Breakout: Laurie Holden

By Kelly Carter, USA TODAY

Who's hot? Laurie Holden

Why now? The 29-year-old makes her big-screen starring debut as Jim Carrey's small-town girlfriend in the drama The Majestic, opening Friday.

The buzz: Entertainment Weekly named her one of the 100 most creative people in Hollywood; Variety picked her as one of Ten Actors to Watch

Standing 5-foot-7 with a dazzling smile, deep blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair, Laurie Holden possesses that I-Am-Somebody look that is so common in Hollywood. The difference: Holden really is.

Best known for her work in The X-Files as U.N. informant Marita Covarubbias, she's bound to gain even more attention as The Majestic's Adele Stanton. Jim Carrey (interview, 7D) is a blacklisted Hollywood writer who loses his memory and is mistaken for a long-lost son in a small town.

Anna Garduno, Majestic director Frank Darabont's president of production, spotted Holden on an L.A. stage performing in Only Game in Town. The audition process took seven months.

"I worked so very hard and felt so passionately about the material that, yeah, I thought I had a shot," Holden says. "Of course I was thrilled and felt exhilarated when I found out that I actually did get it."

Landing a co-starring role opposite a Hollywood star led to inevitable tabloid rumors.

"I think it's par for the course when you're working with someone, especially when you're filming a love story, for people to assume there is a romantic involvement," says Holden, who is still looking for Mr. Right. Carrey is "very cute and he's adorable, but no news there."

Born in Los Angeles but raised in Toronto, Holden is the daughter of two actors (Vancouver native Adrienne Ellis and the late Larry Holden) who divorced when she was young. When she was 6, she played Rock Hudson's daughter in the NBC miniseries The Martian Chronicles, directed by her stepfather, Michael Anderson.

Holden was drawn more to the banking world than acting. But after her freshman year at McGill University in Montreal, where she planned to study economics, she transferred to UCLA, switching her major to theater arts.

Since graduating in 1993 she's appeared in original films for HBO and Showtime, the TNT miniseries Young Catherine and CBS' remake of the MGM classic The Magnificent Seven.

She's feeling somewhat spoiled these days.

"I just worked on this wonderful project with this incredible director and wonderful leading man," she says. "I hope to find something equally as special and that's hard, because the special ones are few and far between."

Breakout is an occasional feature spotlighting emerging artists.