It’s a happy birthday to Vinessa Shaw, who turns 32 today. I had a chance to first meet Vinessa nine or 10 years ago, through
an actor and theater critic colleague, who’d worked with her on a
couple Los Angeles stage productions. She was sweet as the dickens, personable
and accessible in a way that a lot of actors — even before they “hit
it big” with a lot of film or television work — simply aren’t. This was just before Eyes Wide Shut, and when I bumped into her a year-and-a-half later she was exactly the same.

Shaw has since slowly climbed up the call sheets of casting directors, mixing in stage work and appearing in films as disparate as 40 Days and 40 Nights, Melinda and Melinda, The Hills Have Eyes (for which she scored memorably unsettling poster credit) and, notably, last year’s 3:10 to Yuma, opposite Russell Crowe. Most recent for Shaw is the how-screwy-is-Los-Angeles indie ensemble Garden Party (above), in which she makes a very good impression. Next up: the very Judgment Night-sounding Stag Night, co-starring Breckin Meyer, Kip Pardue, Scott Adkins and Karl Geary. Rock on wit’ your bad self, Vinessa…