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Here’s a question.

If you were a 21-year-old actor suddenly thrust into the spotlight, would you want one of your co-stars to compare you to Meryl Streep?

Now think about it for a minute. Sure, it’s flattering. Wow, it would feel nice. But that’s a lot of pressure. It’s not the kind of pressure that comes with being nominated for an Oscar, being followed by paparazzi or even reading about yourself in a magazine. It’s worse.

It’s pressure to deliver.

Dennis Quaid laid the Meryl Streep comparison on his Smart People co-star Ellen Page when he told Famous writer Bob Strauss, “Ellen Page is a movie star…. I actually think she’s like Meryl Streep.”

If — like most people — you’ve only seen Page in Juno and her various red carpet interviews, you may think that comparison is misplaced. Truth is, the real-life Page seems pretty similar to her charming, smartass character in Juno. And great acting is about becoming something that you’re not.

But dig back a little deeper in Page’s 10-year career and you’ll find several roles that are utterly “smartass” free. These are largely tragic parts in movies like An American Crime, the true story of a brutally abused girl in 1960s Indiana, or Hard Candy, where she plays a single-minded 14-year-old out to get even with a pedophile.

In “Hot Out of Halifax” Page explains why she’s excited to play “an extremely bitchy, arrogant Young Republican” in next month’s Smart People, a character she says is “extremely different from Juno.”

Charlize Theron has proven she’s at her best when portraying a character nothing like herself. The former model won an Oscar playing a grizzly serial killer in Monster and was nominated for a second as North Country’s down-and-out coal miner. This month you’ll see her in another less-than-glam role — a neglectful mother who abandons her little girl in Sleepwalking. Read “Getting Ugly” to find out why Theron’s attracted to these harsh roles.

In “Running the Show” former Friends star David Schwimmer talks about shooting his directorial debut, Run, Fat Boy, Run in London, and on a shoestring budget.

And in “Who’s Who” Steve Carell talks about voicing the Mayor of Who-ville in the latest Dr. Seuss story to make it to the big screen, Horton Hears a Who!

—Marni Weisz