SUNDAY'S SEX SIREN: Jessica Biel

Models turned actresses. The first thing that pops into your head is vacuous catwalk supermodels trying their best to string a sentence together in front of a camera. Witness the failure of Cindy Crawford in Fair Game. But there are exceptions to every rule, and it's easy to see why film bosses want models up on the silver screen: they look fantastic. In the right roles, they can do a competent enough job, too. And even if they're as wooden as a pirate's leg, you can still be charmed by their beauty. I mean, Marilyn Monroe was hardly Academy Award material, was she?

Jessica Biel is one such model-turned-actress, although she started out as a vocalist in musicals before becoming a child fashion model. She was just 14 when she made the switch from modelling to starring in the TV series 7th Heaven in 1996. Her saintly role as Mary Camden immediately began limiting her acting career, as she lost out to Thora Birch for a role in American Beauty ('99). In a calculated move to get out of her 7th Heaven contract, Biel posed topless for Gear magazine at the age of 17 (although it wasn't a full frontal), and she was indeed dropped from the show. She did return to 7th Heaven shortly after, for one last season, before quitting to concentrate on her film career...

In 2002, she appeared in The Rules Of Attraction, which was a definite move away from her family-friendly TV role, but she didn't make her breakthrough until 2003 -- by starring in the Michael Bay-produced remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as the token plucky heroine with heaving bosoms, toned stomach, bee-stung lips and a scream that could smash windows. The film wasn't received very well critically, but it cost $9 million and made $80 million in the US alone, so Biel was suddenly in hot demand as the latest sexy tough-girl on the block – getting a role as a crossbow-wielding babe in Blade: Trinity ('04), before crashing down to earth with box-office dud Stealth ('05). I'm not sure what was harder to believe: a sentient stealth bomber, or Jessica Biel as a pilot.

Biel turned down an offer to star in another horror remake (The Fog), and surprised many of her fans by returning to 7th Heaven for the show's series finale in May '06. The death of the TV series that had pigeon-holed her for so long seemed to be the turning point, as Biel finally got a chance to stretch herself alongside Edward Norton in 2006's The Illusionist (in which she's actually pretty good) and Iraq drama Home Of The Brave.

Just recently, she tried her hand at low-brow comedy by appearing in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry ('07), which wasn't received very well and it was a role that required her to be gawped at by Adam Sandler while wearing underwear and a cat-suit. Hubba-hubba. The same year, she starred alongside another Hollywood leading man, Nicolas Cage, for sci-fi thriller Next -- which was another damp squib on her filmography.

This year, she's appearing in Powder Blue alongside Forest Whitaker and is currently filming Nailed, for director David O. Russell, and sci-fi animated comedy Planet 51 -- after turning down an offer to appear as Wonder Woman in the proposed Justice League movie (which seems to be slowly dying now anyway.) That was a wise move, although Jessica Biel would certainly make a physically-strong choice for Wonder Woman if the Amazonian super-heroine was ever given her own movie. She gets my vote, anyway.

So, while not really much of an acting talent to fuss over, I think Jessica Biel has a good attitude and might surprise people in the future. I really liked her in The Illusionist, and she was the best thing about Texas Chain Saw '03 and Blade 3, while her extraordinary beauty (of mixed Choctaw, English, German, French lineage) certainly makes her very easy on the eye. And you know, even if her film career never really takes off, her male fans will always have sizzling photoshoots like this one to ogle.


Name: Jessica Clara Biel
Birthdate: 3 March 1982
Birthplace: Ely, Minnesota, USA