1. - Roxane Mesquida, Kaboom, 2009.      Indie US director Greg Araki saw her for one of his college students having sexual stirrings. Her replacement was the discovery of controversial French director Catherine Breillat.

2. - Portia Doubleday, Youth In Revolt, 2009.     The role? Sheeni Saunders - the girl Michel Cera (as his usual nerdy milquetoast) hoped to lose his virginity with. Instead, Mara played Taggarty.

3. - Amy Ferguson, Tanner Hall, 2009.     This and not The Social Network was the true breakthrough for Tricia Mara, who finally chose Rooney as her credit for this film - and it won her the Rising Star Award at the Hamptons festival in 2009. She took the name from her sporting great-grandfathers: Art Rooney founded the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tim Mara, the New York Giants She had first auditioned for the support role of Lucasta, but New York auteur Tatiana von Furstenberg loved what she saw and tested her for the lead, Fernanda.

4. - Emma Roberts, Adult World, 2011.     A few years back, the Hawaii-born auteur Scott Coffey had Julia Roberts toying with one of his scripts. Her neice didn’t toy... when Mara became The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

5. - Holliday Grainger, Great Expectations, TV, 2011.     She passed on the role of Estella (forever Jean Simmons to most of us) in the umpteenth BBC version... for Charles Dickens 200th birthday year.

6. - Jennifer Lawrence, The Silver Linings Playbook, 2011.     Mara lost the coveted role of of Bradley Cooper’s neighbour on a sexual spree after her husband’s death. So did Elizabeth Banks, Kirsten Dunst, Blake Lively, Anna Hathaway, Rachel McAdams, Andrea Riseborough, Olivia Wilde.

7.- Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty, 2012.     Schedules fluctuated and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo had to hand over to Chastain in US Navy SEALs hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Kathryn Bigelow’s first movie becoming the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar - for The Hurt Locker on March 7, 2010.

8. - Mia Wasikowska, Stoker, 2012. For his first English-language film, South Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy), was introduced to Hollywood casting. He had to see Mara, Bella Heathcote, Cary Mulligan, Emma Roberts and, of course for a vampire number, Twilighters Ashley Greenee and Kristen Stewart! What a choice for Nicole Kidman’s daughter… besotted with and fretting over the most mysterious Uncle Charlie since Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt some 60 years earlier.

9. - Elisabeth Olsen, Oldboy, 2012. Lily Collins and Mia Wasikowska also passed on the leading lady when Spike Lee took over from Steven Spielberg as helmer of the re-tread of Park Chan-wook’s 2003 Korean study on vengeance.

10 - Jennifer Lawrence, The Silver Linings Playbook, 2012. “If you really want to go back and do an archeological dig,” laughed director David O Russell, ““I wrote it for Vince Vaughn. And Zooey Deschanel.” Then, Jennifer did a reading on Skype with “an enormous amount of confidence that was beyond her years… toughness and a sweetness and charisma… I hadn’t seen anything like that.” JLaw won the Oscar for the film meaning her rivals Elizabeth Banks, Kirsten Dunst, Rachel McAdams, Rooney Mara, Andrea Riseborough, Olivia Wilde had been well and truly Skyped!