Laurel Holloman is an actress primarily known for playing Justine on nine episodes of Angel and for playing Tina on Showtime's The L Word. She has a breezy North Carolina charm that I thought worth pointing out. I see no reason why a blog dedicated to short appreciations of poetry and popular culture should exclude short appreciations of actresses, especially sleeper television actresses.
Holloman has crows' feet around her eyes and laugh lines around her mouth. The platitude that lines give a face character is actually true. Pretty 18 year-old girls -- as anyone who has ever hunted for porn on the internet can attest -- are all pretty in exactly the same way. Holloman has a specific beauty based in what appears to be a tremendous emotional intelligence. She has lines on her face because she has not attempted to avoid or erase evidence of emotional intensity. She is the ideal middle point between a real person who happens to be on television and someone grown in a studio-lab for maximum appeal. On Angel she was cast because her pain at the loss of her sister was instantly believable. On the L Word she has a friendly, searching sensitivity -- the kind of sensitivity that reaches for something rather than one that simply responds to something that has crossed its path. I find her genuinely touching.
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7 comments:
let's not forget her commanding presence in a little flm called "boogie nights...."
"I see no reason why a blog dedicated to short appreciations of poetry and popular culture should exclude short appreciations of actresses"
yeahyeah. ya can't fool me, you just wanna talk about a girl yer crushin' on. Nice try ;-P
To be honest, I never really dug her on Angel. However, I have loved her on the L-Word.
Sara: Harold Bloom: "There is a reader's Sublime, and it seems the only secular transcendence we can ever attain, except for the even more precarious transcendence we call 'falling in love.'" To bring it down a notch, a crush on an actress and being into a good poem, same thing.
MH: I didn't notice her on Angel until I caught the L-Word, the pilot of which, by the way, opens with a discussion of Anne Carson, a poet I have discussed on this very blog.
Great description. I've been a fan of Laurels for a long time - for all the reasons you list here. :)
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