The Hottest Breakout Stars of 2011

Maybe the roles come to her because of her choppy-haired, tattooed, rockerish vibe (she and her dad got matching ink for his birthday last year, and she fronts a punky band called Elevator Fight). Kravitz, who grew up with her mom in L.A. after her parents divorced, and moved to New York with dad in her adolescence, has wanted to act since infancy. “I’d stage performances in my grandparents’ living room, charging them and their friends one-dollar admission,” she recalls. “Real Jewy, huh?” (Part Jewish, she identifies as a secular Jew.) Her highest-profile role yet comes in June, as insecure fly-mutant Angel Salvadore in X-Men: First Class. “I wasn’t a comic-book geek growing up, but I was a giant theater geek,” she says. “Which is just as bad.”

-Jonah Weiner