Towards a New Frontier

AKA Hilary Erhard Duff

Born: 28-Sep-1987
Birthplace: Houston, TX

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actress, Musician

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Manufactured pop star

Hilary Duff is a young actress, singer, and Disney product. She starred in Lizzie McGuire and A Cinderella Story, and sang “So Yesterday” and “Come Clean”. Duff was a professional ballet dancer by age 6, when her mother decided she should be an actress. Hilary appeared in many TV commercials, and in 1997, at age 10, she was an extra in a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV show. Two years later she had a real role in a Melissa Gilbert TV movie, The Soul Collector.

In 2001, she landed the lead in Lizzie McGuire, a Disney Channel tweener show about the life of a junior high school girl. At around that time, at age 14, Duff met the man who would be her manager, Andre Recke. Recke, working closely with Duff’s mother, rounded up several producers to help tweak Duff’s sound, and Duff started her musical career by singing “Santa Claus Lane” on the soundtrack of Disney’s Santa Clause 2. Duff’s matching solo album of Christmas music, also called Santa Claus Lane, was released on the Disney label. Duff’s second solo album, Metamorphosis, was released on a Disney-owned label in summer 2003, and promptly went platinum, with the hit single “So Yesterday”.

Duff starred in a Disney TV movie called Cadet Kelly, then co-starred with Frankie Muñiz in Agent Cody Banks and did Disney’s fluffy Lizzie McGuire Movie. “I Can’t Wait”, the opening track from the movie, got extensive airplay on the nationwide network of Disney radio stations, and generating a hit for Hilary. She also sang “The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room” on Disneymania, a compilation featuring *NSYNC, Ashanti, Smash Mouth, and Christina Aguilera, all singing Disney songs.

Duff briefly dated singer Aaron Carter, which reportedly spawned bad blood with another teen star who dated Carter at the same time, Lindsay Lohan. At a 2003 Vanity Fair photo shoot featuring the teen starlets of the day — Amanda Bynes, the Olsen twins, Alexis Bledel, Raven-Symoné, Mandy Moore, and Lohan — Duff made herself the center of attention by bringing Carter. Everyone had been asked not to bring their boyfriends, but when Carter was asked to leave, Duff went into hysterics and threatened to go with him.

Duff has since parted with the Walt Disney Company because, in her mother’s words, they “weren’t feeling the love”. As an actress, she has recently appeared in several non-Disney movies, proving herself every bit as capable as a better-than-average 10th-grader in a high school production of Brigadoon. As a singer, whether she can sing is irrelevant; she is blonde and pretty, and her producer can auto-tune away anything that’s off-key.

In 2004, at 16 years old, she launched a line of clothes called “Stuff”, marketed by Target stores.

Father: Bob Duff
Mother: Susan Cobb (producer)
Sister: Haylie Duff (actress, b. 19-Feb-1985)
Boyfriend: Frankie Muñiz (actor, dated 2003)
Boyfriend: Aaron Carter (singer, dated 2003)
Boyfriend: Jordan Masterson (actor, brother of Chris and Danny Masterson, dated 2004)
Boyfriend: Joel Madden (musician, Good Charlotte, dated 2004-06)

AKA Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson

Born: 15-Apr-1990
Birthplace: Paris, France

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: England
Executive summary: Hermione in the Harry Potter films

Emma Watson plays the bookish, brassy Hermione Granger in the films based on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Watson’s parents, both lawyers, are divorced, and she lives with her mother. Prior to the Harry Potter films, she had only acted in school plays. Watson’s drama teacher suggested that she try out for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, some of which was filmed in Watson’s home town of Oxford.

Father: Chris Watson (lawyer, b. 1959)
Mother: Jacqueline Watson (lawyer, b. 1959)
Brother: Alex Watson (b. 1993)

Born: 14-Mar-1974
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actress

Nationality: American-Canadian
Executive summary: Battlestar Galactica

Grace Park is a American-Canadian actress of Korean descent. She is best known as Sharon Valerii (and the various iterations of Number Eight, a humanoid Cylon) on Battlestar Galactica, as well as Shannon Ng in the Canadian television series teen soap Edgemont.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Park and her family moved to Canada when she was 22 months old. Grace Park graduated from Magee Secondary in 1992, holds a degree in psychology from the University of British Columbia and speaks English and Korean, along with some French and Cantonese. She is currently studying Spanish. As of 2005, Park lives in Vancouver with her husband, real estate developer Phil Kim. She was named #93 in Maxim Online’s 2006 List.

