It’s a happy 32nd birthday to Amy Smart, who forever earns the gratitude of the laddie-mag set by helping to ease, if not fully erase, memories of rail-thin DJ Qualls getting squashed in flagrante delicto in 2000’s Road Trip, with her own moment of pleasant, hurrah! toplessness (below).

Smart is a B-level talent, I guess, and there’s no great sin in that, certainly. Still, she was really quite good opposite Ryan Reynolds in the underrated Just Friends, which is entirely enjoyable in a yawning sort of way, and obviously has a serviceable sense of comic timing and an ability to not take herself too seriously. She’s just never really been in anything that’s hit big, and given her a punch-through kind of platform, at least beyond the genre/fanboy crowd.

I don’t know if she’ll be back for the Crank sequel, but she should definitely consider it if they give her a nice enough bump in salary and character utility, since that movie was a success on its own terms. Other than that, Smart’s got an atrocious-sounding dance flick on her dance card, and I guess she’s the younger sister (?) of Kiefer Sutherland in High Tension writer-director Alexandre Aja’s next horror film, Mirrors. Still, my advice to Smart is roughly the same as it is to all young actresses who have looks and some ability to navigate funny terrain — maniacally seek out young writer-director talent, and get yourself attached to a nice romantic comedy with some pop, in dialogue, character and/or formula. Plow through 100 scripts if need be, but if you find the right one, that will make casting directors and execs rearrange their callback lists, and open up other sorts of plum studio assignments.