With celebrities-turned-fashion designers currently basking in the pop culture spotlight, let’s visit the model-turned-actor’s.
Despite some high profile flops (Cindy Crawford in ‘Fair Game‘, anyone?), there seems to be an endless supply of leggy lovelies dreaming of snagging an Oscar.
LILY COLE
One look at this flame-haired, porcelain-skinned catwalker, and it’s clear that she was destined to play Alice in Wonderland. But given his recent predilection for teenage girls, we can’t help wondering about the wisdom of signing up for the role under the direction of cultural provocateur Marilyn Manson. Still, Cole already has one film project under her belt, playing a schoolgirl in the upcoming St. Trinian’s, co-starring Rupert Everett and Colin Firth and based on a popular British cartoonist’s anarchic vision of boarding school life. And if she can survive the cutthroat fashion world, an aging shock rocker should be, well, child’s play.
EFFORT: B+ TALENT: TO BE DECIDED
GEMMA WARD
The credit for this in-demand model’s role in the upcoming horror movie The Strangers, starring fellow sometimes mannequin, Liv Tyler, is a stroke of pure irony (unwittingly, if we know Hollywood). The face that launched a hundred fashion spreads is listed simply as “Masked Stranger,” although we can’t imagine that the director will be able to keep this wide-eyed lovely under wraps entirely.
EFFORT: N/A TALENT: TO BE DECIDED
GISELE BUNDCHEN
Behind-the-scenes fashion folk have raved about the down-to-earth sense of humor of this arguably most super of supermodels for years, so it’s no surprise that her most memorable film role to date (we’ll forget Taxi, as we hope she has) was as an acid-tongued fashion assistant in the tongue-in-chic blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada. EFFORT: B- TALENT: C+
We have to give credit to anyone who has held her own against Mark Wahlberg AND a hairy ape (Warren did both in Tim Burton’s widely-panned Planet of the Apes remake). Still, the former synchronized swimmer has largely fallen off the radar in recent years, except as a pillow-lipped fantasy figure in the minds of devoted male fans.
EFFORT: C TALENT: C+
CHRISTIE BRINKLEY
That killer smile, that killer car. Brinkley zoomed into every adolescent boy’s dreams thanks to a high profile cameo as “the girl in the Ferrari” in the comedy classic National Lampoon’s Vacation, but these days she’s more likely to be found tooling around her beloved Hamptons—and holding her head up in the aftermath of a nasty divorce—than appearing at a theater near you. EFFORT: C TALENT: C
REBECCA ROMIJN
Hate her or love her, it appears that Rebecca Romijn, actress, is here to stay. Fusing her smoldering swimsuit model physique with a goofy girl next door charm, the former Mrs. Full House has emerged with a full-fledged second career that’s fast outstripping (pun intended) her Victoria’s Secret heyday.
EFFORT: A+ TALENT: B-
CLAUDIA SCHIFFER
She spoofed herself in Zoolander and took on a bit more of a stretch in filmmaker James Toback’s controversial exploration of race relations, Black and White, but at the end of the day this Teutonic supermodel’s most absorbing role is playing mom to children, Caspar and Clementine.
EFFORT: C- TALENT: B
MILLA JOVOVICH
This sharp-cheekboned Slavic stunner has carved out a niche for herself on the other side of the catwalk, as half of the design team behind hipster label Jovovich-Hawk, but she’s played a pretty convincing alien in her day (in former flame’s Luc Besson’s fantastical The Fifth Element), and she’s set to return to the silver screen this fall as the star of the latest installment of the horror-sci-fi series Resident Evil.
EFFORT: A TALENT: C-
CINDY CRAWFORD
Internationally recognized as one of the original core supermodels, Cindy Crawford seemed to have been “marked” for commercial success. Just not in the film/television category. She started off strong with the George Michael “Freedom 90″ video, and the hot Pepsi commercials in the mid-’90s, but when she tried her hand at film (the forgettable Fair Game), her star quickly fizzled out.
EFFORT: B TALENT: D
ELLE MACPHERSON
This eternal amazon’s lingerie empire is now her central focus, but back in the late ‘90s “The Body” made a genuine stab at movie stardom, showing up in such diverse films as the sophisticated sex-drenched comedy Sirens, opposite Hugh Grant, and the bloated big budget flop Batman and Robin.
EFFORT: C+ TALENT: B+
NAOMI CAMPBELL
Her frenzy-inducing public service stint was more entertaining than anything we’ve seen in theaters in years, so here’s hoping that this tempestuous fashion icon harnesses even an iota of her naturally dramatic mojo for her rumored upcoming movie project.
EFFORT: A TALENT: TBD
And… the ONLY MALE…
ASHTON KUTCHER, Yes… he was first a model!
No exploration of the model-turned-actor phenomenon would be complete without Demi Moore’s favorite accessory. Despite attempts at scaling the dramatic A-list, former Calvin Klein model Kutcher is still best known for playing dim-witted Kelso on the long-running sitcom That ‘70s Show and for playing practical jokes on fellow celebrities on his reality show Punk’d. Oh, and of course for being, like, the best stepdad EVER!
EFFORT: B TALENT: B
With her childlike physique and china doll face, teenage supermodel Lily Cole was once the poster girl for size zero. But now she says she loves her “hot” new curves - and is proving it by posing for a men’s magazine.
She Tells Arena Magazine:
“I thought, ‘Hell, why not,…I know I’m not a size zero… I know I have t*ts.”
