Pell James, Broken Flowers/The King

Though she has a small role opposite Bill Murray in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers - which also stars Julie Delpy, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, and Tilda Swinton - Pell James is one actress about to be noticed. Here she is interviewed by Stephen Schaefer at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where Broken Flowers won the Grand Prix. The actress is key in a scene near the film's end where Murray goes to buy the pink flowers he brings to each woman he revisits. Pell sells him a bouquet. A bigger role is opposite Mexico's Gael Garcia Bernal (Motorcycle Diaries) and William Hurt in The King, a tragic Texas-set love story that required the 20-something James to play a preacher's quietly rebellious teenage daughter. James, hardly starstruck, speaks candidly about a business that is seen as glamorous but, as she points out, can definitely be described as soul-stripping.

•