With her patrician looks and celebrated pedigree—she is the daughter of American operatic soprano Maria Ewing and legendary British theater director Sir Peter Hall—one might assume that Cambridge-educated Rebecca Hall, 27, waltzed into an acting career on her name alone. Well, O.K., it didn’t hurt in the beginning, when she starred, at the age of 10, in her father’s television adaptation of the British novel The Camomile Lawn, or 10 years later in his production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession. But her pitch-perfect realization of an indignant, tightly wound American in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) proved she had the chops and the charm, and her sophisticated wit landed her the role of David Frost’s delightfully fabulous girlfriend in Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. Next up is Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give, and Ben Affleck’s Boston crime drama The Town.

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