4. Melanie Laurent
With films such as
Inglorious Basterds,
The Concert and
Beginners under her belt, Laurent is shaping up to be the next Audrey Tautou, a significant player on both the Hollywood film circuit and in her own native France. Brimming with a strong, quiet intelligence and a radiant beauty, Laurent has a romanticism about her roles - even when she's busy engineering the deaths of Nazis or playing in a concert, there remains a focused elegance that evokes the spirit of the great actresses of the 1930s. As for her role as a potential Bond girl, we could easily see her matching wits with Bond before beating some baddies as gracefully as she does everything else.