WHERE THE GIRLS STAR

MATE TRAINOR

The actresses to watch in 2002-and it won’t be hard to find them-have logged serious time in front of the camera. Annie Leibovitz was their latest director

Kirsten Dunst, 19, started acting professionally at the age of 3, in commercials, but has managed to skip over the pitfalls awaiting so many child actors. She received some serious attention (and a Golden Globe nomination) for her performance as a cherubic bloodsucker in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. After turning heads in the part of a suburban object of desire in 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, Dunst graduated to her first top-line role, as a ridiculously perky cheerleader in the surprise popcorn hit of 2000, Bring It On. But last year’s Crazy/Beautiful, in which she played a strung-out wild child, saw her moving as far away from perky as possible. She also shows dramatic range as Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst’s tender but jaded mistress, in the upcoming The Cat’s Meow. This summer it’s back to sweetheart territory for Dunst: she’ll be playing Mary Jane Watson in Spider- Man, a likely blockbuster from director Sam RAIMI.-MATT TRAINOR

Not only is Kate Beckinsale the No. 1 beauty of Great Britain (according to Hello! magazine), but she can talk like an American. This combination of looks and linguistic skills landed her plum roles in Pearl Harbor, The Last Days of Disco, and The Golden Bowl. Blessed with a daunting intellect (she studied languages and literature at Oxford University) and a saucy wit, the famously potty-mouthed 28-year-old understands the importance of maintaining balance in the often unbalanced environment of Hollywood. “If you can find some sort of creative outlet for yourself that isn’t just acting, then you don’t have to do all that many projects that you don’t like,” BeckI insale says. Indeed, she does some writing (“Poetry, short stories—I’ve been threatening to write a novel or a screenplay”) when she’s not busy around the house as mother to three-year-old Lily and partner to fellow actor Michael Sheen, whom she met during a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull. Her new domestic responsibilities have made her more selective about scripts. “I was fairly discerning before,” she says, “but now that I’ve got Lily, whatever is going to make me go to work every day for four or five months has to be something that’s really worth it. And there aren’t that many of those things around.” After playing an Englishwoman in last year’s Serendipity (her first British role in five films), Beckinsale is “back to playing Americans” in her next role, opposite Frances McDormand (with whom she shares an on-screen kiss) and Christian Bale in the upcoming Laurel Canyon.

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LAURA KANG

While her beauty seduces, it’s Jennifer Connelly's refined talent that captures us. After receiving critical acclaim for her performance as a desperate junkie in Requiem for a Dream and for her portrayal of a political activist who ends up murdered in Waking the Dead, Connelly was the first choice of director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer (who had worked with her on 1997’s Inventing the Ahbotts) for the coveted role of Alicia Nash, the wife of the schizophrenic mathematician John Nash (Russell Crowe), in last year’s mesmerizing A Beautiful Mind. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe for best supporting actress and an Oscar nomination in the same category. “I have finally found my niche,” says Connelly, 32, who has been acting in movies since the age of 11, when she was cast as a dancer in Sergio Leone’s 1984 gangster epic, Onee upon a Time in America. Enjoying the luxury of being able to be more selective with her roles, Connelly explains, “I work from the inside out, and I pursue challenging characters who have strength and intellectual and emotional development.” She plans to go to Los Angeles with her four-year-old son, Kai temporarily leaving her New York home—to begin shooting the Ang Leedirected The Hulk, in which she’ll star opposite another Aussie hottie, Black Hawk Down’s Eric Bana.

PUNCH HUTTON

Rachel Weisx is the product of a good North London upbringing, with the cosmopolitan parents (mother a Viennese psychotherapist, dad a Hungarian inventor who created a new kind of artificial respirator) and the senior thesis on Henry James. She made a smash debut in the West End at age 23 in a lusty reworking of Design for Living and since then has memorably appeared in films including Stealing Beauty, Sunshine, Beautiful Creatures, and, yes, Tlie Mummy Returns, not to mention plays such as Neil LaBute’s 77?c Shape of Things. In last year’s Enemy at the Gates, Weisz, as a besieged Russian soldier, enacted a scene of physical passion with costar Jude Law so heartfelt it was almost embarrassing to behold—in several theaters, in fact, condensation was reported to have formed on the screens. Weisz, 31, returns this year opposite Hugh Grant in About a Boy, the new one from American Pie producer—and Cambridge University schoolmate—Chris Weitz. She is now • shooting LaBute’s screen adaptation of The Shape of Things. Another big project looms—the actress has fallen for a star with enormous screen presence: “I’m moving to New York,” she says with a sigh. “I fell in love with the city.”

