Five film stars set to shine in 2014

Gareth Edwards

Last time we spoke to British visual effects artist-turned- filmmaker Gareth Edwards, he’d just written, directed and singlehandedly created the effects for his brilliant microbudget alien-invasion pic Monsters. At the time he told us Hollywood was a "sausage factory," and that he was more interested in making a "great steak." But in the end, Tinsel Town lured him with the meatiest beast of them all, Godzilla, the city-flattening, man-munching atomic terror. Expect a mouthwatering multiplex sirloin, with all the trimmings, when Godzilla opens on May 16.

Jack O’Connell

The ex-cast of Skins don’t half scrub up (not convinced? See Dev Patel and Nicholas Hoult), and Jack O’Connell is the latest to have a Hollywood moment. Right now, the 23-year-old from Derby is taking orders from Angelina Jolie, who cast him over hundreds of hopefuls as a real-life World War II hero in her directing debut, Unbroken. It’s the story of Louis Zamperini, who survived for 47 days in the Pacific without food or water and by fending off shark attacks after his US airforce plane crashed into the sea. Before Unbroken opens early next year, we’ll see him in 300: Rise of an Empire (March 7) and Starred Up (March 21).

Michael Keaton

The 62-year-old actor has been sneaking back into the limelight over the past couple of years with classy cameos—best of all in The Other Guys as a TLC-quoting police captain. But in 2014 the best of all the Batmen (yes, even better than Christian Bale) is well and truly back. Keaton will be chewing the scenery as a villain in the remake of Robocop (February 7) and popping up in videogame adaptation Need for Speed (March 14). We’re most excited by Birdman (which so far has no release yet), in which he plays—Being John Malkovich-style—a washed-up superhero star putting on a Broadway play.

God

He’s back! Well technically, as a deathless deity, he never went away. But this year the Almighty is getting his hands dirty, first by hiring Russell Crowe to build him a bloody great boat in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (March 28). Next he’ll be inflicting plagues, floods and all manner of hindrances on the Egyptian army in its pursuit of Christian Bale’s Moses (and his oh-oh-Israelites) in British director Ridley Scott’s Exodus (December 12). He’ll even be turning up—voiced by Morgan Freeman and wearing a tye-die T-shirt—in The Lego Movie (February 7). Oh, God, is there anything you can’t do?