The Changing Roles of Alex Pettyfer

by Helen Earnshaw | 24 February 2011

I Am Number Four

Since he made his breakthrough back in 2006 Alex Pettyfer has slowly been building his career - chopping and changing his roles over recent years.

This week he takes on the action movie as he teams up with D.J. Caruso for the big screen adaptation of I Am Number Four.

So to celebrate the release of the movie the week we take a look at the changing roles of the young British actor.

Stormbreaker

After kicking off his career in modelling Pettyfer got his big screen break in 2006 when he was cast as Alex Rider in Stormbreaker - a big screen adaptation of the Anthony Horowitz novel.

Alex Rider is a 14-year-old orphan who has been unwittingly trained all his life by his uncle with the skills to become a secret agent -- scuba diving, mountaineering, martial arts and so on.

When his guardian, an MI6 agent, is killed, Rider learns the truth and finds himself forced against his will to take on a dangerous mission for the British secret service.

Directed by Geoffrey Sax the movie boasted an all star cast of Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke and Stephen Fry.

The movie struggled at the box office and was not met well by the critics - however the movie marked the arrival of the latest teen heartthrob.

Wild Child

Pettyfer turned his hand to comedy next as he teamed up with Emma Roberts for Wild Child.

Poppy (Roberts) is a spoiled Malibu brat, and the film opens with her wreaking havoc on her stepmother's moving-in day.

Her father (Aidan Quinn) decides he's had it with her wild ways and promptly packs her off to an English boarding school.

Poppy arrives at Abbey Mount with blond extensions, a designer wardrobe, and plenty of attitude, and she is furious when she is forced to follow the school's strict code of conduct. She is determined to find some way back to sunny Malibu.

She soon befriends her roommates, a loyal, fun-loving troop of girls, who agree to help her come up with a way to get kicked out of school.

They devise a scheme for Poppy to get caught fooling around with the headmistress's (Natasha Richardson) son, Freddie (Alex Pettyfer), but things soon go awry when Poppy's rival Harriet (Georgia King) tries to step in and foil her plan.

Ok so Wild Child may not exactly be oozing with originality but if you accept if for what it is it's not a bad popcorn flick.

Tormented

Not one for sticking to the same genre it was horror next for Pettyfer as he took on the role of Bradley White in Brit flick tormented.

Things couldn't be going much better for Justine Fielding (Middleton), a bright and beautiful student at Fairview High.

She's just won a place at Oxford University and school heartthrob and in-crowd kingpin Alexis (Leonidas) has asked her out on a date.

But Alexis and his clique aren't quite as cool as they seem. They mercilessly bully students who don't match up to their exacting standards - one such victim was overweight, asthmatic geek Darren Mullett (Dean), whom they victimised so relentlessly that he killed himself last summer.

But now he's back from the dead and ready to settle some scores. Darren sets to work dealing out punishment in a variety of bone-crunchingly brutal and blood-splattering ways as the in-crowd discover, much to their displeasure, that there's simply no reasoning with a dead geek on a mission.

This was a perfectly targeted movie - aimed at the teens - Jon Wright has produced a movie that hits the nail right on the head by looking at the different social groups within school, it's something that we can all identify with.

While the movie was met well by the critics it did struggle at the box office when it was released.

I Am Number Four

Pettyfer returns this week as the mysterious John Smith as D.J Caruso brings the novel by Pittacus Lore - the pen name of Jobie Hughes and James Frey - to the big screen.

John Smith (Alex Pettyfer), who is a fugitive on the run from ruthless enemies sent to destroy him.

Changing his identity, moving from town to town with his guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant), John is always the new kid with no ties to his past.

In the small Ohio town he now calls home, John encounters unexpected, life-changing events his first love (Dianna Agron), powerful new abilities and a connection to the others who share his incredible destiny.

John (Alex Pettyfer) is an extraordinary young man, masking his true identity and passing as a typical student to elude a deadly enemy seeking to destroy him.

Three like him have already been killed... he is Number Four.

I smell a possible franchise!!!

Beastly

Pettyfer has already completed work on the delayed Beastly - which is a modern telling of Beauty and the Beast.

Seventeen year-old Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) is the spoiled, shallow, and incredibly popular prince of his high school kingdom.

Entirely captivated and empowered by his own physical appearance, Kyle foolishly chooses Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen) as his latest target for humiliation.

But things are not as they seem, and the disgraced Kendra, a witch masquerading as a high school student, enacts the perfect revenge.

She transforms Kyle into someone as unattractive on the outside as he is on the inside. Now he has one year to find someone to love him, or he will remain "Beastly" forever.

To break the spell, Kyle must discover a beauty who can see past the surface. His only hope, a quiet classmate he never noticed named Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), may be his best chance to prove that love is never ugly. - Beastly is released later this year.