Eleanor Tomlinson is the new Keira Knightley. Really. Look at the evidence. The 16-year-old starlet with the killer cheekbones plays Jas in Angus . . ., the pretty “bestest pally” of calamity-prone protagonist Georgia Nicolson (Georgia Groome). It’s an Identikit homage to Knightley’s breakout role in Bend it Like Beckham.

Like Knightley’s Jules in that movie, Jas is easy on the eye, good with the boys, and the perfect foil for her impetuous best friend. When she flicks her hair, midway through the film, Georgia even sneers: “Oh, very Keira Knightley!”

As an audience, we get it. Hell, even Tomlinson gets it. Sensing that she’s being groomed as a Knightley upgrade, she sighs: “Keira’s such a great actress, I can’t help but think about it, and hopefully it will go that way for me too.” The London-born daughter of the TV actor Malcolm Tomlinson (Emmerdale) made her movie debut in the Edward Norton thriller The Illusionist. She has since been snapped up by the bigwig agents behind Samantha Morton and Helena Bonham Carter, and signed a three-movie deal with the Angus. . . producers Paramount Pictures.

She is about to enter sixth-form college, and determined never to become a tabloid fixture. “I don’t want to be known for my personal life, or for what I’m like behind the camera,” she says. “It’s all about respect.” And yet, she adds, the glamour of the Knightley lifestyle can be alluring. “I went to the Illusionist premiere with Ed Norton. We were there together on the red carpet, signing autographs, in the middle of this huge event and I thought: ‘I could get used to this’.”

You will. Oh, you will.

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