Tag Archives: Actresses

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Felicity Jones

No, Felicity Jones didn’t win the Best Actress Oscar last Sunday. But anyone who’s seen her remarkably brave and touching performance in The Theory of Everything knows that the lovely young Englishwoman’s future is nevertheless guaranteed to be golden. Ms. Jones’ Jane Wilde Hawking opposite Eddie Redmayne’s astonishing, Academy Award-winning portrayal as her physically impaired astrophysicist husband, Stephen Hawking, gives the film its soul and its heart. Her work is subtle and never mawkish but still communicates a woman pushed to the very limit by her belief in selfless love, her sense of guilt and honor and the slow motion tragedy of taking care of a husband with incurable neuromuscular disease. By turns strong and shattered, the actress achieves that rare thing in film acting: a fully realized human being with whom anyone with half a heart can empathize.

The 31-year-old Birmingham beauty began her career as a teen sorceress-in-training on ITV’s The Worst Witch and after 3 seasons she took time off to attend university. But acting remained her calling and she returned to it a young woman on a mission with an impressive run of supporting roles alongside major league actresses like Emma Thompson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helen Mirren. That steady work with top notch professionals eventually led to her own star turn in 2011’s dizzyingly romantic Like Crazy, where she played a British exchange student abruptly separated from her American lover when her visa expires.

She was also carried away by love in 2013’s critically acclaimed Breathe In, where Ms. Jones was again an exchange student, this time falling for Guy Pearce’s married music teacher and leading him astray with her vulnerability, musicianship and big blue eyes. That same year she picked up a British Independent Film Award nomination for her very moving work as Charles Dickens’ secret mistress in the ambitious period biography, The Invisible Woman. Directed with a fine, restrained touch by Ralph Fiennes while he simultaneously portrayed Dickens, it was clear that Felicity’s portrayal of Nelly Ternen and her May-September romance with the great author confirmed a major acting talent reaching full maturity. The fact that she had now held her own and then some with Pearce and Fiennes in two consecutive pictures announced to the world that this was a young lady unintimidated and ready for big things.

And what could be bigger than her breakthrough in The Theory of Everything with its massive success and resultant accolades? Now everyone knows Felicity Jones, not just British film buffs. And with several more films in post-production and a secure spot as one of Hollywood’s new, young A-list actresses this should only be the beginning. Between those eyes, that face and all that talent we’re sure to be looking at Felicity for years to come. Which suits us just fine.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Jana Kramer

Maybe you only recognize Jana Kramer as the athletic, leather-clad heroine replacing items for hapless customers in those Nationwide Insurance commercials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5dhEala7xs

But in certain circles the petite 31-year-old Michigan native is kind of a big deal. Ms. Kramer has been a TV staple for years with recurring roles on Friday Night Lights, the 90210 re-boot and most notably for her fans, on the CW young adult smash One Tree Hill as the flirty starlet Alex Dupré.

Jana left that show at the height of her television stardom to follow her dream of making it big in Country music, which she succeeded at with the release of her self-titled 2012 debut album and hit single “Why Ya Wanna.”

OK, OK, so Country music is not exactly my bag, baby. But there’s no denying that Jana Kramer brightens up any music video she’s in, especially when she’s wearing denim shorts and riding a bike… which she usually is. Exceptionally pretty girls with smiles as warm as Jana’s have a way of getting you to do — and listen to — what they want.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Emily Blunt

Talent, intelligence and beauty — sloe-eyed actress Emily Blunt has those attributes in spades. Descended from a prominent English family of over-achievers, Emily was precocious enough to go directly from secondary school to starring opposite Judi Dench in a revival of George S. Kaufman & Edna Ferber’s classic lampoon of theater prima donnas, The Royal Family. After more well received stage work, including a very fitting Juliet, it was natural that her lovely visage and electric acting should grace British television, where she had a breakout performance in the award-winning dark and complicated My Summer of Love.

