At the heart of the film and TV business lies the talent – the actors, directors and writers who conceive, execute and bring to life the shows and movies audiences want to see. And each year, as Playback’s editorial staff selects 10 individuals from across these disciplines as the hottest up-and-comers, the crop of gifted Canadians out there never ceases to amaze.

This year’s 10 include a 25-year-old director whose own production company has five new kids shows on the go, as well as a 66-year-old Order of Canada-winning author who is writing her first dramatic movie script, based on her own book.

Regardless of their level of experience, the 10 were chosen because, with their latest projects, they stand to raise their careers to a whole new level in the coming year.

ACTORS

Lyriq Bent
Age: 20s
Residence: Toronto
Agency: Christopher Banks and Associates
Buzz: Will heat up small screen in series Angela’s Eyes

Lyriq Bent says he’s committed to landing roles that are thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing. For those who caught his turn in the hair-raising horror sequel Saw II as Rigg, the head of a SWAT team, that will hardly come as a shock. And Bent is back for a cameo in Saw III, currently filming in Toronto.

But the big news for the young actor, who also had supporting parts in the Ontario-shot features Four Brothers and Skinwalkers, is a lead role in the series Angela’s Eyes, which premieres July 16 on Lifetime. Bent plays the partner of Angela, a rookie FBI agent out to prove the innocence of her parents, who have been arrested and charged as double agents. After working in horror and thriller flicks, playing an FBI agent is allowing Bent to stretch his range.

‘I’m trying to be the best actor I can be, to be true to my art,’ he says.

Bent says that when he’s auditioning, he doesn’t even consider his visible minority status, although he is aware of comments from the likes of Oscar-winner Halle Berry, who has complained that race remains an issue in the business.

‘I just refuse to make it an obstacle for myself,’ Bent says. ‘When I entered this business, I knew what I was willing to do and what I wasn’t. I don’t want to take on stereotypical roles. I experience as much joy, happiness and pain as anyone else, and I hope to convey that through the roles I play.’

In the $35-million horror flick Skinwalkers, due for a fall release from Lionsgate, Bent plays a ‘good werewolf.’

-Matthew Hays

Ashley Leggat
Age: 19
Residence: Toronto
Agency: Fountainhead Talent
Buzz: Life with Derek star will show another side in 11 Cameras

At the tender age of 19, Ashley Leggat got to see her half-hour comedy series Life with Derek (Shaftesbury Films) land the highest-rated series premiere in Family Channel’s 17-year history. Meanwhile, the show also airs on Disney Channel, and was recently cited by Nielsen Media Research as the 10th most popular cable show in the U.S. among girls nine to 14.

Ashley plays Casey on Life with Derek, which focuses on the dynamics in a newly blended family, most notably the rivalry between headstrong 15-year-olds Casey and Derek (Michael Seater).

Now Leggat has a chance to display another side in the CBC summer drama series 11 Cameras, a voyeuristic look at human relationships and the new ways people connect to one another in the digital age. In both Cameras and Derek, Leggat plays a character dealing with the divorce of her parents.

‘Both shows have me in the same situation, [but the characters have] very different ways of handling it,’ the actress notes.

The Hamilton, ON native got her start on the stage at the age of eight, making the jump to TV with concurrent recurring roles on I Was a Sixth Grade Alien for YTV and Fox Family Channel, and In a Heartbeat for Disney. Along the way, Leggat has appeared alongside Lindsay Lohan in the Disney feature Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and guest-starred in five episodes of Temple Street Productions’ Darcy’s Wildlife.

Leggat says she is enjoying the relative calm before she starts shooting seasons three and four of Derek in early July.

-Adam Halpern

Steph Song
Age: 28
Residence: Burnaby, BC
Agency: Echelon Talent Management
Buzz: Already a star in Asia, this beauty now looks to conquer Canada

Steph Song is going places – usually to and from Asia, where she’s already a major star and, according to a 2004 poll in the local version of men’s mag FHM, no less than one of the world’s 10 sexiest women.

Song’s Singapore-made sitcom Achar! placed second to Frasier at last year’s New York Festivals in the international sitcom category, and she has appeared in six other series in Asia, including Chase, Six Weeks and Heartlanders, as well as the noted 2004 feature Rice Rhapsody.

