Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Redmayne (right), Chris O’Dowd, and Adam Deacon are the five contenders for the British Academy of Film and Television Awards’ Orange Rising Star Award — now known as the Orange Wednesdays Rising Star Award. The public selects the winner, who will be announced at the BAFTA ceremony on February 12. [You can vote here.]
Two of the contenders were directed by Kenneth Branagh in the summer hit Thor: Hemsworth, who had the title role, and Hiddleston, who played Thor’s villainous brother, Loki. Hiddleston kept himself busy last year. In addition to Thor, he was featured in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, and Terence Davies‘ The Deep Blue Sea. Hemsworth, for his part, appeared only in Thor last year. However, 2012 has in store The Avengers, Snow White and the Huntsman, Red Dawn, Rush, and The Cabin in the Woods.
Eddie Redmayne stars opposite Michelle Williams in Simon Curtis‘ My Week with Marilyn, in which Williams plays Marilyn Monroe while Redmayne plays the guy who spends the fateful week with her during the making of Laurence Olivier’s The Prince and the Showgirl. Coincidentally, a former Redmayne co-star, The Yellow Handkerchief’s Kristen Stewart, was voted the Orange Rising Star Award in 2010.
Chris O’Dowd is one of the few men found in Paul Feig’s sleeper comedy blockbuster Bridesmaids, while newcomer Adam Deacon has been making movies since … 1998. Deacon’s 2011 film roles include Everywhere and Nowhere, Jack Falls, and Victim.
In addition to Kristen Stewart, previous BAFTA Orange Rising Star Award winners include Eva Green, Shia LaBeouf, Noel Clarke, James McAvoy, and The Dark Knight Rises‘ Tom Hardy. This year’s 13-person panel of judges included Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2’s David Yates, anti-yellow press actress Sienna Miller, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol’s actor Simon Pegg.
