From: WashingtonTimes

Jim Sturgess is on the brink of stardom. He has top billing on a big-budget film opening today, 21, while appearing in a smaller role in another film currently in wide release, the period drama The Other Boleyn Girl. He was named one of Entertainment Weekly’s “30 Under 30″ actors just last month.

The 26-year-old English actor is quick to point out he’s no overnight success, but he notes that when success starts happening, it starts happening pretty fast. “It comes in a big tidal wave,” he says in an interview in the District earlier this month. But “I didn’t just fall out of bed and someone gave me the opportunity to be in a film,” he quickly adds. “It’s a process that’s gone on all my life, really.”

Anyone who saw last year’s Across the Universe could have predicted this tidal wave. Mr. Sturgess was the best thing about the Beatles musical; the virtual unknown with the boyish face who could sing and act flawlessly was the find of the year.

Some actors carefully plan out their careers, working ruthlessly toward stardom. Not Mr. Sturgess, as he amusingly relates.

“I had no concept for finding an agent and becoming an actor. I just did acting,” he says. He and his friends would create their own opportunities. “I wrote a play, which is how I got an agent,” he recalls. “I put a one-person show on in a small theater in Manchester, just because I was hanging out with a lot of people interested in filmmaking, theater and acting.” A London actor saw him in that show and told him he wanted to recommend the young man to his agent.

Mr. Sturgess’ response: “What is that? Do I need it?”

He spent time on the stage and the small screen before securing the role of Jude in Across the Universe, which he calls a “dream job.” He’s loved music for as long as he’s loved acting — he’s put in time in a band, too — so he relished the chance to combine the two in a story that involved his earliest influences. “The ’60s culture was a huge part of my life growing up in terms of what inspired me — the artwork, the music, some of the films, the attitude, the experimentation.”

He still writes a lot of music, he says; it comes to him instinctively.

“It’s different from acting,” he says. “You can pick up a guitar or sit at a piano and play for hours. It’s its own reward. It doesn’t feel the same as prancing around in front of a mirror quoting Shakespeare. Someone needs to give you a purpose for you to act.”

Just don’t expect an album any time soon. Mr. Sturgess approaches music the same way he approaches acting — without a plan or a sense of urgency. “It just feels relaxed,” he says. “The great thing about the Internet is you can get your music out there. I don’t feel I have this desperate need to get a Jim Sturgess album out.”