It’s a happy 26th birthday to Canadian-born hockey enthusiast Elisha Cuthbert, who has survived a cougar on 24 and making House of Wax with Paris Hilton, and manages to stand a bit apart from her peer set, if chiefly because I have such fond memories of 2004’s The Girl Next Door, an exceptional, funny and well-colored high school flick that died an unfortunate box office death. Last summer’s Captivity was eye-gougingly terrible, but… well, not her fault. There’s more culpability with The Quiet, on which Cuthbert took an associate producer credit. Move fast, Elisha — the Maxim fanboy window closes pretty definitively in a couple years, after the 24 big screen treatment.

It’s also a 23rd birthday for Kaley Cuoco, who played the boy-crazy girl who drove TV dad John Ritter to distraction on 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, a show that always made me modestly uncomfortable for the barely concealed glee it seemed to take in brightly colored, flippant sexualization. Then again, maybe that was really the entire point. Something about that preening presentation and the half-hour laffer format don’t usually work for me, though.

It’s a happy birthday to Anne Hathaway, who turns 26 today, and probably doesn’t celebrate by calling imprisoned  ex-beau Raffaello Follieri. After two hit Disney flicks opposite Julie Andrews, plus turns in Ella Enchanted and Nicholas Nickleby, Hathaway began an earnest, concerted effort to shed her princess-y image with the 2005 one-two topless punch of Brokeback Mountain, for which she beat out Sienna Miller and dozens of other actresses, and Barbara Kopple’s Havoc (below). For many actresses, of course, that means playing hookers, stripper drug fiends, black widow femme fatales, or some combination thereof.



In savvy fashion, though, Hathaway has run an end-around on topless convention. Brokeback Mountain, of course, was a supporting role in an Oscar-bait project, but the fact that it was a movie about, you know, gay cowboys guaranteed that it would be remembered — or at least publicly discussed — chiefly for other reasons. While Havoc rather inexplicably went straight-to-video — something Hathaway couldn’t have counted on, nor wished — it was a gritty, class-clash suburban-teens-gone-wild picture, kind of like a more hardcore crazy/beautiful, spiced with barrio authenticity. Another legit film, in other words.

So basically Hathaway gets total cred with the drooling Maxim crowd, because the movies are Internet-searchable, yet she takes no hit with female audiences for tackling a sex bomb role, which often results in dramatically diminished same-sex appeal, as Angelina Jolie (among others) will attest. Now, in this fall’s Rachel Getting Married, Hathaway plays the (recovering) drug fiend… without getting naked, thank you very much.

It’s a happy 27th-ish birthday to Megan Hauserman, whose best assets are displayed below. Actually, that may not be completely true.

Hauserman, you see, parlayed an accounting degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago into an appearance on Ashton Kutcher’s Beauty and the Geek, which she then parlayed into a stint on the second season of Rock of Love, where she competed for the heart of ex-Poison rocker Bret Michaels, along with a future STD-positive test.

She lost (and therefore won?), moving on to the debut of I Love Money, a challenge-based reality competition show composed of wash-outs former contestants from other VH-1 series like I Love New York, Flavor of Love and the aforementioned Michaels-centric show. There Hauserman hung around until the final three by mind-fucking her frequently saused fellow competitors in Machiavellian fashion. Now she’s apparently on yet another VH-1 show, Rock of Love: Charm School, which exhibits an uncanny skill at occupational avoidance/vine-swinging that most single college grads can only pull off for 12-18 months. I’m betting that Hauserman hasn’t bought a drink for herself in a long, long time. Yes, she’s crafty, in the style that the Beastie Boys once rapped about.

More broadly speaking (pun?), I’m fascinated by this new breed of demi-celebrity — MTV Real World alums and on-the-grift actresses who aren’t really actresses, at least in any traditional sense — and what it says about the changing nature of entertainment in America.

Oh, and also (and probably chiefly): boobs.

Why doesn’t Brazilian bombshell Izabel Goulart, who turns 24 today, get into acting, so that I might post more scantily clad pictures of her, like this one?

A Victoria’s Secret model, so far she has only single episodes of Entourage and Two and a Half Men to her credit, which means she’s almost certainly been hit on by Charlie Sheen, and perhaps had to submit to an audition where she talked to animals. Voice unheard, I’m recommending her for future Bond babe consideration…

It’s a happy birthday to Parisian-born Bond babe Eva Green, who turns 28 today, and probably celebrates with a baguette. I didn’t (yet) catch The Golden Compass, but in everything else I’ve seen Green in she radiates a certain dangerousness. She’s the girl in high school that knows something about you that you don’t even know about yourself, and the uncertainty over her intentions with that information inspires a certain intimidation. Cruel? Kind? Vamp? Vixen? You’re not quite sure.

If you require more skin, go do a Google search for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, not to be confused with The Others or The Strangers.

It’s a happy birthday to Morgan Freeman, who allegedly turns 71 today. I say allegedly because is there any casual film fan who holds memories of an at-all young Freeman? I’m pretty sure he might have sprung from his mother’s womb pre-aged to about 50 or so.



Freeman is mega-respected by his peers, and not without good reason — he’s a generous and gregarious guy. Still, though you wouldn’t necessarily guess it from the outside, some people in the press have problems with him; I have a good friend who once lobbed him a question incorporating the word Freeman probably detests most when attached to queries about his craft (“gravitas”), and was dressed down in mocking fashion. A lot of others view his cud-chewing, turn-the-question-on-the-questioner routine as tiresome, when they’re just trying to get a cross-quote about a costar or director or what have you. Personally, I tend to think Freeman is a hoot. Yeah, he’s apt to give you some good-natured crap, but it’s because he turned on and tuned in to what you’re actually saying, and appreciates both good badinage and honest reflection. I’d rather have that than the sullen, sighing workmanship of some other celebrities.

Yet I also think Freeman is overrated as an actor, plain and simple. There’s talent, sure, but take away the tent-poles in which he’s appeared, and you have a lot of the same, water-treading type of work, particularly in the last 10 years. He’s leaned too long and too hard on his ennobled wise man shtick (hence all the “gravitas” questions, of which he’s sick), to the point where one expects (and is rarely surprised) to see him play mostly a capital-T type, and even the serious narration of his movies (Feast of Love, the forthcoming Wanted, etcetera) sparks giggles. In many ways, Freeman is the upmarket version of Samuel L. Jackson — an actor who has love of merely working has led him to basically stop challenging himself. Actually, even Jackson seems to occasionally stir to throw himself into something that might be considered trying (e.g., Resurrecting the Champ, and, more arguably, Black Snake Moan). Hopefully The Human Factor, Clint Eastwood’s upcoming drama in which Freeman will portray Nelson Mandela, can serve as that sort of wake-up call for Freeman, who’s been coasting downhill for a long, long time now.

It’s a happy birthday to Cloverfield cutie Odette Yustman, who turns 23 today, and certainly looks a lot better without a steel rod sticking out of her shoulder.

Time and the cruel crucible of young starlet turnover will tell if Yustman has the chops to carry other movies, or if the general effectiveness and affecting nature of her turn in Cloverfield was more a product of its verité construction. Regardless, she seems really naturally charming and pleasant, and I’m both surprised and stoked that actually that’s her given birth name.