Following yet more British television success in Gideon’s Daughter, Ms. Blunt broke through across the Atlantic in 2006 in the hugely popular The Devil Wears Prada. Her pitch perfect Emily Charlton, the icy veteran assistant to the great Meryl Streep’s Anna Wintour-like fashion doyenne, served as the ideal foil for wide-eyed ingénue Anne Hathaway and her performance was just as important to the overall success of that picture. Nominated for a BAFTA and Golden Globe for the role, Emily was now on the A-list in Hollywood. She followed up that breakthrough by de-glamming and teaming with Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning as very funny misfit sisters trying to start a business cleaning up after dead people. She showed more comedy chops alongside Ewan McGregor in 2011’s charmingly offbeat Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and with Jason Segal as a couple perpetually thwarted on their journey to the alter in 2012’s The Five-Year Engagement.

Showing her versatility as well as bankabilty, Ms. Blunt then jumped easily into high-concept sci-fi action with standout support to Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis in the trippy and original 2012 time travel thriller Looper. Caught in another time loop this year, she was more than a match for Tom Cruise trying to repel alien invaders in the would-be blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow. Emily is also slated to be part of the cast of the upcoming big screen adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s Broadway musical, Into the Woods. If she sings as good as she looks in a futuristic exoskeleton battle suit, or most other clothing really, we’re there.

Still only 31-years-old, Emily has been married since 2010 to The Office actor John Krasinski and the couple welcomed their first child into the world this past February, daughter Hazel. To which we can only say, congratulations. And also: keep taking those improv classes, fellas, because it seems that funny guys get all the babes. That’s definitely QED by Emily.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Zoe Saldana

Born in New Jersey and raised in Queens and the Dominican Republic, the lithe and lovely Zoe Saldana has emerged as a talented and strong leading lady in big budget epics. Overcoming childhood tragedy when her father was killed in an auto accident to find her love of performance through dance in the DR, the part Dominican, part Puerto Rican, all-lovely Ms. Saldana started out doing youth theater in Brooklyn in the mid-90s. But it wasn’t long before professional work came calling with a role on a Law & Order episode in 1999 and the melodramatic youth ballet feature, Center Stage in 2000.

From such promising beginnings, she soon caught the eye of Gore Verbinski to play one of the many pirate types seeking revenge on Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in 2003’s mega-hit Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Steven Spielberg also saw that special something in her, presciently casting her as a Star Trek-loving customs agent sympathetic to Tom Hanks’ stranded immigrant in 2004’s The Terminal.

After more blockbuster supporting work in the Roshomon-like political thriller Vantage Point (2008), 2009 saw Zoe have the breakout year that most actresses can only dream of: First, her dancer’s training and ultra-sophisticated motion capture brought to virtual life Neytiri the blue Na’vi princess and the main female character in James Cameron’s monster hit, Avatar. As if that wasn’t enough of an achievement, she also stepped even further into Sci-Fi immortality by assuming the pioneering role of Lieutenant Uhura in JJ Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek. That is what’s called a banner year, folks.

Not only has the 36-year-old already appeared in 2013’s hit sequel Star Trek: Into Darkness, where her fiery portrayal of Uhura assumed even more prominence among the crew of the Enterprise, but she is currently shooting a whopping 3 sequels to Avatar in New Zealand. Continuing with her Sci-Fi/crazy costume bent, Zoe is currently starring as the very green Gamora in the Marvel comic book adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy, alongside newly minted leading man Chris Pratt. And after playing the title role in NBC’s miniseries remake of Rosemary’s Baby it’s somewhat heartening to know that Ms. Saldana will be starring in the soon-to-be-released and decidedly non-occult Nina Simone biopic, Nina. Bewitching as she is in tight latex costumes and weird skin colors, we’re looking forward to this lovely and intelligent lady playing that real live woman of great soul and complexity, thereby showing us even more of her inner beauty and acting chops. Then we sincerely hope Zoe gets a vacation because the girl is seriously working overtime!

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Lucy Liu

Lucy Liu has had a pretty long run as one of the sexiest women on the planet. The Chinese-American beauty first burst onto the scene back in the late 90s as the ultra-hot, ultra-nasty Ling Woo on David E. Kelley’s Ally McBeal. Despite deliberately trading on a lot of stereotypes surrounding the cruel yet sensual “dragon lady”, Liu’s character was one of the first Asian females to be featured as a principal character in American television.

