I'm in love--AGAIN! :O)

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Who would you say is/was THE most beautiful looking actress! I was flipping through the TV channels Saturday and PBS had just started showing "The Barefoot Contessa" and there was no way I wasn't going to watch it--Ava Gardner was/is THE most beautiful female 'animal' ever on the silver screen. Yes, Liz Taylor, in her teens and 20's, was gorgeous but she didn't have the inherent sexuality that Ava had plus her voice and hands were detriments. Rita Hayworth had the look, the hair, the body but she had a vulnerability that made people want to take care of while with Ava you took her on her, or equal, terms. She had an earthiness that added to her bearings. Ava is (to quote one writer) "A sensuous, sloe-eyed beauty with a magnetic, tigress like quality of sexuality." In "Barefoot" you saw every one of those aspects--whether she was dancing in the fields, shoeless, with a male gypsy--or attending her first movie premiere in an iridescent gown--whether wearing a black or printed bathing suit--virginal appearing in her wedding gown--breathtaking in a pink and black dress and cape--you could easily understand 2 billionaires fighting over her or an aristocrat falling in love with this woman. Though she wasn't a 'great' actress--you always looked at her when she was on screen--her roles varied from gun moll in "The Killers" to Julie in "Showboat", as Venus the goddess in "One Touch Of Venus", as a duchess in "the Naked Maja" and as the last woman in the world in "On The Beach", as a wife in "Earthquake" and, probably her last, one of her best acting roles, as Maxine in "The Night Of The Iguana"--she made over 70 pictures, not all gems, and just watching her move was a joy. There isn't an actress today who even comes close to her in the combination of looks, sensuality, earth mother, sexiness--in the advertising for "Mogambo" she was called "The most beautiful female animal in the world! Garbo, Theron, Turner, Hayward, Kerr, Simmons, Roberts, etc., all have/had that certain something but not to the degree Ava did and all in one package. Just watch "The Barefoot Contessa" and you, too, will fall in love with her either for the first time or again!