Andrew Garfield

Cute Brit Andrew Garfield is the new Spider Man

If you missed last year's 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus', a.k.a. Heath Ledger's last movie, you missed one of the most enchanting performances ever by rising British star Andrew Garfield. He played the elfish Anton, one of the Doctor's performers, who helped rescue Ledger's character from certain death while hanging from a bridge and brought him into a ragtag group of traveling gypsies. One look at Garfield and I was in love.

The magic was real - customers were literally taken through the imagination of Dr. Parnassus by stepping through a makeshift mirror into their own imaginations, into real-life dreams that would make Walt Disney himself cry tears of joy. Anton's job (and later Ledger's) was to reel customers in, to seduce them with stories about the 1000-year-old Dr..Parnassus, of making their dreams come true.

Garfield played Anton with a sincere honesty and unyielding sense of duty, until he discovers the truth of it all. Which might describe his transition from relatively unknown British actor to all-American Blockbuster hero. But let's hope for the best.

Fitting into Tobey McGuire's tights would prove a bit of a task for any actor, much less an unknown from the UK. But Garfield has that "IT" factor, that indescribable something special that big stars possess. Director Marc Webb said of Garfield, "He has a rare combination of intelligence, wit, and humanity. Mark my words, you will love Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker."

Plus, he's great eye candy. In tights. And close-ups.

The fourth film in the series is planned to be a Spider-Man origin story ("prequel") that Sony said would focus on "a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises." Garfield is 26, but easily passes for 16.

The actor is one of the hottest talents in Hollywood. He's currently promoting two movies - 'Never Let Me Go' with Keira Knightley, and 'The Social Network', a making-of-Facebook tell-all costarring Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenburg. And he's currently working on a movie called "Night Flower".