From there it was a one-way ticket to the top, as Ms. Liu was immediately tapped for big budget Hollywood features in 2000 like the Jackie Chan-Owen Wilson vehicle Shanghai Noon and, more importantly, the Charlie’s Angels reboot alongside Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore, a huge popular success. She had a key supporting part in the Oscar-winning Chicago in 2002 and then reprised her role as Alex Munday in 2003’s sequel, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

2003 also saw her work for auteur Quentin Tarantino on his cult revenge epic Kill Bill (Volume I & II) as samurai sword wielding yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii, the first killer to be crossed off Uma Thurman’s list. Beautiful and lethal, O-Ren’s snowy duel with the Bride is a coup de cinema in a major work that deserves to be revisited. A pale imitation like 2012’s The Man with the Iron Fists, in which she also starred alongside Russell Crowe, shows just how good a movie Kill Bill was in retrospect.

Seeming to get lovelier by the year, Ms. Liu is now an ageless 46 and continues to do important work, returning to television for the critically acclaimed cop drama Southland and the highly entertaining CBS hit series Elementary, where she plays an unconventional Watson to Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes in New York City. She is also an accomplished visual artist and active in several charities, including as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign. Beautiful, accomplished, pioneering and whip-smart: Lucy Liu is the total package and definitely a MFL kind of woman. In fact, why she hasn’t been a Bond girl is beyond us. Better yet, we think she’d make a killer 008. You’re welcome, Eon Productions.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Jessica Paré

With the iconic 1960s advertising series Mad Men winding down to its final episode, it seems entirely fitting that we pay tribute to one of the loveliest actresses to grace that or any other television series, the stunning Jessica Paré. With her lean and lithe body, huge green eyes gazing out from above high cheekbones and mischievous gap-toothed smile, Ms. Paré is at once a classic beauty and a unique one.

A native of Montreal, Quebec, the 33-year-old ingénue was raised bilingual in French and English and caught the acting bug as a child helping her father, a drama teacher and actor, rehearsing his lines. She quickly found success in Canada with 2000’s satire about beauty and fame, Stardom, opposite Dan Ackroyd. This led to more featured roles in 2001’s adolescent lesbian love story, Lost and Delirious, and her Hollywood debut in 2004 as Josh Hartnett’s jilted fiancé in Wicker Park.

After keeping busy if not quite breaking through in subsequent years with good parts in the TV series Jack and Bobby, the vampire comedy Suck and memorably topless in Hot Tub Time Machine, Jessica made a massive impact when she debuted as Megan Calvet in 2010’s Season 4 of Mad Men. Looking stunning in mod costume, Jessica imbued her fellow French Canadian character with coltish naiveté balanced by observant ambition. In short, Megan Calvet was a revelation and it’s no wonder Don Draper proposed to her after she was so good with his kids in Disneyland despite it shattering the lovely and intelligent market researcher Faye Miller’s heart (played by the lovely and intelligent Cara Buono). And in a case of life seeming to imitate art, or at least art imitating itself, it seemed as if the show ditched January Jones in subsequent seasons almost as completely as Don ditched the former wife, Betty, that she played to such early fame.

With Megan separated from Don in Hollywood and the entire cast of characters facing an uncertain future at the dawn of the 70s, Jessica Paré has done her finest, most emotionally challenging work to date this season. We’re not sure where she’ll pop up next but we’re fairly certain that even bigger things are on the horizon for this brunette beauty. We’ll certainly be watching the final Mad Men episodes with interest and hoping that certain Charles Manson/Sharon Tate-related rumors about her character’s fate are not true. And if we were lucky enough to be Megan’s chosen mate, we’d probably give up New York for the sunny L.A. climate and that beguiling, uncorrected smile. Heck, we might even give up advertising entirely. It’s not that hard with such a sweet incentive.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — MyAnna Buring

Yet another Swedish beauty, although this time by way of England, you may not know MyAnna Buring‘s name yet but you’ve probably seen her elven visage on several of BBC-TV’s & BBC America’s most popular shows. The 34-year-old MyAnna was born in Sweden but was raised primarily in the Middle East before immigrating to Great Britain at the age of 16. After graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, she had her first big role on a 2-part episode of Doctor Who in 2006.

