Forbes has released its list of Hollywood’s Most Valuable Young Stars. The list came out as part of Forbes’ recent Star Currency Survey, which evaluated star power of 1,400 actors in Hollywood. The choices, meant to give a cross-section of Hollywood, was sent to 157 people working in all parts of the movie industry, who evaluated actors based on certain factors.

Criteria used were:
-The amount of financing that flows to a project is significantly determined by the individual actor’s presence in a film.
-The individual actor’s presence in a film guarantees theatrical distribution.
-The individual actor’s presence significantly drives the film’s theatrical box-office performance.
-If the individual actor’s involvement is essential in securing rights deals for revenue streams, including DVD, pay/free TV, video-on-demand and online/downloading/streaming (when applicable), as well as a project’s ultimate financial performance in those areas.
-If the individual actor can attract audiences in any film genre.
-If the individual actor can attract other top-line talent based on his or her involvement in a film.
-If the individual actor is popular among most demographic groups.
-Whether media exposure the individual actor receives (positive or negative) enhances his or her ability to attract financing and audiences to a project.

[from Forbes]

The survey participants then ranked each actor based on these questions. The young Hollywood list was extracted from this survey and had the criteria that the actor be 19 or younger on February 10, 2009. Most of the young thespians on the list are actors who have potential staying power: Abigail Breslin, Daniel Radcliffe, and Dakota Fanning, for example. Miley Cyrus also makes the list not necessarily because of her potential for an adult career, but because she has yet to go wrong with her project choices, and continues to bring in the dough. Here’s the list:

1. Daniel Radcliffe (age 19)
2. Miley Cyrus (age 16)
3. Dakota Fanning (age 15)
4. Abigail Breslin (age 12)
5. Hayden Panettiere (age 19)
6. Emma Watson (age 18)
7. Freddie Highmore (age 17)
8. Keke Palmer (age 15)
9. Emma Roberts (age 18)
10. Anton Yelchin (age 19)

Most of these are not surprising, except for Anton Yelchin, who has been doing projects for a while but hasn’t made a celebrity name for himself yet. He’ll be starring in Terminator and Star Trek this summer. The article about the young Hollywood list makes a good point that’s worth quoting: “In the past, someone like a Shirley Temple was limited,” says [producer Rick] Alvarez. “She was playing herself, and she was the cute little girl with the patent-leather shoes and the curly hair. How do you go from that to playing Cleopatra or Mary, Queen of Scots?” I can see Abigail Breslin, Dakota Fanning, and Freddie Highmore going on to do just that – if they decide to keep going. Fanning, for one, was recently in the movie Hounddog, which included a rape scene that was too graphic for many audiences. Can you imagine Shirley Temple doing something like that? As for the rest of the actors on the list, it will be interesting to see how many of these names we see in Forbes’ Most Valuable Hollywood Stars in a few years. I’ll bet that Miley’s name will be nowhere near it.

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