Next Gen 2010: Hollywood's Young Guns

Sure, Mara has only one pivotal scene in David Fincher's hit drama The Social Network. But it was apparently enough to score the relatively unknown actress the role of the year in the director's forthcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; she reportedly beat out big names like Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman to star opposite Daniel Craig in the English-language adaptation of Stieg Larsson's trilogy. Before diving into her craft full time like her older sister Kate (127 Hours), Mara traveled the globe after high school and was inspired to start a charity, the Faces of Kibera, which provides aid to orphans in Nairobi, Kenya. She eventually enrolled at NYU and graduated just in time to reinvent herself as goth hacker Lisbeth Salander in Tattoo,which she's filming in Sweden. "I'm not funny at all," Mara admitted to Interview magazine last year. "I'm much darker." We wouldn't want her any other way.