Thereafter, she alternated theater work with English television roles on shows such as Midsommer Murders and Inspector George Gently. Her international breakthrough came in the omnipresent tween blockbuster series, Twilight, where she appeared amongst the vamipres and wearwolves as the reformed succubus, Tanya, in Breaking Dawn, Parts 1 & 2.

After that popular success, MyAnna had a banner year in 2012. She landed a featured part on the runaway hit, Downton Abbey, as the striving, social climbing maid Edna Braithwaite who uses her sexual wiles on widower Tom Branson in an attempt to climb above her station. And she also won the principal role of the alluring but tough-as-nails brothel madame, Long Susan, on the excellent 19th-century crime drama, Ripper Street. In this latter role, the pixie-sized Ms. Buring uses her beauty and fierce unsentimental intelligence to dominate both men and women to further her ambitions. Are we sensing a pattern here?

She is slated to be one of the leads in BBC’s new period series, Banished, currently in pre-production for a 2015 debut and intruiguingly set in Australia during the 1700s as England established its penal colony on that continent. We can only hope that despite her indisputable success on British TV that she will continue to grace us with her beauty on more projects here across the pond. It seems decidedly unfair of the BBC to keep such luminous natural beauty all to itself. In short, may we have some more MyAnna, please?

Classic Movie Watch — To Catch a Thief (1955)

One of Alfred Hitchcock‘s more effervescent cinematic cocktails, 1955’s To Catch a Thief is a must-watch for any cinephile or aspiring bon vivant. A gentleman can learn many lessons from the impossibly stylish Cary Grant as reformed (or is he?) jewelry thief and hero of the French Resistance, John Robie, aka “The Cat”. Grant’s Robie comes under renewed suspsicion when a series of high profile, high value robberies plague the glitterati of the French Riviera. His old war buddies, with whom he escaped from a bombed out prison, soon turn on him for fear of having their paroles revoked, leading Robie to endeavor to find out who the new “Cat” is before the police pin it on him or his old mates do him in to save themselves. Added to the heady mix is the lucious Grace Kelly in her prime as prim but sexy nouveau riche debutante Frances Stevens, determined to share in the excitement of “The Cat’s” criminal exploits and capture the uniquely intriguing Robie for her own pleasure.

Filmed largely on location in Nice, Cannes and Monaco, To Catch a Thief looks as stunning today as it must have when it was released if not more so because the coast and the Principality had not yet been so frantically overdeveloped. The helicopter shots of high speed drives through Mediterranean hills and villages are breathtaking. And the teasing rapport between the ultra-tan, ultra-suave Grant and the golden, precocious Kelly is pure cinema magic. It’s no wonder that Grant, along with James Stewart, was one of Hitchcock’s favorite male leads. They did four remarkably good films together — Suspicion, Notorious, Thief and North by Northwest — and Hitch was always able to coax the dark shadows of Grant’s sometimes glib personality to the fore. For the Master of Suspense, he was willing to reveal his weakness and even his unattractive side and if you know only the smiling playboy caricature of Grant you’ll be in for a treat watching any of those classic collaborations. One of the unquestionable cinema greats, Grant’s body of work for Hitchcock alone would put him near the top of any list of all-time best movie actors.