MARC GOODMAN

Brittany Murphy lives in Los Angeles but doesn’t have a driver’s license. That’s all right with her. “I don’t know how to drive,” she says, “but I’m a very driven person.” No wonder Murphy, 24, is such a fan of V.F.’s Annie Leibovitz. Asked about the cover shoot, Murphy says, “It was all about work. Business, baby. Annie knows what she wants, she gets it, and I love that.” At the age of 20, Murphy made it to Broadway in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. For the past five years she has been providing the voice of sex kitten Luanne Platter on the animated Fox series King of the Hill. Her best-known part may have been as Alicia Silverstone’s makeover project in 1995’s Clueless. Look for her to develop something of a scary reputation over the next year. She stars opposite Eminem (brave girl) in 8 Mile. And in Spun, playing a speed-freak stripper, she’s with the equally dangerous Mickey Rourke. -DAISY HO

DAISY HO

After winning an MTV Movie Award and the affection of redblooded males everywhere for her sapphic kiss with Sarah Michelle Gellar in 1999’s Cruel Intentions, Selma Blair has kept her audience on its toes. In the past year, Blair has tackled the role of an “in over her head” rape victim in Todd Solondz’s creepy Storytelling, has played Cameron Diaz’s promiscuous sidekick in The Sweetest Thing, and has finished filming the romantic comedy A Guy Thing, opposite Jason Lee and Julia Stiles. All that work has enabled Blair, 29, to purchase Groucho Marx’s West Hollywood pad for herself and Wink, her one-eyed dog. “When a director has a scene that no other actress will do, I’m sure they say, ‘Let’s call in that Selma Blair,’” she says. Perhaps it’s that down-to-earth modesty that has earned the self-described Hollywood newcomer a second appearance on the cover of VF s Hollywood issue, this time with the likes of Jennifer Connelly, who, in Blair’s opinion, “hangs the moon.”

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LAUREN TABACH-BANK

Rosario Dawson is the type of young woman who exudes girlish glee, still thinks it’s “cool” when publicists give her free stuff, and finds her personal mantra on a box of Yogi Tea. And why not? Hers is one of those great Only in New York stories: she was discovered as a 15-year-old on the stoop of a Lower East Side apartment building. “They just saw me laughing, and were like,

‘You wanna be in our movie?’” says Dawson, 22, of her first encounter with Kids director Larry Clark. By now she has wrapped 15 movies, 5 of which will be released in the coming months, and even has a Josie and the Pussycats doll made in her likeness—after seeing a prototype, she asked that the skin be made darker and the hair kinkier to better reflect her Afro-Cuban-Puerto Rican-Irish-Native American roots. The result was a stunningly lifelike doll, thanks partly to its 16 “points of articulation” (that’s 5 more than some G.I. Joes have).

Given that she’s starring with Will Smith and Eddie Murphy, respectively, in what could be two of the summer's biggest films, Men in Black II and The Adventures of Pluto Nash, the tea leaves most definitely augur well.

STEPHEN LEVEY

Those of us who grew up lusting after Christina Applegate during her 11 years as the magnificently vulgar bimbo Kelly Bundy on Fox’s Married... With Children are having mixed feelings lately. On the one hand, Applegate, 29, just got married to actor Johnathon Schaech (That Thing You Do!), and rumor has it that she goes to church. On the other hand, the daughter of former record exec Robert Applegate and soap actress Nancy Priddy has two promising movies on the way: The Sweetest Thing, with Cameron Diaz and cover-shoot colleague Selma Blair, and the stewardess comedy View from the Top, with Gwyneth Paltrow. “I’m sort of the sidekick in both of them,” she says. There’s good news and bad news about Applegate’s activities at V.F.’s cover shoot as well. She did spend a lot of time with Blair, her notoriously naughty friend, but explained it by saying, “I get very shy. Selma was a great safe place for me.” Fine, but can we at least expect more sexy movies in the near future? “Right now my project is my marriage. I’m just enjoying that.” Well, we’ll always have reruns.

MICHAEL HOGAN

Australian Naomi Watts didn’t just burst into the spotlight with her dual performances in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive—she grabbed it and ran. If you missed her as the fresh-faced, just-off-thebus Betty Elms (whose jawdropping “audition scene” alone is worth the price of a movie ticket) and the shadowy Diane Selwyn, you missed seeing why people go into acting. Watts, 33, has been likened to the haunting blonde seductresses of Alfred Hitchcock films, but did Grace Kelly ever have to maintain her poise during scorching lesbian love scenes? As for Watts’s recent success, she ascribes it to simply being “lucky enough to connect with David Lynch.” But luck had nothing to do with it. A quick scan of the resume shows a slew of TV movies and period dramas, not to mention an ill-fated role in Tank Girl. Oh, and by the way, this is her first cover, ever. You’ll just have to trust us—it won’t be her last.

AARON SKRYPSKI