But the Malaysian actress who grew up in Saskatchewan is still catching on at home. She had a recurring role on the canceled series Godiva’s, and plays a Cambodian village-girl-turned-prostitute in the upcoming CBC crime drama mini Dragon Boys.

She also has the lead female role in Everything’s Gone Green, the Paul Fox-directed adaptation of the Douglas Coupland book for ThinkFilm and Shoreline Entertainment, and in the action pic Rogue, due from Lionsgate in 2007.

Of the latter, she exclaims, ‘I play opposite Jet Li – me, a little country girl from Sask!’

Before she embarked on acting, Song earned degrees in journalism and nursing to placate her academic parents. At 21, she beat a track to L.A. to study acting, and made commercials and music videos. After three years she moved to Australia, where she anchored the National Geographic program EarthPulse. She then relocated to Singapore.

‘I went to Singapore because I wanted to experience as many different roles as possible, and there weren’t sufficient roles for Asians elsewhere. I was getting disillusioned with L.A.,’ she says. But, she adds, ‘there are fantastic projects coming out of Canada.’

-Ilona Beiks

Stephen Amell
Age: 25
Residence: Toronto
Agency: Core Talent Group
Buzz: Heartthrob stars in Richard Attenborough’s feature
Closing the Ring

The acting bug bit Stephen Amell in high school, where he found the thrill from performing in a play even more intoxicating than his passion for sports. But he says that he couldn’t rely on acting as a lone source of income, so he sold insurance until performing could pay all the bills. And that has worked out very well for the past year or so.

‘I was really lucky to land a recurring role in Beautiful People,’ Amell says of his eight episodes as a wealthy snob in the Toronto-shot ABC Family series. It was all part of a roll that has also included guest stints on Queer as Folk, Degrassi: The Next Generation and Dante’s Cove. He also appears in four episodes of Showcase’s forthcoming comedy series Rent-a-Goalie.

But his career jumped to another level when his agent Richard Gerrits called to tell Amell to send his reel ‘right away’ to the U.K., where Lord Richard Attenborough (Gandhi, Chaplin) wanted to see it. Within days, Amell had a meeting with the Oscar-winning filmmaker and landed a lead as a fighter pilot in the Toronto-shot World War II romance Closing the Ring, opposite Mischa Barton, Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer.

‘The role I play is a very romantic one,’ Amell says. ‘So Attenborough asked to meet with both me and my girlfriend. She helped to close the deal.’

-Matthew Hays

DIRECTORS

J.J. Johnson
Age: 25
Residence: Toronto
Agency: None
Buzz: Charting new waters in kids TV

J.J. Johnson – co-creator, producer, writer and director of This Is Daniel Cook – says he’s living his dream.

‘This is the most fun I’ve ever had – working with kids, seeing through their eyes,’ he says of the hit preschool show. ‘It works because it’s real kids that kids can relate to, not puppets.’

The show follows its titular young host as he explores the world, and in 2005 it bagged three prizes at the 2005 Alliance for Children and Television Awards, including best program, and was nominated for three Gemini Awards. For Johnson, it’s a pretty good performance, considering he says he was never a stellar student.

‘I didn’t intern or do all the things that I should have done,’ he says. ‘I’m still in shock I have a show, let alone five more coming… Inexperience was my best asset. And Daniel.’

Fresh out of Toronto’s Ryerson University in 2002, Johnson was working at a talent agency, which is where he met his host-to-be, six-year-old Daniel Cooper.

With friends Blair Powers and Matt Bishop, Johnson formed Sinking Ship Productions. They bucked up $1,100, shot a pilot, and sent it to every kids broadcaster in Canada. The next day he got a call from TVO. Today, the show, coproduced with marblemedia, airs on the provincial pubcaster and on Treehouse TV, ACCESS, Knowledge Network, and Playhouse Disney.

Johnson is now steering five new live-action preschool series: the Cook spin-off This Is Emily Yeung, to air this fall on Treehouse and Radio-Canada; I Dare You and Day Camp, for TVO, ACCESS, Knowledge and the Saskatchewan Communications Network, launching this fall and in 2007, respectively; Roll Play, premiering on Treehouse and SRC in September; and Are We There Yet? for Treehouse in 2007.

