Cillian Murphy

Batman Begins (June 15), Red Eye (August 19), Breakfast on Pluto (November 18)

Cillian Murphy may have had a banner year playing baddies in Batman Begins and Red Eye, but he doesn't want anybody putting him in a box. "Journalists have a myopic view of your versatility," says the 29-year-old Irish actor, who frightened audiences as Bat-nemesis Scarecrow and as Jackson Rippner in the Wes Craven thriller. "They're like, 'You only play the creep.'"

But in November, Murphy proved pigeonholers wrong with his most riveting performance of the year—this time, as a hero (albeit an unlikely one). In Breakfast on Pluto, Murphy, an abandoned transvestite coming of age in a conservative Irish town who sets off to find his birth mother in the big city. As the tale toggles between the fantastic (talking robins) and the grave (leering sexual predators), Murphy balances the character's naivete with an awe-inspiring defiance, sashaying through this cruel world like Forrest Gump in a wig and four-inch platforms.

Though Murphy was born with those unsettling baby blues, Kitten's gangly femininity is his creation. "I don't think you need to identify with characters you play," he says of the transformation. Good to hear from someone recently seen chasing Rachel McAdams with a kitchen knife.