Prognostication is tricky business, especially in a
town as fickle as Hollywood.
At the beginning of '08, who would have thought that Robert Downey Jr. would
re-emerge as a superstar, or that Mickey Rourke would be considered a shoo-in
for an Oscar nomination, or that a pale, skinny British lad named Robert
Pattinson would displace Zac Efron as America's reigning teen heartthrob?
Certainly not us, and we tend to consider ourselves pretty learned on such
matters.
With that in mind, we humbly offer our picks for
the Breakout Stars of 2009. We probably won't be right about all of them -- in
fact, we hope we're wrong about a few. Otherwise, we'd really freak ourselves
out.