Suppose you’re a young Texas-born actor who dreams of hitting it big in Hollywood, and in your first major role, you land a movie that films for four months in Hawaii and is piloted by an Oscar-winning director.

Oh, and the movie stars George Clooney.

Or maybe you had a prominent spot in the ensemble cast of the NBC series, “Friday Night Lights,” and now suddenly you’re considered one of the “it” girls, and you’ve landed three major movie roles.

Or perhaps you’re an adolescent actor who has worked in tons of commercials and bit parts since you were 8, but now you’re one of the stars of a J. J. Abrams-directed, Steven Spielberg-produced kids/alien adventure flick.

What are the odds that three young actors with Lone Star roots would suddenly find themselves on the cusp of stardom?

“Everyone knows it’s a million-to-one shot to make it in this business,” says talent agent Liz Atherton, whose Georgetown, Texas, agency, The Atherton Group, represents all of these young actors.

Just getting to this point means these talented performers have already beaten the odds, at least in terms of landing high-profile roles in prominent projects. Let’s take a look at each one’s story.

Madison Burge

Playing 15-year-old Becky Sproles on the acclaimed “Friday Night Lights” was a dream come true for Burge, 20. Growing up in Hutto, Texas, just outside Austin, she’s been working her craft for almost 10 years, though with limited success.

But then two years ago, she was cast in the next-to-last season of “Friday Night Lights,” playing a young beauty pageant contestant who uses her looks to get what she wants.

“’Friday Night Lights’ deals with big, adult issues like premarital sex and abortion because that’s a real part of life,” Burge says. “They don’t write the typical cheerleader-meets-quarterback stories. It’s much, much deeper than that. It’s so well-written, so true to life. It was really an actor’s dream.”

Pretty heady stuff for a self-described “country girl” who grew up in a close family on five acres outside of town.

Since “Friday Night Lights” wrapped its final season, Burge has landed roles in three feature films: “Seven Days in Utopia,” “Humans Versus Zombies” and “Cowgirls n’ Angels.”

She plays opposite Oscar winners Robert Duvall and Melissa Leo in “Seven Days in Utopia”; she’s a rodeo trick rider in the western, “Cowgirls n’ Angels”; and she stars as a hardcore gamer chick in the sci-fi adventure, “Humans Versus Zombies.”

With all that success, Burge has decided to capitalize on the buzz she’s getting, and is trying out life in Los Angeles.

“I love Texas and Austin and all that, but I want to see if I can really make it in this business,” Burge says. “And to do that, you have to go to California.”

Nick Krause

Krause, 18, was only 17 years old last year when he filmed “The Descendants,” an early Oscar favorite starring George Clooney as the workaholic father of two girls trying to reconnect with his daughters after their mother gets injured in an accident.

“What was most surprising was how laidback everyone was, George Clooney included,” Krause says. “For me, it was cool to just sit back and watch all these A-list professionals – people at the very top of their game – go about moviemaking like it was no big deal.”

Clooney and Krause had plenty of time to bond between scenes, holding intellectual conversations about important issues like politics and the civil war in the Darfur region of the Sudan, a subject close to Clooney’s heart.

“George would get emotional talking about the massacres and the terrible things going on over there, and it was obvious that it was something that he truly cared about,” Krause says.

After “The Descendants” finished shooting (it’s scheduled to be released on Dec. 16), Krause and his new high-profile career moved to Los Angeles.

And even though he’s caught the acting bug, he still knows the importance of getting an education, and is attending college in Los Angeles.

“I’ve always been interested in the medical field, and someday, I plan to do something with that,” Krause says. “For a while, I was thinking about becoming a trauma surgeon, but lately, I’ve kind of rethought that, and now I’d like to do something in medical research.”

Ryan Lee

Of all the actors profiled in this story, 14-year-old Ryan Lee may be on the shortest path to stardom. Lee has been a working actor since he was 8, and with more than 20 movies to his credit (some big roles, some tiny), he’s spent more time on film sets than both of the other actors in this story.

Lee is one of the young stars of “Super 8” (along with Elle Fanning, Dakota’s little sister), the summer blockbuster release from “Lost” creator and “Star Trek” director J. J. Abrams, produced by none other than Steven Spielberg.

The storyline of “Super 8” involves a group of adolescents who accidentally film a captured alien that the military is transporting to Ohio from Area 51. As the story unfolds, Lee has a number of standout moments as the movie’s comic relief, playing the “special effects” member of the adolescent film crew who loves to use fireworks to blow stuff up.

For a young actor, getting cast in a Steven Spielberg/J. J. Abrams movie is a lengthy process.

The “Super 8” producers did a nationwide search for new faces and looked at thousands of actors for the few coveted roles. In order to keep the actual storyline of the movie under wraps, they held casting calls with phony script pages of films entitled “Darlings” and “Wickham.”

“I think I did three or four auditions like that,” Lee says. “Then finally, after months of going back and forth, I went in for another audition – this time with the real script, and J. J. Abrams was there.”

On that trip to LA, Lee and his mother, Lisa, had planned to stay in town for a couple of days after the audition and hit the Universal Theme Park. But the next morning, they got the call to come back in.

“That time, Mr. Abrams was talking to the stylist about changing my hair, and he looked at me and said, ‘We were watching your audition tape last night, and Steven and I were just laughing and laughing.’ And I said, ‘Steven Spielberg?’”

Lee did a worldwide press tour promoting the movie, visiting London and Singapore, and he walked the red carpet at the big Hollywood premiere.

“I was so excited to work with J. J. Abrams and get to meet Mr. Spielberg,” Lee says. “You can’t be in this business and not know that those two guys are about as big as it gets.”

For more information, contact Craig A. Lewis at tabloidman@yahoo.com or 903-316-0827.

Sources are on file and available upon request.