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Hookers, Victims & Doormats*

hookers, victims & doormats*

Angela Bassett: Boarding The ER Ship To Troubletown

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

This week in Hollywood casting announcements: plenty of potential victimization for Tinseltown's bold-faced beauties. (Victim characters, of course, are easy to spot: They're usually described as "troubled" or have a "tortured past," have "suffered" a "crisis," are "surviving" and "learning to move on" from their rape/brutal attack/illness...take your pick!) After the jump, take a look at the newest roles for Angela Bassett, Nicole Kidman, and America Ferrera and see how they stack up on the actress-cliche scale.

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hookers, victims & doormats*

Starlet Rosamind Pike To Suffer As Vain Surrogate

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

Along with playing the ubiquitous hooker, victim or doormat character, actresses are often pegged playing "the wife of," or "the mistress of," or even "the best friend of", especially in films that aren't specifically directed at women. Unless they are starring in a rom-com or a movie that is somehow centered around shoe-shopping, actresses in mainstream films are most often seen in some sort of role that supports the main actor. The newest casting announcements out of Hollywood prove that: most were almost entirely supporting roles, and there were even some hookers and doormats in there to keep things spicy! After the jump, Rosamund Pike fears aging and sticks with the surrogate-obsessed pack in a sci-fi thriller, and Camilla Belle fools around with a dreamy (but much older) Vincent Cassel in a new Brazilian coming-of-age film.

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hookers, victims & doormats*

Marisa Tomei Takes It All Off; Gina Gershon Hangs At The Brothel

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

Guess what, kids? The writers' strike is almost really and truly over! Now you can look forward to more of the same romantic comedy tripe they've been feeding us. I hear How To Lose 27 Dresses In 10 Days In Paris just signed Debra Messing to star! But seriously, since screenwriters are actually writing for a living again, there's a slew of casting news about Hollywood women and there's gonna be a lot of hookers strutting the silver screen in the coming months. Oscar winner Marisa Tomei is slated to play an '80s-era stripper in the Wrestler (fingers crossed for an homage to Flashdance!), Gina Gershon plays a resident hooker at a Nevada brothel owned by Helen Mirren in Love Ranch, and Penelope Cruz stars in an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel, The Dying Animal, called Elegy. Check out the rest of the Hollywood shuffle, with some victims and doormats thrown in for good measure, after the jump.

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hookers, victims & doormats*

Hilary As Amelia? The Geena Davis Institute Would Approve

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

This just in from The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (yes, such a thing exists) — men outnumber women nearly 3 to 1 on the silver screen. The study, conducted at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism, also notes that "females are over five times as likely as males to be shown in alluring apparel and are roughly three times as likely as males (10.6% vs. 3.4%) to be shown with an unrealistically 'ideal' body." That's the bad news. The good news is several female actresses have recently been awarded parts that show off something other than their 'ideal bodies': their acting chops. After the jump, an assessment of parts just assigned to Jezebel girl crush Amanda "Big Love" Seyfried, Hilary Swank, Uma Thurman, and Mary Steenburgen. There's nary a hooker or doormat to be found (and only one victim)!

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hookers, victims & doormats*

Kate Hudson Gets Creative; Heather Locklear Goes Lifetime

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

With rumors of the writers strike coming to a close, today was rife with casting notices for many an A (or B) List actress. Kate Hudson, Brittany Murphy, Robin Wright Penn, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Monica Bellucci, Winona Ryder, Julianne Moore and Heather Locklear have all been placed in forthcoming films, some of which are contingent on the writers strike reaching a resolution. So are these ladies portraying hookers, victims, doormats, some insidious combination of all three, or are they playing actual three dimensional female characters? Find out after the jump.

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Hookers, Victims & Doormats Talk about Dreamgirls: Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson, box-office behemoth Queen Latifah, singer Alicia Keys and British actress Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) are set to star in the Fox Searchlight drama The Secret Life of Bees, based on Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 novel of the same name. Latifah, Keys and Okonedo will play "an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters" who take in a teenage girl (Dakota Fanning) and her caregiver (Hudson) after the two flee the girl's troubled, mother-less home. Wonder who will get top billing? [Variety]

hookers, victims & doormats*

Keener + Holofcener = A Good Day For Women In Hollywood

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Today in Hollywood casting news: Actress Rhona Mitra (Nip/Tuck) is set to star as the wife of a police chief (Jon Hamm) and grieving mother of a missing boy in the independent thriller The Boy In The Box, reports the Hollywood Reporter. And in other ugh-inducing deals, Variety reports that former HBO honcho and alleged domestic abuser Chris Albrecht is set to bring the British show Secret Diary Of A Call Girl to American shores. But no matter! Female actresses, directors and audiences have reason to celebrate following reports that the incomparable, Oscar-nominated Catherine Keener is reteaming with her Walking & Talking director, Nicole Holofcener (with Keener, above left) to star in an untitled film about a group of New York women who live in the same apartment building.

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film schooled

The Golden Globe Nominees: No Hookers, But Lots Of Victims

As you may have heard, Hollywood icon Shirley MacLaine once asserted that the best parts for actresses always fall into the category of hooker, victim or doormat. Sometimes an actress wins an award, like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, for playing all three at once! Well, now that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced the nominees for the 2008 Golden Globe Awards, we wondered: what kinds of roles are women getting the nod for this year? We break it down, after the jump. (Also, we haven't seen all of these movies or TV shows, so feel free to disagree.)
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hookers, victims & doormats*

Sandra Bullock Goes From Tomboy To Girly-Girl

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Good news on the casting front today: One of Hollywood's least-victimized leading ladies, Sandra Bullock, is set to star in the Fox vehicle One of the Guys, a comedy about a tomboy who throws her all-guy group of friends "into chaos when she embraces her feminine side", reports Variety.

