The Hottie Thespian Series: Elisha Cuthbert

Last week I had an item discussing the relative merits of Alyssa Milano and Jessica Alba on the front that they're rarely judged by: their acting skills. For those too lazy to click, the crux was that Alba was pretty, but showed little acting abilities; Milano was not only willing to do nudity, but could actually act enough to make it more than just a flesh fair.

The purpose of the Hottie Thespian Series (pat. pend.) is to discuss the overlooked talents of beautiful actresses who don't get their due because people hate them because they're beautiful. And to post hot pictures of them, too! Usually they have to de-glam themselves to get noticed (e.g. Halle Berry, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman), but what we'll try to do is focus on the performances they give while still looking purdy.

Our first contestant is Elisha Cuthbert who starts off at a disadvantage because she came to prominence by playing Kim Bauer on "24", who started off the whole series by sneaking out of the house and being a distraction to her father, uber-hardcore mack daddy Jack Bauer.



By the time the day was done, her poor mother, who had to look for her ended up having to schtup a terrorist to protect her daughter virtue, getting amnesia, and eventually shot to death by Jack's terrorist ex-girlfriend/CTU mole. Yeah, she looked hot in her cheerleader t-shirt, but what a twit she was.



Her ignominy grew in the second season when she got got in a leg trap and menaced by a mountain lion, considered a low point for the show until the dreadful sixth season happened. Mysteriously, the producers thought we were supposed to accept that this bimbette was qualified to work at CTU, but considering the mole-du-jour plotting for the show, why not? When she was last seen in Season Five, she was shacked up with her therapist and a total bitch to Jack, blaming him for her mother's death. Uh......wrong.



Her first big movie was "The Girl Next Door" in which she played a high school student with a dark past as a porno actress - yeah, I know that she should've been too old for high school and not been Traci Lords, if you follow - and while it was regarded as a "Risky Business"-ish teen comedy, there was some nuances to her performance as a damaged girl who knew that men expected her to behave in real life as she did in her films.



But the real showcase for her was the weird, creepy art house flick, "The Quiet" (DVD review here) in which she plays a high school hottie (a stretch) who is being molested by her father and she is of a decidedly mixed mind about it. The review mentions the scene where she reveals her secret to another girl and that's what I was thinking when I watched the movie - Elisha's got some chops, but will she get to showcase them?



Her last film, the torture horror flick "Captivity", flopped at the box office, but the whole genre seems to have run it's course as "Hostel 2" also bricked despite actually garnering some decent reviews. (If "Saw 4" fails at Halloween, that will pretty much put the button on this ugly genre.) To blame Cuthbert isn't fair, though her turn in the "House of Wax" remake should've counted for something unless teen fans don't care about her.



Coming this fall is "He Was A Quiet Man" which puts her across from Christian Slater (who looks like he's trying to reclaim some acting cred) and William H. Macy. Here's the trailer:



Dark hair? Check. Paralyzed? Yep. Serious ACTING? Could be!!! The movie looks a little predictable and showy, but at least it's not another three-quel.



Finally, what does this picture make you think of?



When is "They Call Me Blondie: The Deborah Harry Story" going into production?

Finally, I was discussing with some comic book store clerk about how wrong it was that Jessica Alba was now wearing creepy blue contact lenses in the second "Fantastic Four" and suggested that they should've cast a natural blond like Elisha instead. He replied that she would've looked like how Jack Kirby drew Sue Storm. So, why didn't they cast the role properly? (Not that the movies would've have been mediocre to downright sucky with a different cast.)

UPDATE: Bonus pictures!