Park has a role in the movie West 32nd, a crime drama dealing with NYC’s Korean underworld which is currently in post-production and expected to be released in 2008.

She appeared as Lt. Sandra Telfair in Electronic Arts’ Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, along with her Battlestar Galactica co-star, Tricia Helfer.

Born: 19-Apr-1987
Birthplace: Nyagan, Siberia, Russia
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Tennis

Nationality: Russia
Executive summary: 2004 Wimbledon Singles Champion

Maria Sharapova is a Russian tennis player, who won the singles championship at Wimbledon in 2004. Because she is blond and beautiful, Sharapova is often called “Anna Kournikova with a game,” which is an important distinction for true tennis fans. Even before winning Wimbledon at 17, Sharapova had already won three Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and four International Tennis Federation (ITF) singles titles. Kournikova, 23 at this writing, has never lost a singles event.

Sharapova’s family lived near the oil refineries of Nyagan, but when she was two years old the family moved to Sechi, a city on the shores of the Black Sea, to escape fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. At 4, the father of tennis champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov — a beer buddy of Sharapova’s father — gave her a tennis racket, and she started bashing balls against walls. At age 6, she attended a tennis clinic in Moscow, and met and played a game with Martina Navratilova, who was impressed. Navratilova told Sharapova’s father he had a prodigy on his hands, and the family began saving for a move to America.

Accompanied by her father, Sharapova moved to Florida when she was 7 (say some reports) or 9 (say others), to be coached by Nick Bollettieri, formerly coach to Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Kournikova, and others. At the time, she spoke no English and owned only two tennis rackets. Her mother was unable to get a visa, and remained in Russia for two more years. At Bollettieri’s tennis academy, Sharapova was usually pitted against older players, and shared a dormitory with older girls. She has often said she felt like an outsider, but “I learned to be a better fighter, and I never cried.”

Sharapova has endorsement deals with Nike, NEC, and Prince, and has signed with IMG Models, the firm that employs Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum.

Father: Uri Sharapov (tennis coach)
Mother: Yelena Sharapova

AKA Jessica Marie Alba

Born: 28-Apr-1981
Birthplace: Pomona, CA

Gender: Female
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: Multiracial
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Dark Angel

Raised in a military family, Jessica Alba grew up in Mississippi, Texas, and California. She took her first acting lessons at 11, and soon burst out as a gifted actress. Within months, Alba had an agent, and soon she was featured prominently in commercials for JC Penny and Nintendo. At 13, she was hired for a tiny role in Disney’s Camp Nowhere, but her big break came when a girl with a larger role backed out after filming had begun. Alba had similar hair, so recasting her in the more prominent role required few re-shoots. She quickly landed a recurring role on Nickelodeon’s The Secret World of Alex Mack, and at 14, she did a schlocky direct-to-video film with Morgan Fairchild called Venus Rising. On her second TV series, she wore bikinis in the mid-1990s redux of Flipper. She says she received the role on account of her swimming ability.

At 15, she was the pregnant teen in an abysmal Afterschool Special, Too Soon for Jeff with Freddie Prinze, Jr.. She was more lifelike as one of the high school kids in Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore, and as the object of Devon Sawa’s affections in Idle Hands. In James Cameron’s Dark Angel, she pouted, kicked ass, and did some genuine acting as the “genetically enhanced” Max Guevara for two enjoyable years. She has since starred on the big screen as Sarawak tribal translator in The Sleeping Dictionary, as a hip-hop dancer in Honey, and as a stripper in Sin City. In Fantastic Four, she was the invisible woman, Susan Storm.

Father: Mark Alba (real estate agent)
Mother: Cathy Jensen (housewife)
Brother: Joshua Alba (actor, b. 8-Jul-1982)
Boyfriend: Michael Weatherly (Dark Angel costar, engaged May-2001, broken 2003)