Working Girl – Melanie Griffith portrays a secretary with ambitions of moving up the corporate ladder. She starts working for Sigourney Weaver, and she thinks that she’s going to get her chance, but it turns out that her new boss plans to steal all of her ideas and take credit for them. Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin co-star. The movie received five Academy Award nominations.

Titanic – This James Cameron box office hit shattered records right and left. Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet co-star, but the real star is the iceberg. Men and women alike enjoy this box office blockbuster.

Thelma and Louise – An unforgettable film starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, this one includes a great cameo from a very young Brad Pitt. Harvey Keitel also shines in a supporting role. It’s more than just a road movie, and it still plays as well today as when it first came out.

Chick flicks. They’re not just for girls. Besides, next time you want your wife to watch Fight Club with you, you can use the latest chick flick you watched together as leverage.

So what does it take to be one of the lucky few who move from celebrity wannabe to red carpet regular?

According to Elisa Eliot, an acting Coach in Los Angeles who has helped budding starlets land roles on major TV shows including CSI, Nip/Tuck and The Office, while looks can be important in making the cut, even the most attractive actor won’t be cast if he or she doesn’t have the acting ability to turn a script into a convincing performance.

And for Eliot, who learned her acting skills at Yale University’s drama school, that means rising stars have to leave the day job behind them when they make it to the audition.

“I’m always telling my students to make the stakes higher in their acting, which means committing to each moment,” she says. “If an actor is not totally committed to what he or she is trying to achieve then the moment won’t be believable.”

That doesn’t mean though that a background in Stanislavski and a love of Method Acting are all you need to win the breakthrough parts. According to Eliot, it’s just not enough these days for an actor to have only one way of bringing a character to life. “No actor can be confined to just one of the older methods in today’s acting world,” she advises on her website. Instead, Elisa teaches a blend of all the different acting approaches so that actors can choose the methods that work best for them.

So the right looks help, it seems, and solid acting skills certainly count for something. But there’s one more ingredient that any actor with ambition needs: an objective opinion to tell them where they’re going wrong and how to improve it… before the casting director does. Even the most talented actor can struggle with the stress of an audition and nervous habits like shifting from one foot to the other can kill chances faster than a fluffed line.

For many stars in the making, that means exchanging poses in the mirror for personal training if they want to swap their uniform for an Oscar dress.

- Daniel Nord