Beauty Break: Ryan O'Neal

Baby Tatum and dad RyanToday is the 75th birthday of early 70s cinema's golden boy Ryan O'Neal. Happy Birthday Father o' Tatum. The picture to the left is just the cutest thing ever, don't you think? If not you don't cherish and worship and love to revisit Paper Moon (1973) in which the real life father & daughter stars played a fictional father and daughter, and played it to perfection in one of the greatest movies of that enormously fine cinematic decade.

But today, perhaps, younger readers don't really know Ryan O'Neal. In today's celebrity parlance I would suggest that he's something like a cross between Ryan Phillipe (all-american golden boy, super young dad as celebrity parenting goes, who remains more famous for his personal life than his career) and Leonardo DiCaprio (I shall explain). After coming to fame on television's Peyton Place (1964-1969) O'Neal was Oscar nominated for the #1 box office behemoth Love Story (1970) which we presume was something like the Titanic of its day. A bold statement you say? Perhaps not so bold...

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Beauty Break: Olympic Actors

As Google reminds us today is the anniversary of the very first Olympic games way back in 1896. What better time than now then for a beauty break featuring actors (this is the Film Experience after all) with Olympic history. Know this going in: Hollywood was OBSESSED with swimmers for a long time.

Let's kick it off with the original Flash Gordon Buster Crabbe. Here are eight Olympic Beauties with acting careers after the jump...

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Birthday Beauty Break: Charlotte & Jennifer & Barbara & Laura

February 5th is a big day for Actress birthdays. Two of this year's Oscar nominees are celebrating birthdays today! How about that? Charlotte Rampling, Best Actress nominee, is 70 today and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Best Supporting Actress nominee, is 54. And to round out the 1-time nominee party, it's also Barbara Hershey's special day. She's 67.  Finally, since  The Lovely Laura Linney, turning 52, is one of our most beloved actresses we can't leave her out if we're talking Oscar love.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OSCAR BEAUTIES!

After the jump, I've selected 7 of their most important performances each (excluding current roles) and, to make it more fun, they're in chronological order so you can see how the careers overlap. Sound off on these beauties in the comments.

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Bowie Beauty Break & "Lazarus" Farewell

Pt 1 Bowie & Velvet Goldmine
Pt 2 Curio Finale
Pt 3 Beauty Break

A picture released by the family last week to accompany their announcement that they will be having a private ceremony. They are overwhelmed by the public outpouring of love but wanted to remind everyone that they welcome all the tributes and celebrations (as people see fit) but they are not officially endorsed or organized by the family.

Have you been listening to David Bowie for a week solid now? If you haven't we forgive you. Where even to start with that discography?  Bowie loomed so large in music and cultural history that we needed more time to process, so a week later here's the final piece of our goodbye -  a beauty break to think of him more visually instead... or at least to give you visual accompaniment to go along with your playlists elsewhere.

Musicians have been catching the acting bug since the movies began to wildly varying degrees of success. Some that showed early promise simply didn't care enough to continue doing it (Annie Lennox, Björk, Courtney Love, Tina Turner), others who seemed to want it badly, didn't really have the gift for it (Madonna, Prince), a few have been successful at it despite not being "good" at it (Elvis). There are other musician/actors on whom the jury is still out of course (Justin Timberlake/Lady Gaga). And then there have been people like Cher who were so good at acting that people eventually or temporarily forgot they were musicians. Finally there's David Bowie, our subject today, who occupies the odd ground of being of the cinema but also quite apart from it. (Are there other musicians who have had a similar relationship to the movies -- maybe Sting?)

After the jump, a visual tour of his filmography...

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Best of '15: Hunkalicious Screen Beauty

Our Year in Review party continues! Cue mood music.

Since The Film Experience obsessives over actresses almost daily, the actors could use a little spotlight from time to time. So this entry into our year in review party is a beauty break starring the year's best man candy in cinema ...with a little TV thrown in for extra flavor.

15 A superhero... but which one?
Any of The Avengers will do but if actors are going to be expected to be on special diets and grueling workout routines daily for those spandex ready bodies, you'd think Marvel would let them go shirtless for more than 10 seconds each movie. Chris Evans is still the most delicious among them but we'll give this round to Paul Rudd for the sleeker non-steroidal fitness regimen (which we hope becomes more the norm because Henry Cavill's Superman body is so cartoon weird; it's like a giant chest and shoulders with random stick appendages and face).

Runner up goes to Chris Hemsworth When Wet: in that silly pool of visions in Age of Ultron; shipwrecked and starving but still somehow maintaining the workouts in In the Heart of the Sea; or even just those carefully wet stray Blackhat bangs

Fourteen more people or categories after the jump. But fair warning... it's slightly nsfw. So it's a good thing you're on Christmas break. In the immortal words of Tina Belcher...

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