Actors Evan Rachel Wood and Elijah Wood (no relation) have been chosen to receive this year’s Midnight Awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival tomorrow evening. The Awards have been designed to honor a dynamic young American actor and actress who have made outstanding contributions to independent and Hollywood cinema. The Awards ceremony and after-hours cocktail reception is one of the Festival’s hottest tickets. This year, the actors will be interviewed in a relaxed late night talk show format, with local literary luminary Beth Lisick conducting the interviews and showing film clips.

Evan Rachel Wood, age 22, was a child actress who at the age of 13 made her breakthrough performance in Catherine Hardwicke’s controversial THIRTEEN (2003) as a teenager mired in the world of drugs, sex and petty crime. Her uncompromising performance earned her Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations. Since then, she has been working steadily, making her mark in such films as PRETTY PERSUASION (2005), RUNNING WITH SCISSORS (2006) and the Beatles phantasmagoria ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007). This past year, she received kudos for her performance as Mickey Rourke’s estranged daughter in the Oscar-nominated THE WRESTLER.

Elijah Wood, age 27, also started as a child actor and made his feature film debut as an 8-year-old in BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989). His first major role that established him as a star in the making was as the sexually inexperienced teenager in Ang Lee’s THE ICE STORM (1997). Since then, Wood has been dividing his time between Hollywood and indie films, most notably ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004), SIN CITY (2005), EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED (2005) and BOBBY (2006). He is best known for his role as Frodo Baggins, the young seeker of truth, in Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. Wood’s next project seems bound to expand his range and his audience. He will play the iconic rocker Iggy Pop in the biopic THE PASSENGER, directed by Nick Gomez (LAWS OF GRAVITY). For more information on the Festival, visit: http://fest09.sffs.org


Sandy Mandelberger, San Francisco Film Festival Dailies Editor