Alice Englert

Budding actress Alice Englert rose from relative obscurity to international fame in 2012 and 2013 with a pair of diametrically opposite but high-profile film projects: the independent drama "Ginger & Rosa" (2012) and the fantasy "Beautiful Creatures" (2013). Born in Sydney, Australia in 1994, Alice Englert came from a filmmaking family. Her mother was Oscar-nominated director Jane Campion, while her father, Colin Englert, was a television director who served as second unit director on Campion's acclaimed features "The Piano" (1993) and "Portrait of a Lady" (1996). Englert was raised largely in her mother's country of origin, New Zealand, where she dabbled in music, writing and theater. Hours spent in her mother's editing room inspired her to explore the possibilities of storytelling through acting, which she began with a leading role in "The Water Diary" (2006), a short film about drought directed by her mother which was eventually incorporated into the feature "8" (2008), a collection of shorts inspired by the Millennium Development Goals.

Englert's feature acting debut came with "Ginger & Rosa" (2012), director Sally Potter's critically acclaimed period drama about two young friends (Englert and Elle Fanning) growing up in the social upheaval of the mid-1960s. After netting a British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her turn in the film, Englert was cast as the lead in "Beautiful Creatures" (2013), a supernatural romance based on the novel by the same name by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The film, which was viewed as Warner Bros.' attempt to generate a fantasy franchise to replace the outgoing "Harry Potter" series, attracted considerable attention in the press, boosting Englert's profile from relative unknown to a Kristen Stewart-like star-in-the-making. However, the actress did not leave her arthouse origins far behind, as evidenced by her minor role in director Roland Joffe's time travel adventure "Singularity" (2013). By Paul Gaita