The Australian Breakout Actors Taking The Film World By Storm

The breakout star of this year's Sundance Film Festival is a 25-year-old from Sydney. Danielle Macdonald headlines Patti Cake$, a feelgood coming-of-age tale about a dorky white girl from New Jersey who harbours hip-hop dreams. Indiewire called it "the Best Hip-Hop Movie Since Hustle & Flow" and a bidding war for distribution rights to the film crossed the US$10mil mark. And, front-and-centre of all this hype is Macdonald, about whom Sundance Director John Cooper said "not since Jennifer Lawrence have I seen a star like this".

Macdonald was seen by debutante director Geremy Jasper in 2013's The East, the so-so eco-terrorist thriller made by future The OA creative crew Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling. Macdonald booked various one-off TV appearances over the years — in Pretty Little Liars, 2 Broke Girls and American Horror Story — but her break was bubbling along all the while; she and Jasper spent two years workshopping her titular Patti Cake$ character, Macdonald having to learn to rap from the ground up. Upcoming, she's already appearing in Greta Gerwig's next directorial effort, Lady Bird, but, after being the buzz of Sundance, she'll soon be in a whole lot more.

Macdonald isn't the only Australian actor for whom 2017 will be a notable year. Angourie Rice just turned 16, but her career is already rolling. After debuting in local apocalypse yarn These Final Hours, her turn in Shane Black's crime caper The Nice Guys proved eye-catching. This year she's front-and-centre in Sofia Coppola's remake of the old Eastwood Western The Beguiled and local coming-of-age yarn Jasper Jones, as well as playing Betty Brant in the Marvel reboot Spider-man: Homecoming.

Winnie Mzembe is also in a Marvel franchise, but she wins the '17 gong for someone collecting small roles in big films; appearing fleetingly in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok and the latest Pirates Of The Caribbean film (Dead Men Tell No Tales). She's also in Kriv Stenders' provocatively titled ensemble film Australia Day, which is, duly, an exploration of race, racism and cultural identity. One of its leads is Jenny Wu, and the Shanghai-born, Sydney-raised actress will also play a recurring role in season two of Jane Campion's lauded TV series Top Of The Lake.

Eamon Farren will be appearing in the back-from-the-grave revivalisation of that most lauded of all TV series: David Lynch's Twin Peaks. After turns in two of Australia's biggest screen successes of the past year — Rosemary Myers' Girl Asleep and Garth Davis' Lion — he'll also be in Fred Schepisi's new film Andorra (which stars Guy Pearce, Clive Owen, Vanessa Redgrave and Gillian Anderson), and the US-frontier war-movie Mohawk, helmed by We Are Still Here's Ted Geoghegan.

Speaking of Davis, he's Australia's obvious breakout filmmaker, spinning his Lion success into the biblical epic Mary Magdalene, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus(!) and boasts an amazing cast (Rooney Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tahar Rahim) that includes Ryan Corr, the Melburnian actor who shined in Holding The Man. Anthony Maras makes his own directorial feature debut in India, with Hotel Mumbai telling the story of the 2008 terrorist attacks; the cast headlined by Lion's Dev Patel and featuring South Australian next-big-thing Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

Emily Browning, a generation removed from next-big-thing status, has, aside from a few moments of random adventure (like Sebastian Silva's Magic Magic or Stuart Murdoch's God Help The Girl) largely toiled in forgettable films; if you saw 2014's Pompeii, my commiserations. But, in 2017, she's been blessed with the lead role in Golden Exits, the latest film for sardonic Brooklynite Alex Ross Perry, which reunites the director with old Listen Up Philip star Jason Schwartzman.

There's other budding Australian actors in notable roles — Lucy Fry is in David Ayer's secretive Suicide Squad follow-up Bright, opposite Will Smith, Joel Edgerton and Noomi Rapace — but no one is going to see as much multiplex screen-time as Ruby Rose. The 30-year-old Melburnian is appearing in a mind-boggling run of B-movie franchises: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter; XXX: Return Of Xander Cage; John Wick: Chapter 2; and Pitch Perfect 3. She's been a star — and a queer icon — in Australia for a decade, but after her Orange Is The New Black turn, 2017 will seemingly mark Rose's breakout year.