Actress/author Carrie Fisher

Before 1977, Carrie Fisher was known best - if known at all - as the daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. A little sci-fi movie released that year changed all that. Some silly ol' outer-space war flick called Star Wars - maybe you've heard of it! :-D



Her character, Leia Organa, was a princess captured by villains (the Galactic Empire) and rescued by heroes (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo). A cliché out of many a fairy tale, this one came with a twist - Leia was capable of rescuing herself. She would rescue her rescuers on many an occasion in the Star Wars trilogy, most notably in the original movie, when Luke frees her but then realizes too late that he forgot about an exit strategy.

As a result, Carrie Fisher became a sex symbol to geeks everywhere. Many sci-fi nerds growing up in the late seventies and early eighties would admit to having a crush on her.



Since then she's appeared in movies such as Hannah and Her Sisters and When Harry Met Sally. Sadly, her personal life became something of a show as she openly discussed her battles with drugs and bipolar disorder, which led to movie success in a different way; her novel based on her own life, "Postcards From the Edge," was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. (Four novels followed.)

Zooey Deschanel Redux

I got such a response for the picture of Zooey Deschanel I just featured, I decided to post another!



Currently, she's starring in the romance movie 500 Days Of Summer. Summer is the name of her character.

Actress/singer Zooey Deschanel

Strictly speaking, I wonder if I should have saved Zooey Deschanel for another edition of The Beauty of Song (and another month's worth of posts devoted to beautiful female singers and musicians should be coming soon).



Because in addition to movies such as Mumford, The Good Girl, and The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, the 29-year-old Deschanel has been a songwriter and recording artist, putting out several singles and performing with alternative rocker M. Ward as She and Him.

Could this be the American Minnie Driver? Maybe. :-)

Actress Stephanie Courtney

You probably have never heard of Stephanie Courtney. But you've most likely seen her.


That's right, she's the actress who plays the cute and quirky cashier Flo in the Progressive Insurance commercials you've been seeing for the past year and change. She started out doing only one ad, improvising her character. Flo proved to be so popular that Courtney was called back to play her again. It's been a sweet deal for her; she's done several of these commercials.


In real life Stephanie Courtney is a comedienne as well as an actress, and she's been a member of the Groundlings, a improvisational comedy troupe founded in 1974 whose alumni includes Cheryl Hines, Kathy Griffin and Conan O'Brien, among others.

CNBC's Erin Burnett

Erin Burnett is a familiar face to viewers of the business news channel CNBC.



A former staffer at CNN's "Moneyline," Burnett now hosts CNBC's "Street Signs" and co-hosts another CNBC prtogram, "Squawk on the Street."

French actress Anouk Aimée

Anouk Aimée was the woman in A Man and A Woman. She starred in that 1966 romance classic, directed by Claude Lelouch, opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant. It won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.



The daughter of actors, Anouk Aimée, born Françoise Sorya Dreyfus, has starred in numerous French and Italian films, including Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8½. She also worked with American director Sidney Lumet in the psychological drama The Appointment.

Anouk Aimée is still active, and her most recent movie is the French feature Holy Money, from 2008.


Here's Anouk Aimée from the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. :-)

La la la, lalalalala, la . . . La la la, lalalalala, la. . . . :-D

The Latest Statistics

I have now posted pictures of 247 different women on this blog.

More are coming soon. :-)

The Beauty of Retrospect, Part Eight: More of Dianne deWitt

Here are three more pictures of that other blonde eighties supermodel from Texas, Dianne deWitt.



She never became as famous as Jerry Hall . . .



. . . but she didn't do too badly.



If my earlier pictures of Ms. deWitt didn't prove so, these should. :-)

The Beauty of Retrospect, Part Eight: Clotilde

More pictures of Ralph Lauren's star spokesmodel of the early 1980s.



Kristin Clotilde Darnell - who went by her middle name as a model - once laughed at her own image.



"I am an optical illusion," she once said.



Today she's a dressmaker in a tony New York suburb, and I'm sure she's for real these days. :-)

Actress JoBeth Williams

JoBeth Williams had already been in a few soap operas and movies when she broke through in the early eighties with Poltergeist and The Big Chill.



More recently, she has been in Fever Pitch, about the Red Sox's first World Series championship in 86 years.

Actress Kathleen Turner

Back from my hiatus, and picking up where I left off. . .

I feature today Kathleen Turner, one of the most legendary actresses of the past thirty years.



Ms. Turner caused a sensation in 1980 in the thriller Body Heat, co-starring William Hurt. Subsequent eighties films included the adventure film Romancing The Stone, the Mafia drama Prizzi's Honor, Peggy Sue Got Married, and The War of the Roses.

An illness slowed her down in the nineties, but she has recovered enough since then to find a second career on the Broadway stage.

The Naomi Sims Online Memorial

Naomi Sims's Web site, from which she marketed her business online, has now been turned into a memorial blog, bearing pictures, reminiscences, and biographical data. The sad irony is that more information about her life is available online now than I could ever find when she was alive.

But I'd rather not go on about that. Anyone who ever admired or appreciated this incredible woman, as I did, is encouraged to look at this blog and leave a message of condolences while it remains up.

Meanwhile, new additions to this blog have been suspended for at least one week in honor of Ms. Sims's memory. I'll return to where I left off with a new pictorial post on Tuesday.

Naomi Sims: 1948-2009

It is with great sadness that I report, for the first time since I started this blog, the death of a woman I have featured here.

Naomi Sims, the first major black fashion model in history and a successful businesswoman in the fashion and beauty industry, died of cancer this past Saturday. I didn't even know she was ill, but she had apparently been fighting cancer for awhile. Having made it through a tough childhood and having successfully battled racism in modeling and sexism in business, this disease proved to be the one thing Naomi Sims could not overcome.

I am shocked, and very saddened. She was great lady, and a wonderful role model for all people, not just those of her race and her gender.

Long ago I stated as a ground role that deceased women are not considered for inclusion on my blog. The pictures of Naomi Sims I've already posted on this blog will remain, as I posted them when she was very much alive. I will not, however, post any more pictures of her going forward.

The world is a little less beautiful with this loss. RIP. :-(

(Back with more pictures later.)

Actress Tracee Ellis Ross

Tracee Ellis Ross is one of the most ubiquitous television stars of the past decade.



The daughter of R&B legend Diana Ross and music manager Robert Silberstein, Tracee Ellis Ross clearly got her good looks from her mother. She's established herself as an actress in her own right, and she's best known for playing lawyer Joan Clayton in the TV sitcom "Girlfriends."