YOURS CUTEE: Alex Pettyfer

Alexander Richard "Alex" Pettyfer (born 10 April 1990) is an English actor and model. He appeared in school plays and on television before being cast as Alex Rider, the main character in the 2006 film version of Stormbreaker. Pettyfer was nominated for a Young Artist Award and an Empire Award for his role. He has been seen as a model in several advertising campaigns for Burberry. His next two starring roles were in the 2011 films I Am Number Four, a science fiction action adventure, and Beastly, a modernised retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Pettyfer was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, the son of Lee Ireland, an interior decorator, and Richard Pettyfer, an actor. He has a younger half-brother, James Ireland, a junior tennis player, from his mother's re-marriage to Michael Ireland, a property developer.

Pettyfer was raised in Windsor, and began his career as a child fashion model at the age of seven, for Gap, after meeting Ralph Lauren in a toy store in New York City. He also did advertisements for some yogurt brands. His first commercial was at age six.

As a schoolboy, he performed in plays, including in the role of Willy Wonka in a production Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Pettyfer was educated at two junior independent schools: The Mall School, a small school in Twickenham, followed by the Lambrook Haileybury school in Berkshire. He subsequently attended two other independent boarding schools: Millfield School in Street in Somerset and Shiplake College near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. After his GCSEs, he left Shiplake College to attend the independent Sylvia Young Theatre School.

On 14 June 2009, Pettyfer was voted #35 on the Britain's top 50 most eligible bachelors by UK women's magazine Company. In August 2009 the UK magazine Glamour ranked him at #21 on their list of the sexiest men on the planet, as determined by a poll of 2000 British women.

After Pettyfer completed filming Stormbreaker, he did not discuss the film with anyone at his school, citing the advice of his Stormbreaker co-star, Ewan McGregor, who told him to keep his personal and professional life separate. Pettyfer has since decided to leave school and concentrate on his film career, whilst studying drama at college, saying that "When you have already experienced going out and working in the real world, and you come back to school, you just see it as a playground and you don't want to be there any more".

Pettyfer has seven tattoos, including a Celtic cross on his chest, Arabic script on the inside of his right arm, the words, "What Goes Around Comes Around" on his right shoulder, a Kanji script on his lower waist, and the letters "ER," the initials of his now ex-girlfriend Emma Roberts inside interlinking hearts on his right wrist. When Contactmusic asked him about the "ER" tattoo he said "I don't know how to say it, she's a lovely, lovely girl, we had a spell of something that is over now, but we're on good terms. She's beautiful, she's great; we're really good friends." The actor had gotten Roberts' name tattooed on his wrist while the two were dating. "I'm going to get asked about this, aren't I? I thought it was just between me and her," he said when asked about the tattoo.