Josh Hutcherson

Hutcherson debuted on the big screen in 2004, with two back-to-back voice assignments on animated features. He played Markl in the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (alongside screen vets Lauren Bacall, Christian Bale, Billy Crystal, and others) and a Hero Boy -- one of many -- in Robert Zemeckis' CG-animated holiday picture The Polar Express. That same year, Hutcherson topped these efforts with additional small-screen voice-over work in the episode of the televised animated series Justice League Unlimited entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything."

Hutcherson tackled a three major roles in 2005, beginning that spring with a supporting role as Bucky, the son of dictatorial boys' soccer coach Robert Duvall (and the half-brother of Will Ferrell) in Jesse Dylan's family-oriented sports comedy Kicking & Screaming. Later that same year, Hutcherson tackled his first lead with premier billing in Mark Levin's Wonder Years-style coming-of-age dramedy Little Manhattan; in that film, the actor played Gabe, an 11-year-old boy from the New York upper crust who must contend with a newfound crush on a girl in his class (Charlie Ray), against the backdrop of his parents' tentative split. (That film also marked Hutcherson's first onscreen appearance alongside his younger brother, Connor.) Concurrent with the release of Little Manhattan, Hutcherson received second billing after Jonah Bobo, as Walter, the eldest of two siblings, in Jon Favreau's underrated family-friendly sci-fi thriller Zathura (adapted, like The Polar Express, from a Chris Van Allsburg tale).

Hutcherson's activity decrescendoed the following year, when he limited himself to one role, albeit one with great visibility -- that of young Carl Munro, the son of family patriarch Robin Williams, in Barry Sonnenfeld's nutty road comedy RV In 2007, however, Hutcherson resumed his hectic workload with multiple A-list motion pictures. The first, Bridge to Terabithia, was adapted from Katherine Paterson's popular children's novel; it stars Hutcherson as Jess Aarons, a youngster who befriends classmate Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb) and constructs a vivid fantasy world with her that ends in tragedy. Animator Gabor Csupo, of Rugrats fame, directs. In spring of the same year, Hutcherson headlined another picture, Firehouse Dog, directed by Todd Holland. In that film, Hutcherson played an adolescent who teams up with the titular canine to resurrect a dilapidated firehouse. And in the summer 2008 release Journey 3-D (produced under the working title Journey to the Center of the Earth, and a contemporized adaptation of the Verne novel), the young actor portrays the nephew of a geologist played by Brendan Fraser, with whom he discovers a passageway to a "lost" universe at the Earth's core. ~ Nathan Southern