Asa Butterfield

Rising to fame as the earnest little boy in the Holocaust drama "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (2006), English actor Asa Butterfield was lauded for his breakout performance as a German boy who befriends a youth trapped inside a concentration camp. From there, Butterfield went on to play the not-yet-evil Mordred on the BBC's young King Arthur adventure series "Merlin" (2008-09) and appeared alongside Anthony Hopkins in the remake of "The Wolfman" (2010). He charmed audiences as Maggie Gyllenhaal's son in the family fantasy "Nanny McPhee Returns" (2010) and garnered the attention of director Martin Scorsese, who cast Butterfield as the lead in "Hugo" (2011), a 3-D family film about a little boy living in the walls of a 1930s train station, trying to unravel the parallel mysteries of his father's death and a magical machine. Though his bread and butter had always been all brood and drama, it was clear that young Butterfield came to the screen armed with deeply intuitive and well-rounded talent.