British actress Naomie Harris

If you've seen the two most recent (as of this writing) James Bond movies, Skyfall and Spectre, then you recognize Naomie Harris. She played Miss Moneypenny in both of those films.

The daughter of Caribbean immigrants to Great Britain, Ms. Harris is known in that country through roles on various television programs, but she's best known to moviegoers as the sorceress Tia Dalma in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, as well as Selena in the apocalyptic virus film 28 Days Later.

One of her most prominent roles, however, was as Nelson Mandela's second wife Winnie in the 2013 biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom with Idris Elba in the title role. Winnie Mandela herself told Ms. Harris that she seemed to have channeled rather than played her, and Ms. Harris later said that Mrs. Mandela thought the performance marked  "the first time she felt truly captured on film."

High praise, indeed.

Actress Clio Goldsmith

Clio Goldsmith is a retired actress from the French branch of the European Goldsmith banking and financial dynasty.  But while her relatives and forebears have involved themselves in finance, politics, and scholarly pursuits (her father, Edward Goldsmith, was a prominent environmentalist and philosopher), she pursued a career in the movies.

  

She often played the femme fatale in movies like Honey, Miss Right, and her best-known film, The Gift, from 1982, in which she plays the title role - a high-priced prostitute hired as a present for a bank employee on the occasion of his retirement.

It's a French-Italian movie.  Don't tell me you're not surprised by that! :-D   

After only a few years - 1980 to 1986 - Ms. Goldsmith retired form the movies.  She was married to the late Mark Shand, a British travel writer, for nineteen years beginning in 1990, before they divorced.  

Fun fact:  Mark Shand was the brother of Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.  So, for nineteen years, Clio Goldsmith was an in-law of Prince Charles. 

Ines de la Fressange, Again

Ines de la Fressange has also made a name for herself as a fashion designer and perfumer in France and elsewhere. She's very much the embodiment of French fashion and beauty culture . . . and French culture in general.

She so embodies France, in fact, that, in 1989, she agreed to be the model for Marianne, the female allegorical symbol of France.  This did not sit well with Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, who had signed her to Chanel and saw her as his muse.  They parted company as a result, with Lagerfeld dismissing Marianne as representing "everything that is boring, bourgeois, and provincial."

As anyone who's followed Ines de la Fressange knows, though, the honor was still well-deserved.

Ines de la Fressange

Do I have to explain who this is?

Ines de la Fressange is one of those models for whom the the term "supermodel" was coined, and she more than lives up to the term.  The first model to sign an exclusive contract with the house of Chanel, she became synonymous with not only the designer's institution but also with grace, beauty, class, and just about everything else Americans love about the French.  Well, among those Americans who actually love the French.  

The daughter of a stockbroker and an Argentine model, Ines de la Fressange has been represented by the Marilyn agency in Paris and the Ford agencty in New York.  She's also a member of what passes for the French aristocracy in the Fifth Republic these days; he paternal grandmother was a banking heiress.     

Despite her Frenchness and her aristocratic airs, I'm willing to bet that she could charm the socks off a Republican. :-D   

TV reporter Aixa Diaz

Aixa Diaz is a local reporter who reaches many markets.

She's what they call a "generic reporter" - she files reports from Washington, D.C. for Hearst Television, a consortium of local TV stations that may or may not be affiliated with a network.  Ms. Diaz, a native of Puerto Rico, has worked for WESH-TV in Orlando, WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, N.C., and WPTZ-TV in Plattsburgh, N.Y.  All are sister stations of the Hearst chain.

Aixa Diaz is also a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Actress Rachael Leigh Cook

Rachael Leigh Cook is another leading young actress in Hollywood.

Some of her best-known movie roles have been in remakes.  She starred in the hugely successful She's All That, a romantic teenage comedy that updated George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.  Ms. Cook played the Eliza Doolittle surrogate, Laney Boggs, to Freddie Prinze's Henry Higgins-based Zack Siler.  She also starred in the 2000 remake of Get Carter.

She's also made a lot of appearances in too many TV shows to list. 

Model Lise Brand

Lise Brand is a model from the 1980s. While equally adept with fashion shoots and beauty shoots, she was far more than elegant.  She had a fierce, edgy look comparable to  that of modeling legend Patty Owen.

Her ability to project strength or allure is reflected by these two photos.  The one on top shows her edginess - check out those leather opera gloves! - while the one below shows her soft side . . and her gentle blue eyes. :-)

A client of the Elite agency's New York and Los Angeles offices, she also worked in Paris and was represented by the City agency there.  

Actress Nicole Beharie

Nicole Beharie is an actress who, at 31 years of age as of this posting, already has an impressive résumé.

She made a strong impression in the 2008 movie American Violet, as a young working mother in Texas who is wrongfully accused of being and charged as a drug dealer . . . and then takes on the system to clear her name.  

Today, she stars in "Sleepy Hollow," an occult-oriented TV series about an FBI agent fighting evil with a resurrected Ichabod Crane; Ms. Beharie plays agent Abbie Mills. 

Model Claudia Abruzzo

Claudia Abruzzo is a fashion and beauty model from the late seventies and early eighties.

A client of the Wilhelmina agency in New York, she moved to Europe and was represented by the Talents-Inge Schuckmann agency in Munich.

March 2016 - Going Forward

The year 2016 is going to be big year on this blog, this being my tenth anniversary year on this piece of bandwidth.  In addition to to reaching the milestone of pictures of a thousand different women, and the massive retrospective series I have just finished up, I am planning more A-Z runs, my sixth series of beautiful dancers in December, and, before another series of beautiful women in popular music (likely in July), plus more looks back at women I've featured here before.

Sit tight for the latest A-Z run, starting tomorrow.  :-)