But Johnson is being careful not to overdo it.

‘We want to be the best, not the biggest,’ he says.

-Ilona Beiks

Daniel Grou
Age: 38
Residence: Montreal
Agency: Agence Omada
Buzz: TV director known as ‘Podz’ has new series on the way

Daniel Grou, or ‘Podz,’ as he likes to be called, is a Gemeaux award winner with a preference for dark stories. ‘I don’t like things that are lightweight and soapy,’ says the Montreal native.

Podz’s penchant for the unconventional explains why he has helmed some of the most original TV out of Quebec, including the hit Radio-Canada comedy series Les Bougon, controversial in its portrayal of a family of scammers.

Grou is also the principal director on Minuit, le soir, a starkly realistic half-hour drama about three bouncers in a downtown Montreal bar who struggle with illiteracy, impotence, and debilitating loneliness.

‘Minuit, le soir was supposed to be a comedy, but it ended up being quite melancholic,’ says Podz of the hit series written by Pierre-Yves Bernard.

‘The common thread in all my work is humanity. I try to make what I do really human and emotional,’ adds the film-school dropout, who has worked steadily since the 1990s, honing his craft with video clips and spots.

His Gemeaux came in 2003 for the TV movie exils. His English-language helming credits include Vampire High, Drop the Beat and The Hunger. He is currently directing the much-anticipated Radio-Canada series C.A. (which stands for Conseil d’administration, or board of directors), about the erotic adventures of a group of MBA graduates.

He will start shooting the third season of Minuit, le soir this fall, and hopes to devote himself to personal projects, including a film that he describes as an ‘anti-romantic comedy.’

‘It’s going to be dark, that’s for sure,’ he says.

-Patricia Bailey

David Ostry
Age: late 30s
Residence: Toronto
Agency: ICM
Buzz: Helmed an upcoming feature for Kevin Spacey

David Ostry is a cinematic triple-threat: an editor, writer and director who just happened to get a phone call from Kevin Spacey’s production company out of the blue. If he continues at his current pace, he just might challenge hockey superstar Bobby Clarke as Flin Flon, MB’s most successful native son.

An editor for more than 15 years, Ostry’s numerous credits include Black Widow, Paint Cans and The Events Leading up to My Death.

‘Editing is good. You learn to work with a story,’ he says.

Aspiring to direct, Ostry attended the Canadian Film Centre and struck gold, writing and helming the fantasy short Milo 55160, starring Patrick McKenna (The Red Green Show) as a bureaucrat in the afterlife. It played to great acclaim, winning half a dozen awards on the festival circuit and a 2006 Genie for best live-action short drama.

Milo also caught the attention of Spacey’s New York- and L.A.-based prodco Trigger Street Independent. After a fruitful meeting, Ostry was tapped to direct the comedy feature Mr. Gibb, about an unpopular high school teacher (Wings’ Timothy Daly) who turns his life around after a student is kidnapped.

‘The experience was really good,’ Ostry says. ‘I learned a lot from the actors, especially William Sadler (The Green Mile).’ Mr. Gibb is slated for release in fall 2006.

Ostry is currently scripting a dark comedy about a kleptomaniac who gets a job as a store detective, and he is also in discussions to direct Patrick Tarr’s script Prone, a coming-of-age dark comedy about an accident-prone teenager who must get a grip on his accidents before it’s too late.

The filmmaker notes: ‘It has all the elements I’m interested in: dark comedy, flawed characters and a scene in a meat packing plant.’

-Adam Halpern

WRITERS Marie-Claire Blais
Age: 66
Residence: Montreal and Key West, FL
Agency: Goodwin Agency
Buzz: Her adaptation of her own novel is set for the big screen

Marie-Claire Blais, a Quebec author, playwright and poet, is far more seasoned and celebrated than her fellow 10 to Watch finalists, but the forthcoming adaptation of her novel La Belle bête marks a new direction for her. (She did help cowrite Anne Claire Poirier’s 1997 doc Tu as crié: Let me go.) She benefited from workshopping her screenplay for La Belle bête at the Equinoxe Film Lab in Paris.

