Hollywood’s latest thing seems to be to decide someone is a star before they’ve made any major movies and then cast them in everything until the audience catches on. Last year it was Sam Worthington, who suddenly had to star in every big action film. Having bagged themselves a much needed new male action hero in Worthington, Hollywood is now moving on to finding a new women to star in their female-skewing comedies (after all, Sandra Bullock can’t appear in all of them), and it seems the one they’ve chosen is Lucy Punch.
At the moment the British actress is best known for supporting roles in the likes of Ella Enchanted, Hot Fuzz and St. Trinians, but now she’s being lined up to become a major star. In 2010 we’ll see her opposite Anna Faris in Young Americans, with Steve Carell and Zach Galifianakis in Dinner For Schmucks and in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger. Indeed it was with her casting in the latter movie that people really started to take notice of her, as Allen put her in a role that was originally going to be played by Nicole Kidman.
Now Punch has yet another new project, as THR reports that she’s just signed up for the film Earthbound, opposite Kate Hudson and Gael Garcia Bernal. The movie starts shooting this month and sees Hudson playing a woman who learns she’s got cancer, just before she meets a new guy (Bernal). Punch will play Hudson’s best friend and co-worker. Although that little synopsis doesn’t exactly make the movie sound a barrel of laughs, it is allegedly a comedy, although with The Woodsman director Nicole Kassell behind the camera, don’t expect it to be too cheerful.