After thinking more about it I realized that she's just one of a handful of actresses whose attractiveness experiences certain ebbs and flows. In one movie she's hot, the next she's not. Then you see her on The Tonight Show (I'm not getting into that whole fiasco, but an inordinate amount of female celebrities look great as guests on late night talk shows) and she looks hot again. You get the idea. I imagine that these women must be the actresses that actually have talent whereas the Jessica Alba's and the Megan Fox's of the world get by simply because they're hot.
The only other explanation would be that their inconclusive sexual appeal is the very characteristic that makes them appealing in the first place. Now I don't necessarily buy that, but take a look at this excerpt from a July '09 article (well, mailbag) written by ESPN.Com's Bill Simmons.
"Q: My girlfriend has been making me watch "The Bachelorette" and I'm not even ashamed. Isn't it easily as good as any other Monday night comedy? Plus, there's Jillian and the unending internal debate in my head as to whether she's hot or not. Literally every shot of her evokes a different reaction from me. I'm amazed at how intriguing the show is.
-- Mike B. Brighton, Mass.
SG: And you left out Wes, the two-timing country singer who wasn't there for the right reasons, as well as the appropriately named Ed, who couldn't rise to the occasion with Jillian in a sleepover date and now is headed for a double-bathtub ad with her for Cialis. But I had to follow up on your Jillian comment. Never, not ever, not in the history of mankind, has a TV or movie star vacillated back and forth between "not attractive" to "super attractive" this frequently. If you charted it, it would be like an EKG exam gone haywire. She's cute. She's not cute. She's hot. She's smoking! Yikes, I wish her face didn't just do that. She's cute. She's not cute. She's super cute. A genius selection by the show's producer. No wonder Ed couldn't come through on the sleepover date; even his organs were confused by Jillian's looks."
For the record in that case I do buy it, but that's neither here nor there. This waffling of hotness by certain actresses has gone too far. It's time to make some decisions.
I've selected five actresses that teeter back and forth on the theoretical scale of attractiveness. To help illustrate my point I have included two pictures of each. One where I think that they look attractive (on the left) and one where I think that they do not (on the right). I will then decide, once and for all, whether the actress in question is hot, or not.
Let's get to the judging.
1.) Amanda Peet
I think the reason that I wasn't a fan of hers is because I only really knew her from her roles in two movies.
1.) In The Whole Nine Yards (2000) she plays a young, crazy girl who falls for a serial killer. Bottom line- she didn't do it for me.
2.) In Saving Silverman (2001) she plays an unlikable, controlling girlfriend (her name in the Australian version of the film was "Evil Woman") named Judith. She by no means looked bad, but I never fell for her because she was the villian.
Nine years have transpired since she's really been in the spotlight (she's now 38), but after her appearance on HIMYM I think it's safe to say that she's matured quite nicely.
Verdict: HOT
2.) Kirsten Dunst
She looked great in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) (jumping around in your underwear doesn't hurt) and decent in the Spiderman movies with red hair, but if you don't look good with air blowing in your face then something's wrong.
Verdict: NOT
3.) Hilary Swank
I know that the entire subplot of an episode of The Office was centered around whether or not she was hot, but I would like the record to show that I weighed in on this debate in a 2007 column that I wrote for my college newspaper.
Furthermore, there is a website (ishilaryswankhot.com) that is a running poll devoted to answering this question. The majority opinion only has 51% of the vote.
All that aside, I think the two-time Academy Award winner is hurt (from an attractiveness standpoint) by the roles that she chooses. In her breakout role in Boys Don't Cry (1999) she plays a popular teenage boy who is discovered to have been born a girl. In her other Oscar winning role in Million Dollar Baby (2004) she plays a female boxer who gets bruised and battered and wears a mouth piece.
Lastly, I know a girl that has a little Hilary Swank thing going on (the mouth/jaw), but she's much more attractive (and younger- I think she's 20?). I'd post a picture of her, but I think it might be a little creepy considering that 1.) I hardly know her and 2.) She is 1-2 years younger than my friend's little brother (a senior in college) whom she dated.
Verdict: NOT
4.) Uma Thurman
I don't know if it was her seductive portrayal of Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (1997), her badass murderous rampage in the Kill Bill films (bonus points for being the Black Mamba- the very nickname that Kobe Bryant stole), or her role as Ben Affleck's love interest in the very underrated film Paycheck (2003), but I'm an Uma Thurman fan.
She looks horrendous in the picture to the right above, but it's hard to argue with her long, slender frame.
Verdict: HOT
5.) Amy Adams
She's not drop-dead gorgeous by any means and I don't think she's really all that well known, but she's definitely a rising star in Hollywood.
I first noticed her potential when she played Frank Abagnale, Jr.'s (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) wife in Catch Me If You Can (2002). I then loved her in both Talladega Nights (2007) and Charlie Wilson's War (2007). She defintely took a step back (in terms of her attractiveness) when she played a nun in Doubt (2008), but that role got her a second Oscar nomination, so I can't knock her too much for it.
I'm not wild about red heads, but certain ones do it for me and Amy Adams is definitely one of them.
Verdict: HOT
No comments:
Post a Comment