Is La Cid the Marilyn Monroe of her generation, or the Gretchen Mol? She’s still hot, but seems to be glowing in the dying embers of her fire. It seems to be about minute fourteen for her as she approaches thirty and sees hot new fires flaring behind her. Sometimes the it girl, the next big thing, has the staying power to remain relevant, and sometimes she ends up in Hallmark Christmas movies, the elephant graveyard for faded starlets. One path leads to Jennifer Lawrence, the other to Rachael Leigh Cook.
Either way, Sweeney still looks as good as ever, and there’s no denying that chest.
I hope that she has many years left in her career. She is smart and has talents beyond the 2 big ones that are immediately apparent. The film/TV industry is admittedly obsessed with youth, especially for women, but some actresses these days are demonstrating a staying power into their later years, including a staying power in respect of their attractiveness/sexuality. Many of those actresses have been featured on this site. ‘In Praise of Older Women’ indeed!
A career will endure. But which career? Will she follow the Jennifer Lawrence trajectory or the Rachael Leigh Cook? Rachael is still working constantly, but most of us haven’t seen her in years although she was once the next big thing. Gretchen Mol is an even more dramatic illustration. She was officially anointed as the next big thing by Vanity Fair and the Hollywood powers-that-be in the late 1990s. She is still making several movies every year, and turned out to be a good character actress, but when was the last time you saw her in anything significant?
So which path will beckon to La Cid?
I suspect that her trajectory will be more like Jennifer Lawrence. Perhaps even bigger than Jennifer Lawrence if she can avoid getting cancelled by one side or the other in the ongoing political/cultural wars.