Thomas Sangster

With the face of an angel but the preternatural ability to convey something much deeper and more sinister in his characters, American actor Thomas Sangster landed one of the most difficult roles conceivable for a child star, early in his career. Producers tapped him to portray the ten-year-old Adolf Hitler in the Alliance Atlantis miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003). Though this hardly represented the young dramatist's debut, he tackled it so admirably and convincingly that it paved the way for many additional roles. His next significant turn was in Working Title's romantic ensemble film Love Actually (2003), in which he played the gentle and love-struck Sam, the stepson of Liam Neeson. Sangster encountered material more tailored to his age bracket (and re-teamed with Love Actually co-stars Colin Firth and Emma Thompson) for the family-oriented fantasy Nanny McPhee (2005). In that outing, he played one of Firth's seven children, unexpectedly saddled with a nanny (Thompson) who harbors a wealth of magic powers.

Sangster then scored his first lead — and collaborated with Firth a third time — for the sweeping, ambitious historical epic The Last Legion (2007). In that opus, the young actor played Romulus, a child poised to inherit the Roman throne but swept aside and taken under the wing of a brave general (Firth) when invaders strike.

by Nathan Southern, AMG