Hugh is this actor?

He is barely out of shorts, but his bumbling manner and plummy tones are unmistakably familiar.

This is the 13-year-old cousin of Hugh Grant.

Grant - Britain's most famous bachelor at 43 - has based his 20-year career on playing the sociallyinept singletons featured in Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill, and About A Boy.

But Thomas Sangster - who got his first break two years ago with a role in the TV mini-series Stig Of The Dump - has landed a part arguably more challenging than any Grant has tackled.

South-London-born Thomas is pictured here in his first major dramatic role - playing a 10-year-old Adolf Hitler in a new biopic about the Nazi leader.

He won plaudits for his performance in Hitler: The Rise Of Evil when it aired in the US, the New York Post describing it as "first rate". The TV drama is due for release in the UK later this year.

The young actor appears alongside Peter O'Toole, Robert Carlyle and Matthew Modine in the story about the Nazi leader's rise to power.

On the back of that part, Thomas - whose father is starring in The Lion King in Hamburg and whose mother is also an actress - has landed a further role in one of the most anticipated movies of the year, romantic comedy Love Actually.

Cousin Hugh also has a part in it, albeit a more modest one.

Set in contemporary London, Love Actually weaves together 10 separate love stories in the run-up to Christmas.

Thomas stars as a boy with a troubled relationship with his stepfather, played by Liam Neeson. Uncle Hugh has a smaller role in the film, playing a Prime Minister who falls in love with a maid, played by Martine McCutcheon.

The film also stars Billy Bob Thornton-Emma Thompson and Colin Firth.

Unkind observers might say that Hugh's relationship with Thomas has given him a leg-up with his acting career, but that is far from the case.

A friend of Hugh's said: "Thomas has talent far in advance of his years. He has managed to land some fantastic parts on the back of the few roles he has performed to date - and those parts appear to be getting more and more substantial.