I don’t know if you guys knew this, but Hollywood is kind of shallow. If you’re a woman, regardless of your talent, intelligence, or drive, an awful lot of people are going to base their first and last impressions of you on your looks and body type. How many wildly talented women never got their shot because they didn’t wear a size zero? Take Charlize Theron for example. Impossibly attractive, she was first noticed in 1996’s 2 Days in the Valley.* For several years, she appeared in a string of forgettable films. She took a risk in 2003 playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. The... Read More

When it comes to performers, we’re ridiculously inconsistent. We discover an actor we like, and we want them to deliver more of what attracted us in the first place. Then we either throw a fit if they take a chance on something new, or bitterly complain when they do “more of the same.” One example is poor Meg Ryan. Long known as a darling of fluffy rom-coms, she understandably grew tired of briefly being America’s sweetheart. As a result, she tried to stretch her range. She played a crumbling alcoholic in When A Man Loves A Woman, and a doomed Army helicopter pilot in Courage... Read More