AllMovie

Versatile film and television actor Ed Westwick established his footing on the small screen with roles in Doctors and Casualty before making an impressive leap to the big screen with a small role in director Alfonso Cuarón's critically acclaimed sci-fi feature Children of Men in 2006. Immediately thereafter, the rising star worked with Oscar-nominated director Anthony Minghella on the romantic drama Breaking and Entering, followed by a part in the television series Afterlife. It was on American television, however, that Westwick found his breakthrough role, playing filthy-rich bad boy Chuck Bass on the hit CW teen drama series Gossip Girl, which premiered in 2007. He continued to act in films as well, appearing in a supporting part in director Garth Jennings' acclaimed coming-of-age drama Son of Rambow -- a low-budget indie that sparked a heated bidding war in 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival. He also found time to front the U.K. rock band the Filthy Youth. He appeared in S. Darko, the ill-fated sequel to Donnie Darko in 2009, and he scored a small part as Agent Smith in Clint Eastwood's biopic J. Edgar.