer, when Cera starred in the vulgar yet tender comedy Superbad, that the rest of the world discovered him – sweet, honest and slightly uncomfortable. In Juno, widely consid­ered one of the best films of 2007, he played an unlikely teenage father, shining alongside Ellen Page. Most recently, he landed the starring role in the forthcoming adaptation of Youth in Revolt – a part that he fantasized about for years, long before the film was a go. It will likely mean more time away from Brampton, Ontario, where he lives with his family, and more time away from Swiss Chalet sauce (“I could live on it”) and Canadian Oreos (“they have firmer cream and crunchier cookies”), but Cera, who turns 20 in June, is philosophical about these sacrifices. “Compared to people who have summer jobs, I’m really lucky,” he says. “I love acting; I always have.”