Looks like some up and comers may be giving A-List veterans a run for their money. In Australia, Nicole Kidman and BFF Naomi Watts are reigning queens of the big screen, but they’re about to get a bit of competition from 20-something rising stars Emily Browning and Rachael Taylor. Aussie paper The Herald Sun reports all four actresses are on director Bruce Beresford’s “wishlist” to play decorated WWII war hero Nancy Wake in his biopic blockbuster “The White Mouse”.

Wake, who died yesterday in London at the age of 98, grew up in Sydney and left home at age 16 to become a nurse and then a journalist, working all over Europe, where she witnessed Hitler’s atrocities in Vienna and Paris. After Hitler took France in 1940, Wake joined the French Resistence as a courier and then became a British spy, eventually saving thousands of lives by sabotaging the German armies and setting up escape routes for Allied forces.

Beresford warns that casting is nowhere near firm. “I’d like an Australian girl obviously but casting is still in the early stages,” he told the paper. “I haven’t sent any actresses scripts yet but there are some great (women) around who would suit the part.” Among the attributes, a “perfect French speaking voice” is a must. “Most of the film is set in France and spoken in French. Otherwise it’s just not credible.” The director is also aware that a “big name” may be what he needs to secure the financing needed to mount such an ambitious, grand scale blockbuster, so perhaps Kidman and Watts have an edge over the young upstarts yet.

Taylor, who had a breakout moment in the original “Transformers” playing a young hacker who aided Shia LaBeouf and his giant robot alien friends, is one of the new “Charlie’s Angels” debuting on NBC this fall. Browning headlined Zack Snyder’s girls-with-machine-guns fantasy “Sucker Punch” and garnered rave reviews in Cannes for her performance in Julia Leigh’s erotic drama “Sleeping Beauty”.