Whoa, Who's That Kid?

By Rebecca Winters Keegan

If Travolta's Edna Turnblad is the heart of Hairspray, Elijah Kelley's Seaweed J. Stubbs is the hips--the kind of boy who makes teenage girls nearly choke on their lollipops or want to join him in detention. That's where Seaweed teaches kids, white and black, including Tracy (Nikki Blonsky), all the fun dances. With his strenuous, just-naughty-enough performance of the number Run and Tell That!, Kelley, 20, emerges as a Hollywood throwback--a charismatic young actor who sings and dances. Kelley is in talks to star in a biopic of the young Sammy Davis Jr., and he's just been cast in Party Up, a comedy he describes as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off meets House Party."

Not bad for a guy who moved to Hollywood just two years ago, after growing up singing in the church choir in LaGrange, Ga., and taking one dance class, at 10, to meet a girl. "Performing is a rush," says Kelley. "You can express yourself without regret or explanation." Although he tangoed in 2006's Take the Lead, when he first saw the moves he was expected to do in Hairspray, Kelley was baffled. "I was like, I hope you have a stunt man," he says. Two months of rehearsals later, the cameras rolled. And Kelley danced away with a promising career.