And as is well documented, Hitchcock was enraptured by Kelly as his ultimate cool blond with hot blood. After making three terrific films for Hitch in quick succession — Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and Thief — Kelly married Prince Ranier in 1956 and retired from movies to be the Princess Consort of Monaco. While the great director quipped that he was “very happy that Grace has found herself such a good part” he was in fact bereft and struggled in vain to find a new version of her in subsequent films. Hence he has Kim Novak with Stewart in Vertigo, Eva Marie Saint with Grant in North by Northwest, Janet Leigh in Psycho and Tippi Hedren in The Birds and Marnie. While all those actresses did admirable work in their own way, especially the very touching and tragic Kim Novak in Vertigo, it’s no doubt that Hitchcock would have preferred Grace Kelly in all of those roles. After watching her take Grant on a white knuckle ride through the hills of Monaco before stopping to picnic and slyly offering him the choice of a leg or a breast, it’s easy to see why. The fact that Princess Grace was killed in a car accident in 1982 at the age of 52 in those very same cliffs just adds a layer of poignancy to the near-perfection of To Catch a Thief.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Naomie Harris

After a long period of establishing herself as a versatile and talented actress in big movies, Naomie Harris rocketed to worldwide fame with a bullet. Literally. As James Bond’s support agent in the field, she is responsible for taking the shot on M’s orders to stop a terrorist entangled with Bond on a speeding train. Instead she hits Bond and derails his life sending the world’s favorite secret agent into injury-induced existential crisis. Such is the beginning of 2012’s dark and biographical 007 blockbuster Skyfall. And only at the end of the film do we discover that Ms. Harris’ sexy and capable character is, in fact, Eve Moneypenny, now quitting the field and destined for a lifetime of desk work and double entendres. Now that is how you become a big time movie star.

The daughter of Caribbean immigrants in London, Naomie’s mother was a scriptwriter for the long-running BBC soap EastEnders and she caught the acting bug quite young, where she had success as a child actress. Her big break came in Danny Boyle’s excellent 2002 post-apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later as Selena, one of the harried survivors of a horrible pandemic. After good roles alongside Colin Firth in Trauma and former Bond Pierce Brosnan in After the Sunset, Ms. Harris was tapped to play the mysterious and supernatural Tia Dalma for the 2nd and 3rd movies of the mega-budget Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End.

Then came her revelatory work in Skyfall, memorably making amends with Daniel Craig’s Bond in Macao but never succumbing to his legendary charms. And then, as if to prove that she was more than just a lithe and beautiful starlet, Ms. Harris did awards-worthy work as Winnie Mandela alongside Idris Elba in the respectful biopic, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

It’s readily apparent from her now-long and accomplished resume that the 37-year-old beauty can not only act alongside today’s hottest leading men — from Depp to Craig — but can also deftly hold her own with them under any circumstances. In a movie world often dominated by blond bombshells, the dark and lovely Naomi Harris stands out with playful sex appeal, acting chops and a sharp-edged sense of humor. She’s an unconventional original and a major talent and that’s something we absolutely can’t resist. In short, she’s an MFL kind of gal and she’s one of the many reasons we’re keenly anticipating Bond #24 and all her other future work still to come.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Abbie Cornish

Hailing from a country that produces more than its fair share of good looking people, draw droppingly beautiful Australian Abbie Cornish combines natural sex appeal with plenty of talent. After success at home as a model and budding star actress, Abbie made the seamless transition to Hollywood ingenue. The usually blond, hazel-eyed 31-year-old vegetarian broke through in 2007, looking ravishing in historical finery in the big budget sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age, where she held her own alongside such heavyweights as Kate Blanchett as the Queen and Clive Owen as her lover, Sir Walter Raleigh.

She also had key roles in the 2008 Iraq War drama Stop-Loss with Ryan Philippe (with whom she had a relationship), the 2009 Keats biopic Bright Star and alongside Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro in 2011’s Limitless. That year she also appeared in the preposterous Zach Snyder flop Sucker Punch — she was her usual sexy self weilding swords and guns amidst the mayhem but looked even hotter without the S&M accoutrement.

Ms. Cornish has had better material to work with recently in the 2012 black comedy Seven Psychopaths and this year’s action blockbuster reboot, Robocop, as the hero’s steadfast wife. She was also co-lead in the Discovery Channel’s first scripted programming, the historical gold rush miniseries Klondike.

With her best years ahead of her and a face that only seems to get more lovely with time, we’re sure that Abbie Cornish is destined for much more success. Some actresses will always be in demand and a looker like Abbie is definitely on our much-watch list.

Man's Fine Life

The Return of the Well-Rounded Gentleman