Fresh Faces to Watch for this Fall

With a banquet of entertainment about to be served up for fall, look out for some new, or at least, newer faces in the mix that definitely bear watching.

Kristen Bell of UPN's "Veronica Mars," debuting Sept. 22, already wins recognition as She Who is Most Often Singled Out for Stardom-to-Come by television critics this season. Playing a sleuthing teen in the series, 24-year-old Bell is familiar to viewers of "Deadwood" and "Everwood" as well as the telepic "Gracie's Choice," in which she played Gracie, a teen coping with a drug-addled, neglectful mother played by Anne Heche.

Marguerite Moreau is only 27, but she's walking the Mrs. Robinson road of the sexually alluring older woman on ABC's "Life as We Know It" show about three hormonal high school boys in Seattle (Sean Faris, Jon Foster, Chris Lowell). The beautiful actress is a native of Vancouver and graduate of Vassar - and appeared in all the "Mightly Ducks" movies.

(WB) Matthew Long and Logan Herman, a.k.a. the title stars of the WB's new "Jack & Bobby," are also big on the buzz meter. Long, who plays Jack, is a 24-year-old newcomer from Kentucky. Logan, who plays Bobby, is 12 years old and previously played Mel Gibson's son in "The Patriot."

Ben Taylor - son of James Taylor and Carly Simon - is coming aboard "American Dreams" as a new love interest for Beth (Rachel Boston) this season.

Erica Durance is the latest actress to inhabit the role of bright and beautiful Superman love interest Lois Lane, joining the cast of "Smallville" She's 26, gorgeous, hails from a small town near Calgary, and is engaged to David Palffy of "Stargate SG1," "Andromeda."

The Nicole Kidman flick, "Birth," isn't due until Nov. 5, but the movie already carries the buzz of controversy over a bathtub scene and a purportedly passionate kiss between Kidman and Cameron Bright - the blue-eyed Canadian boy who was all of 10 years old when he made the film. In it, his character convinces Kidman's that he is the reincarnation of her dead husband, and the role demanded that he act as a 30-year-old man. Still, Cameron reportedly acts like a regular kid and buddied with Kidman's son Connor during New York production of "Birth." A veteran of "the Butterfly Effect" among other film and TV credits, Cameron also has the sci-fi horror flick "Ultraviolet" with Milla Jovovich on the way, in addition to "Godsend" with another pretty well-known actor - Robert DeNiro.

Already the phrase "the new Britney Spears" has been placed next to the name of 16-year-old Skye Sweetnam, whose delayed debut album, "Noise From the Basement," hits stores Sept. 21. In fact, the Canadian songstress with the Lolita look on her official website - who's served as Spears' opening act -- has called herself "bubblegum Britney" (is that redundant?) and "Avril lite" in her song, Hypocrite. She says she wanted to beat critics to the punch.

Oct. 12 will bring the release of "Busted" by the British boy band Busted - which, of course, doesn't call itself a boy band, but an edgy punkish pop group. They're already multiple platinum sellers in the U.K., and the BBC said they have "enough attitude to be cool and enough musicianship to be credible." But can James Bourne, Matt Jay and Charlie Simpson duplicate their success in North America?

With "Mystic River" and "The Day After Tomorrow" already to her credit, 18-year-old Emmy Rossum is poised to clinch her stardom as Christine - object of obsession for the title scary guy in Joel Schumacher's film of "The Phantom of the Opera," due on Christmas day.