HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Rob Morrow and Claire Forlani are among the actors set to star in the independent love triangle film Elements. Also cast are Jayne Brook and Jake Webber. The movie is currently shooting in New York and Massachusetts and marks the debut of the writing-directing team of Sean K. Smith and Anthony Stark. Jean Doumanian, Woody Allen's longtime collaborator is producing. Morrow's bigscreen credits include Quiz Show and Last Dance, while Forlani joins the production after a year of mixing studio and independent work. Besides playing Sean Connery's daughter in The Rock, she was Jean Michel Basquiat's girlfriend in Basquiat. She will be seen later this year in Last Time I Committed Suicide, which also features Thomas Jane and Keanu Reeves. Jayne Brook's credits include Ed and Bye, Bye, Love. She currently plays Dr. Diane Grad on CBS' Chicago Hope, and will next grace the big screen opposite Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke in Gattaca (formerly The Eighth Day) in March.

The idea was simple but ambitious: A gallery of 30 actors under age 30.

But who to choose?

Winona Ryder, Uma Thurman, and Ethan Hawke are all under 30. So are Nicole Kidman, Alicia Silverstone, and Chris O'Donnell. Add Drew Barrymore, Christian Slater, and the newest seraphim in the firmament, Matthew McConaughey and Gwyneth Paltrow, to the list. But what about the dozens of talented performers whose names aren't yet above the title? Don't they deserve some recognition too?

Determined to dig a little deeper, we came up with the men and women on the following pages. Some you have already heard of, others you may have never heard of. Then again, depending on the power of the hype machine, by this time next year there may be some who you are tired of hearing of.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. For now, welcome to 30 Below.

Claire Forlani

"I was always ready to leave England for some absurd reason," laughs Claire Forlani or her family's decision to leave her native Britian for Northern California three years ago. "Sometimes I miss the spirit of London, but it's a very gray place."

Forlani's life since the exodus could hardly be more colorful. After her screen debut in Mallrats, the half-Italian, blue-eyed beauty practically made the canvases seem drab in Basquiat, in which she played artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's waitress girlfriend. "I was truly ignorant about art before the film," she admits, "and now I go to museums and know what I'm looking at." More widely seen than Basquiat was her small but memorable role as Sean Connery's estranged daughter in The Rock. "Sean's the ultimate pro," she says fondly, "and he's got lots of good dirty jokes."

Forlani recently wrapped The Last Time I Committed Suicide, in which she plays the suicidal girlfriend of Beat poet Neal Cassady. "You find out you're depressed a lot of the time, and you wonder why," the actress says of embodying someone with wrist-slitting tendencies. "Then you realize, Oh, I'm doing this part."

Forlani has always wanted to be in movies, though she admits her family has expressed reservations. "They keep hoping I can act," she laughs. "My father just saw Basquiat, and he called me up and said, 'You're getting better.'"

Just you wait, Mr. Forlani.

--Dennis Hensley

West Hollywood resident Jeff Fisher is banking on a vision. The 28-year-old film director and producer left his full-time job at Columbia Pictures to hawk his 30-minute film short around town. And while Fisher may resort to a job flipping pizzas or waiting tables, recent events indicate his vision is on course.

There are an estimated 5,800 directors listed with the Directors Guild of America. About 3,500 are in Southern California, according to the DGA. Clearly a competitive field, Fisher has his work cut out for him.

"I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet," he says.

Fisher says he didn't leave his job at Columbia before securing loans and storing away the funding he needed to make his film, Garage Sale. After spending $25,000 to produce the film, Fisher was left with enough money to cover two months rent. Yet Fisher's eye for spotting rising talent may actually be his best asset to bank on.

"I think he's really gifted," says writer Marianne Wibberley. "I think he's very good at discovering new talent."

Thirty-one-year-old Wibberley and her husband, Cormac, 35, are the writers behind Garage Sale. Wibberley says that from the time she met Fisher in 1991, he has consistently predicted the success of rising stars. His latest prediction has once again come true. Scheduled to be featured in Vogue and US, Claire Forlani, 23, was first discovered by Fisher as the leading actress in Garage Sale. Since 1995, when Garage Sale was completed, Forlani has since achieved big screen success with her role in The Rock.

