She's on the radar now, you bet. With three new films in the offing, husky-voiced Taryn Manning, who began her artistic life as a dancer, is prepared for the attention, if only by watching those around her take their turn. "When I was 16, I started to go once a week to this acting class in Burbank," Manning says. "The class had Kirsten Dunst, Leelee Sobieski, Erika Christensen, me -- all these young actresses who were nobody at the time, except for Kirsten." Manning sees entertainment as a kind of triathlon, and wants to be known as a "triple threat." She dances, acts and sings, and recently landed a record deal with Dreamworks for Boomkat, the band she began with her brother Kellin. "There's a major hip-hop influence," she says, "mixed with pop and trip-hop, really electronica-based, with a little bit of R&B flavor on the vocals. It's a new sound. My brother and I, we rap together, and then we have slow ballads. It's the new shit, that's what we say."
But right now she's known for her acting. The 23-year-old L.A. girl, whose turn last year as a sweetly incorrigible badass in Crazy/Beautiful saw her on-screen beside childhood acquaintance Dunst, stars in three films this year-two of them with the biggest pop tarts on the planet (Crossroads with Britney Spears and 8 Mile with Eminem). The third, White Oleander, features Manning as a foster kid in the film based on Janet Fitch's best-selling novel, with heavyweights like Robin Wright Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer grounding the film. She's going to have a good year.
Jonathan Durbin
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