The trade paper also reports that another strong lead actress, the Oscar-nominated Joan Allen, will appear alongside Richard Gere in Hachiko, A Dog's Story, a remake of a Japanese film about a loyal Akita who waited patiently for almost a decade after its owner died and didn't return home.

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hookers, victims & doormats*

Michelle Williams: Martin Scorsese's Next Beaten-Down Babe

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Michelle Williams to play another woman as victim? The Oscar-nominated actress (Brokeback Mountain) is in final talks to star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio (yawn) and Mark Ruffalo (yum) in Shutter Island, a drama based on Dennis Lahane's book of the same name and directed by Martin Scorsese. The film follows two U.S. Marshals (DiCaprio, Ruffalo) as they investigate the disappearance of a mental patient; Williams' character — the dead wife of DiCaprio's character — "haunts" him throughout the film, explains the Hollywood Reporter.

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hookers, victims & doormats*

Chloë Sevigny Built Her Career Playing "Victims, Naifs and Muses," Says 'Psychology Today'

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories More »

hookers, victims & doormats*

Hollywood Always Loves A Harlot

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Los Angeles Times Oscar blogger Tom O'Neil catalogs the Academy Awards' "taste for tarts" today, listing a whopping 11 actresses who have won the little gold guy for portraying prostitutes, including Jane Fonda (Klute), Charlize Theron (Monster) and shockingly, homemaking idol Donna Reed (From Here to Eternity).

And those are only the actresses who won an Oscar. Shirley MacLaine was nominated twice, (and lost twice), for playing a lady of the night in Some Came Running and Irma La Douce. And Nicole Kidman, Elizabeth Shue and Gloria Swanson were all nominated for playing pros and lost out. As was Julia Roberts, who was denied the Oscar in 1991 for Pretty Woman. Still, with the record of success of starlets playing streetwalkers, we guess that actress Anna Faris is onto something!

That Naughty, Naked Golden Boy Oscar Sure Loves Floozies! [L.A. TImes]


hookers, victims & doormats*

Starlet Trades In Playing Dumb Blondes For Deep-Throating Brunettes

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

Poor Anna Faris. Sick of being typecast by male Hollywood executives as the stupid girl who gets regularly assaulted for comedic effect, the 30-year-old actress is developing her own starring role as a sad girl who gets regularly assaulted for dramatic effect. Faris, who will also be seen in the upcoming comedy I Know What Boys Like, playing a former Playboy bunny, is so eager to be taken seriously as an actress that she's planning on starring as former porn star Linda Lovelace in the drama Inferno.

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*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories. Well, it's not exactly the role of the Black Best Friend, but it's close! Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson will be playing second fiddle to Sarah Jessica Parker in the film version of Sex And The City, reports Variety. Hudson, who won an Oscar for her role in Dreamgirls, has been cast as the assistant to Parker's Carrie Bradshaw character. Maybe the film's producers figured out that when setting a story in New York City you've got to actually show some people of color? [Variety]

hookers, victims & doormats*

Ashley Judd: Mental Case Off-Screen And On

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Two-and-a-half years after checking herself into a rehabilitation facility to treat her chronic ennui (we've been there!) and come to terms with her dysfunctional family (been there too!), actress Ashley Judd is using the experience as film fodder: Variety reports that the 39-year-old actress has signed to star in the drama Helen, which "centers on a music professor and mother who suffers from a deep, debilitating depression." Is it just us or does the name "Helen" often get associated with mentally or sensory-challenged types?

Ashley Judd To Star In 'Helen' [Variety]
Related: Ashley Judd On Rehab: 'I Needed Help [People]


hookers, victims & doormats*

Nicole Kidman To Naomi Watts: I Can Remake Foreign Horror Flicks Too!

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Perhaps captializing on the success of The Others (or trying to one-up her best friend and Ring franchise star Naomi Watts) Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman is gearing up to play yet another introverted damsel in distress, this time in a remake of the Colombian horror film Al Final Del Spectro, reports Variety. The trade paper explains that Kidman, who came to Hollywood's (and Tom Cruise's) attention for her portrayal of a kidnapping victim in the the 1989 horror film Dead Calm, will play "a woman who, after a tragedy, is encouraged by her father to take refuge in a fancy apartment building. She becomes a shut-in, and begins to see a ghost."
Universal Sets Kidman For Horror Film [Variety]


hookers, victims & doormats*

This Time, Halle Berry Wants To Win An Oscar For Playing Someone Sober

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories

Oscar-winner Halle Berry is reteaming with her Monster's Ball costar Billy Bob Thornton to star in the drama Tulia, "an adaptation of the Nate Blakeslee book "Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town," in which 10% of the black population of Tulia was incarcerated," reports Variety. Although the trade paper is not reporting what Berry's role will be, it's safe to say that she's not going to be playing the male lawyer who exposed the corruption, nor the crooked local law enforcement officer behind the racist arrests. In better casting news, the incomparable Miranda Richardson and up-and-comer Emily Blunt have been cast in the drama Young Victoria; Richardson will play the Duchess of Kent and Blunt the young Queen Victoria.
John Singleton To Direct 'Tulia' [Variety]
Duo Sign On For 'Young Victoria' [Variety]


hookers, victims & doormats*

Jennifer Esposito To Play Subjugated Second-Fiddle To Val Kilmer's Hero

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

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