"He discovered Claire Forlani before she was doing any movies," Wibberley adds.

Fisher's eye for talent also appears to cross industry boundaries. He was quick to nurture a friendship with the Wibberleys when he first met the doing feature development at Strato Films.

"You don't meet too many friends here in Hollywood," Wibberley says.

As writers in Los Angeles, the Wibberleys have had their share of disappointments.

Despite having sold a story to Disney for a handsome $275,000 a few years back, the story never went into production.

Previous to Garage Sale, which they wrote in 1995, they never viewed any of their work on screen.

Working with a big company such as Disney has its drawbacks when management is consistently changing, Wibberley says.

But working directly with someone who is determined to complete a film ensures a final product.

As well, films such as Garage Sale are unusual on the festival scene because it's a romantic comedy, she adds.

Filmed in West Hollywood, Garage Sale features Forlani as Julia, an unassuming, down-to-earth woman who pairs up with Brent (Salvator Xuereb), a haughty nose-in-the-air fashion model.

In the midst of a relationship where Brent leaves for Paris and is suspected of infidelity, Julia repeatedly bumps into Roy (Tim Quill) at garage sales. What follows is a twist of romance, comedy and irony.

"It was like a wedding," Wibberley says, "everyone fought like cats and dogs, then everyone got along in the end."

Garage Sale, which recently placed in the top five at the Palm Springs Film Festival, is slated for viewing in Britain starting in September.

In need of a midsummer pick-me-up? Try something, anything, in pale blue, the color of heavenly skies and '70s eye shadow. This calming shade is never completely out of style -- like, say, its more garish cousin fluorescent blue -- but it's looking particularly au courant right now. "I always wear baby blue," says CLAIRE FORLANI, who plays the girlfriend of the 1980s art star Jean-Michel Basquiat in the eponymous movie about his life. "It's my favorite color. Now that it's finally in, I'm finally in!"

There's a scene midway through Basquiat, Julian Schnabel's film about the late art star, that will take your breath away. Claire Forlani, who plays Gina, painter Jean-Michel Basquiat's girlfriend, is making a tuna sandwich in the kitchen of the couple's fifth-floor walk-up when Basquiat, still flush from an afternoon tryst with Big Pink (deliciously played by Courtney Love), pirouettes through the doorway and drapes Gina in a pink chiffon scarf that hours earlier belonged to Big Pink. It's a dazzling, heartbreaking moment in which Gina goes from being the very picture of the Italian girl next door to a portrait of pathos painted by one of the Prado boys.

"The tuna was my idea," says the 23-year-old actress. "The chiffon scarf was Julian's."

Forlani, who grew up in London and moved to California with her "very bohemian" parents three years ago, is best known ("If I'm known at all," she says) for her performance opposite Shannen Doherty in Mallrats. She's done a "touch" of English TV, a small part in The Rock, and a slightly larger one in the upcoming The Last Time I Commited Suicide, which stars Keanu Reeves. "At the moment," she adds, "I'm doing one of those -- what do you call them -- 'action thrillers' with Treat Williams. But Basquiat is the first thing I've done that I'm really proud of."

As she should be. Basquiat electrified the Manhattan art scene in the early eighties but burned out by the end of the decade. Forlani based Gina on an interview with Basquiat's real-life girlfriend, but before she was cast for the pivotal part, she didn't know a Basquiat from a Schnabel. "The beautiful thing about Julian is that he's an artist, so he understands the creative process," she says. The other beautiful thing about Julian, of course, is that he took a chance with Claire Forlani.

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Famke Janssen, who played the sadomasochistic Bond girl in Goldeneye, is replacing Claire Forlani in the action thriller Deep Rising, sources said. Forlani was dismissed Saturday during the first day of shooting in Vancouver. She had last portrayed Sean Connery's daughter in The Rock. Sources cited friction on the set. The project, which also stars Treat Williams and Wes Studi, is about a gang of thieves aboard a luxury cruise liner who discover the ship is mysteriously empty of passengers but is occupied by a killer creature. Stephen Sommers is directing the Disney movie from his own script and it is slated for a summer 1997 release.