Rising stars of 2014 – film

Dimitri Leonidas: 'It was surreal, being on set with people like George Clooney'

Dimitri Leonidas is scarred by the memory of his worst audition. It was for the lead part in a new production of Peter Shaffer's Equus a couple of years ago. He thought it had gone really well, and when his agent told him he'd got the part he understandably spent the weekend celebrating.

"Then I met up with a friend who said: 'What do you mean, you've got it? Alfie Allen's doing it.'"

There'd been some confusion: Leonidas had actually been auditioning to be the understudy. "It was just too heartbreaking," he says, smiling.

He can afford to laugh about it now. The 26-year-old actor is braced for a big year, featuring as part of a knock-out ensemble cast in what looks set to be one of the box-office hits of 2014. The Monuments Men, directed by and starring George Clooney, is a second world war heist movie that tells the true story of an allied platoon tasked with rescuing art masterpieces stolen by the Nazis. Leonidas plays a German-born US soldier recruited to the team.

"I had a few accent lessons," he confides. "At first they just wanted German, then George wanted something with a Newark [New Jersey] sound to it, which was trickier."

He drops in the first name quite casually. But in a cast that includes Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and John Goodman, Leonidas must have been intimidated when he turned up on the first day.

"Yeah," he says. "It's surreal. You do have a moment of going, 'OK, I'm actually on a set with these people.' But generally the focus is on wanting to do the best work possible."

Last June Screen International named Leonidas as one of their stars of tomorrow, and The Monuments Men is his fourth feature film, coming after a string of TV parts including Casualty, Grange Hill, Doctor Who and Sinbad.

As a child in Wembley, north London, he discovered a passion for acting after accompanying his older sister to a local drama group. When he was 13 his mother, Lesley, died of cancer, and performing became "a catharsis". The woman who ran the drama group started to put Leonidas up for auditions, and he never looked back. Two of his three sisters are also actors (his younger sister, Georgina, appeared in several of the Harry Potter films).

His father, Harry, is originally from Lanarca in southern Cyprus and runs a wholesale delivery business. What does he make of his son's success? "Perhaps initially he was a little hesitant," Leonidas says, a smile spreading across his face. "Now, I imagine, he's quite proud." ED

The Monuments Men is released on 14 Feb

Three more to watch
Kate O'Flynn
Won acclaim in Port at the National Theatre. Stars opposite Lesley Sharp in A Taste of Honey at the National next month.

Sophie Kennedy Clark
Played the young Judi Dench in Philomena. Appears in Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Part II.

Joe Dempsie
Since his breakthrough role in E4's Skins, he has had roles in Southcliffe and Game of Thrones. Stars in Channel 4's 2014 restoration drama, New Worlds.

Jonathan Asser: 'Prisoners use their own language. I revelled in that'

Starred Up, a prison drama written by feted new screenwriter Jonathan Asser, begins with a series of barked commands: "Up the stairs… Wait!… Keep it moving, fella." An inmate is being led to his cell, and Asser's punchy opening suggests he's docile, cowed by incarceration. Anything but: soon the inmate is threatening to butcher a warden with a radio aerial. Asser's script, his first, tells a story of boiling tempers and the near-impossible effort of containing them. "The great advantage of a prison drama is that it forces your characters together, it's a pressure cooker," says Asser, who was named best British newcomer at the London film festival in October. His film, brought to screen by director David Mackenzie, comes out in March.

A 49-year-old Londoner, Asser thought of himself foremost as a poet when he was approached by a film agent a few years ago. She suggested he try a film script: did he have a subject in mind? For years Asser had run therapy sessions in a London prison, stopping in 2010 when he fell out with authorities there. "I wrote Starred Up as a way of winding down afterwards." His scenes of group therapy, some terrible flare-up always threatening, provide some of the film's most tense moments.

Asser's script oozes authenticity: the ultra-specific, almost dainty prison etiquette, as well as the slang ("kanga" for guard, "mugging off" for being disrespectful). "Prisoners use their own language as a form of power. They're no longer the excluded – it's other people who are excluded, because they have no clue what they [the prisoners] are talking about. I revelled in that."

Two former members of Asser's prison therapy group have since been released, and have small roles in the film. "Other members of the group saw it at the London film festival. They were very happy with it!" Asser says his next film will be about a boxer. "I've used my prison backdrop now." TL

Starred Up is released on 21 March

Three more to watch
Hong Khaou
The writer-director, a Cambodian-born Londoner, directs Lilting, an immigration drama starring Ben Whishaw.

Ciaran Cassidy
Documentary maker from Northern Ireland whose prizewinning short, The Last Days of Peter Bergmann, premiers at Sundance.

Lenny Abrahamson
The Irish film-maker directs Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal in offbeat comedy Frank.