Besides being incredibly beautiful and almost impossibly sexy, the girl can act and made the transition seamlessly from kid actor to teen starlet to serious actress. I fell for her when I saw her in Sergio Leone's
Once Upon a Time in America and Jim Henson's
Labyrinth back when I was fifteen or so. And it wasn't too weird to be ga-ga for a teenaged girl at the time because I was a teenaged boy at the time, in fact we're the same age. But when I saw her a few years later all grow'd up (and in all the right places) and
nekkid in
The Hot Spot, it quickly grew from a crush to out-and-out lust (luckily I wasn't wearing too-tight pants for this sudden growth).
Career Opportunities is John Hughes lite, but since Jennifer parades around in a white tank top for 82 minutes it's difficult to find fault with it. And in
The Rocketeer, though a Disney family-friendly comic book Serial romp, she's awfully sexy in those '30s period clothes. The mid '90s was a pretty fallow time in her career, but by the time the new century rolled around she had emerged as a very fine actress, as well as still being a
stunning beauty. I found her fetching as the lost lover of
Waking the Dead, and heartbreaking as a junky in
Requiem for a Dream. So of course she was snubbed by the Academy for both of those and rewarded the following year for a competent but not terribly thrilling performance in a competent and not terribly thrilling movie which also managed to win Best Picture,
A Beautiful Mind. And then two years later when she's fan-frippin'-tastic in
House of Sand and Fog, she doesn't even get a nomination.
Grumble.
So, yeah. I'm crazy about her. If she ever wants to cut that Paul Bettany dude loose, I do a lot of work with unwed mothers. You know, just helping them get their start.
*Y*O*W*Z*A
Ho-Ho-Holden