BAFTAs Rising Star shortlist

Hosting this year's BAFTAs, Stephen Fry will be naming new and established talent

Stephen Fry will cement his position as Britain's most in-demand fantasy uncle this Sunday, as he guides the gilded and the gorgeous through the 2014 BAFTA awards ceremony. 

In recent years the BAFTAs have slowly but surely been Hollywood-ified having previously languished as a prequel to the America’s bombastic Oscars in March. 

In 2014 British cinema has Gravity, the existential blockbuster and nominee for best British film produced by Harry Potter producer extraordinaire David Heyman, a movie which has earned almost $700 million dollars worldwide and counting. Make no mistake, this year's ceremony will attract more attention than ever from filmgoers and film-makers the world over.

Whilst veteran leading ladies Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett duke it out, and Martin Scorsese and Steve McQueen go to lens to lens, surely the night's most exciting, unpredictable gong is the Rising Star Award.

The award celebrates those ridiculously talented whippersnappers that have enlivened the last year of cinema. This year's nominees include British stars Will Poulter and George Mackay, 20, and 21, alongside American Dane Dehaan, Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o and Paris born Lea Seydoux, an international bunch representative of the more varied origins of this year's most warmly received cinema.

BAFTA has form when it comes to predicting future box office gold. The recipient of the first Rising Star Award in 2006 was James McAvoy, while the list of his fellow nominees – Gael Garcia Bernal, Rachel McAdams, Michelle Williams and Chiwetel Ejiofor – reads like a Who's Who of the top actors working today. 

2014’s crop have been chosen by a jury made up of chair Pippa Harris (producing partner of Sam Mendes) actress Gemma Arterton, film critic Mark Kermode and director Kirk Jones, but the public will get the final vote.

Flying the flag for Britain are Will Poulter and George Mackay. Poulter was introduced to audiences in his early teens via coming-of-age comedy drama Son of Rambow. You might also have caught him in The Chronicles of Narnia and the hugely successful US comedy We're the Millers, alongside glossy stars Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis. 

Poulter has succinctly described the nomination as "mental" and has told how a slight dip in auditioning success had made him "a bit miserable, and my mum kinda gave me a really inspirational sort of mother's pep talk, and literally that afternoon I found out" and he sees George Mackay as less competitor than "good friend".

George Mackay is another Londoner whose role in the film adaptation of Meg Rosoff's young adult novel How I Live Now (2013), alongside Saoirse Ronan and Tom Holland, put the film streets ahead of similar dystopian teen fare. (In fact, CW are a little surprised that Ronan hasn't yet been included in BAFTAs shortlist – she’s been wowing audiences since her best supporting actress nomination at the Oscars for Atonement, aged 13).

In the likeable Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith Mackay’s character Davey finds love after being discharged from the British Army, a feature filmed back to back with the far grimmer For those in Peril. In this role, Mackay's grieving fisherman Aaron is ostracised from his community and plagued by madness. Equally dark is his performance in the new theatrical production of Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden as part of the Vault Festival – a great opportunity to catch an evolving talent on stage.

Mackay has said he follows his father's advice to treat this kind of response ‘with ambivalence’ but that the BAFTA nomination is ‘amazing’, particularly as it’s an award ‘that appears to be about looking forward’. 

So who have the BAFTA committee missed? Other young British actors CW have on our radar include Skins alumni Kaya Scodelario and Jack O'Connell.

Since graduating from the pill-popping teen drama, the pair have been involved with some exciting future projects. Scodelario will tackle dark teen sci-fi in The Maze Runner'alongside Poulter, while O'Connell is currently filming Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie and based on the life of war hero and Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini.

The BAFTAs screen on BBC1 on Sunday 16th February from 9pm.