Jim Sturgess is in the middle of a long story about Marilyn Manson, whom he insists is "not as crazy on the inside." This is a credible insight into the rocker mind from someone who spent his teenage years banging around in garage bands before an unexpected screen career took off. It was while filming last year's Across the Universe, his big break, that the 27-year-old Sturgess became friendly with Manson's latest nubile paramour, Evan Rachel Wood, and Manson himself. To hear Sturgess tell it, the unlikely May–November romance has been a good influence on the young starlet. "He's always encouraging her to experiment with what it means to be an artist," says Sturgess, who hangs out with the couple in L.A.

Since he is currently having tea at Market in London's Camden Town — a piece of chicken and ham pie poised on his fork — the thought of him carousing through Hollywood with the world's most notorious goth seems absurd. But a good measure of Sturgess's appeal lies in this ability to slip from bright-eyed innocent to rake-in-training with a simple gesture — a talent that has led to four major roles this year. In August, he appears with Sean Penn, Harrison Ford, and Ray Liotta in Crossing Over, a harrowing tale of immigrants making their way in L.A. Then there's Fifty Dead Men Walking, with Sir Ben Kingsley, set during the violent conflict in Belfast in the eighties. "I found a new ballsiness and a new sense of humor," Sturgess says of maintaining an Irish brogue for the six-week shoot. "Afterwards, for three days at least, I was incapable of speaking in my own accent." Late last winter, he got overly affectionate with screen sisters Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson in The Other Boleyn Girl and romanced Kate Bosworth in 21, about MIT students who count cards and take the Las Vegas casinos — not a bad hat trick for a guy who's still new to the big screen.