‘It is a work of my adolescence,’ says Blais of her debut novel, a critical sensation back in 1959. In the book, Blais delves into the psychological reasoning behind a woman’s hatred for her gorgeous sister – a nasty sentiment that culminates in violence.

La Belle bête was translated to dance in a 1977 National Ballet of Canada production, but has never been adapted to film – until Montreal indie filmmaker Karim Hussain (Subconscious Cruelty) approached Blais with the idea.

‘Karim is very impulsive and a very sensitive young man,’ says Blais, a recipient of the Order of Canada. ‘I felt his passion for the book and I felt he could really handle it.’

As is often the case when two artists collaborate, there were some clashes of vision along the way.

‘Karim cut a lot of the dialogue,’ Blais explains. ‘Because it came from a novel, there was a lot of dialogue in it earlier on. But Karim saw more the expressions of the faces and the intensity of the images. In film, things somehow seem more violent.’

The film, starring Caroline Dhavernas, David La Haye and Marc-André Grondin, shot last fall and is due for release through Equinoxe Films this fall.

-Matthew Hays

Russ Cochrane
Age: 35
Residence: Toronto
Agency: The Alpern Group
Buzz: Work on Whistler and Last Exit coming to CTV

Russ Cochrane has established a solid rep as a ‘go-to writer’ in the TV world. That’s because while many scribes in the industry aspire to write features, Cochrane has always been a bigger fan of TV.

‘It’s what I grew up with. I know the medium well. Film students can be condescending about TV, but it’s more liberating,’ he says. ‘In a two-hour feature, you can’t risk like you can over a series. TV is like playing in a sandbox. It’s a certain size, a certain amount of sand, and each episode you build a new sand castle – that gets seen.’

Cochrane has played in a few choice sandboxes. In 2002, one week before he was to enter a program at the National Screen Institute, he got a writing gig for MTV’s cult hit Undressed.

‘That was boot camp,’ he recalls. ‘Eight writers, one room, and 52 episodes in five months. I learned quickly how to write what didn’t have to be rewritten.’

After more series (Young Blades, Radio Free Roscoe), Cochrane moved on to coproduce and cowrite Whistler, the big-budget ski-slope soaper set to premiere on CTV on June 25.

‘We wrote a show based on an American model. Canadian stories can be sexy, but we don’t have to ring the Canadian bell,’ he says.

Cochrane’s first MOW, the road-rage-themed Last Exit, starring Kathleen Robertson (Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story) and Andrea Roth (Rescue Me), and helmed by John Fawcett (Ginger Snaps), is slated to air on CTV later this year.

‘Exit is rare,’ Cochrane says. ‘MOWs get a bad rap as slow and about the disease of the week. But they don’t have to be. Exit may have been the experience of a lifetime for me.’

-Ilona Beiks

Jonathan Sobol
Age: 30
Residence: Toronto
Agency: Ambition
Buzz: Coscripted Michael Mabbott’s sophomore feature

‘Every now and then, and all too rarely, a new writer comes along and gives you a real jolt,’ says Accent Entertainment producer Susan Cavan of Jonathan Sobol. And Cavan has put her money where her mouth is, optioning the feature script Citizen Duane, cowritten by Sobol (his first screenplay) and R.J. Deleskie from an original story by Sobol, five minutes after reading it.

The plot of the comedy focuses on Duane (Douglas Smith), a man driven to correct past and present injustices by running for mayor of a small town. The project also stars Vivica A. Fox (Kill Bill Vol. 1) and Donal Logue (Just Like Heaven), and is directed by Michael Mabbott, fresh off his well-received mock-honkytonkumentary The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico.

Up until the age of 18, Sobol lived in a motel owned and operated by his family on the Niagara Falls strip, a milieu that may have helped him develop a knack for penning character comedy. It also provides the fodder for a motel-set series he is currently developing with Accent. Also in development is Year of the Jackass, a romantic comedy about a 30-year-old man forced to live out the New Year’s resolutions he made as a teenager.

Sobol exclusively writes idiosyncratic comedies, or, as he calls them, ‘comedy-hyphenates – not Farrelly Brothers stuff.’ Would he ever try his hand at writing a drama? ‘Even if I tried to do a drama it would probably come out a comedy,’ he says.

-Adam Halpern