The Beauty of Retrospect, March Actress Edition: Rosamund Pike

I first featured Rosamund Pike in August 2015, and the British actress has done a lot of movies since then.

One of her roles in the past three-and-half-years was as a suicidal widow who joins an Indian-fighting group after Comanches murder her family in the 2017 Western Hostiles.

Two of her more recent pats, however, have been in politically charged movies about the Middle East.  In 2018's Beirut, she played a CIA agent trying to ensure the success of a former diplomat's mission to save a former colleague, opposite Jon Hamm as the ex-diplomat with the mission.  And in 2018's A Private War, she plays the late journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed in 2012 in Syria while covering that country's civil war (still in progress).

Rosamund Pike, who turned forty in January 2019, has no intention of slowing down.  Later in 2019, she stars as Marie Curie in the biographical film Radioactive. :-) 

The Beauty of Retrospect, March Actress Edition: Jennifer Lopez

I first featured Jennifer Lopez in June 2012, and she's been rather selective in choosing movie roles since then.  She has become one of those actresses who can pick roles perfectly - because she's that much of an icon.

One of her most interesting roles was a teacher who has a one-night stand with a younger man while separated form her husband in the 2015 thriller movie The Boy Next Door; the young man then develops a fatal attraction to her.  As of this writing, her most recent movie is a comedy: Second Act, about a middle-aged woman (played by our heroine) who starts a new career as a corporate consultant based on a fake résumé.

 

In addition, Jennifer Lopez is a producer.  She was the executive producer of "The Fosters," a TV series about an interracial lesbian couple and their foster children, which starred Teri Polo, my favorite actress of my own generation and an earlier honoree on this blog.  The series wrapped up in 2018 after five successful seasons; it was Teri Polo's first bona fide hit show.   Because she saved Teri Polo's career, Jennifer Lopez is a woman I tolerate no criticism of.

Jennifer Lopez turns fifty in July 2019, but obviously you'd never know it. :-)

And if I had to pick a favorite Jennifer Lopez record - she's put out eight albums - it would have to be "Waiting For Tonight," if only because the idea of a woman like J-Lo waiting for the night when I'd be there in her arms is too tempting for any man to want to pass up! :-D  

Next up for Ms. Lopez: playing Rosie Alvarez in a live television production of Bye Bye Birdie. :-)

The Beauty of Retrospect, March Actress Edition: Felicity Jones

So what has British actress Felicity Jones been doing since I first featured her in March 2014?

A lot, really. She had a leading role in the Star Wars movie Rogue One, which documented what happened between Revenge of the Sith and the original 1977 Star Wars movie.She played Jyn Erso, a young renegade woman who is imprisoned by the Galactic Empire for crimes against the state until the Rebel Alliance frees her.

More recently, she played another renegade - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in the biographical movie  On the Basis of Sex. 

It's telling that a foreign actress from a country that's already had two female prime ministers should play a justice in a country that took a giant leap backward from gender equality with the ascension of Brett Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land.