THE FANTASTICS

ON THE COVER

The mood was “I feel pretty” great, as V.F.-cover veterans Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Claire Danes, and Uma Thurman joined first-timers including Kerry Washington and Ziyi Zhang, while Sienna Miller and Kate Bosworth had a hard time keeping straight faces for Annie Leibovitz

It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since a 25-year-old Uma Thurman, fresh from her triumph in Pulp Fiction, appeared on the cover of V.F.’s inaugural Hollywood Issue. Today, with more than 30 movies to her name, Thurman is nothing short of an international icon. At the CulI ver City, California, set of this year’s Annie Leibovitz shoot, where Thurman arrived looking luminous and feeling upbeat, she met first with her friend the stylist George Cortina, who indulged her modesty by dressing her in a pair of Klaus Krehan trousers. Then she proceeded to hair and makeup, where she chatted and swapped baby pictures with fellow moms Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. Although Thurman, a mother of two, has said she is ready to relax, fans who enjoyed her Golden Globe-nominated performances in both volumes of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill won’t have to wait long for her next performance. Beginning in March, Thurman will dance again with her Pulp Fiction co-star John Travolta, in the Get Shorty sequel, Be Cool, then star in the romantic comedy Prime. After that, she’ll play the bodacious Swedish secretary, Ulla, in the film version of Mel Brooks’s hit musical, The Producers, alongside Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

LINDSAY BUCHA

Cate Blanchett is widely regarded as an actress’s actress. When she attracts comparisons, they’re usually to such heavy hitters as Bette Davis, Grace Kelly, and Meryl Streep. But she’s also one of the cinema’s great shape-shifters, embodying such far-ranging characters as a lovelorn English monarch in Elizabeth, an ethereal elf queen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a flaky but hard-charging reporter in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and, in Martin Scorsese’s Tlte Aviator, Katharine Hepburn, one of her predecessors in the pantheon of top-tier actresses. Like Hepburn, the 35-year-old, Australian-born Blanchett has a simple, no-frills side (she loves gardening, baking, and collecting books and letters) that helps her transcend mere movie stardom. Unlike Hepburn, she is happily married (to Andrew Upton, who recently directed her in a Sydney stage production of Hedda Gabler), with children (her second son, Roman, will have his first birthday in April). Blanchett, who has been nominated for four Golden Globes and won one (for Elizabeth), arrived for her fourth V.F. cover shoot just 2 hours after her 14-hour flight from New Zealand touched down at LAX, and put on a tour de force performance as a person who’d slept the night in her own bed.

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FRED TURNER

Kate Winslet is not your typical star. The 29-year-old British beauty is unapologetically frank (she criticized British GQ for digitally slimming her down for a cover), unabashedly down to earth (she has turned up for at least one interview with baby vomit on her collar), and fearlessly independent (she refused to jump on the blockbuster bandwagon after Titanic and opted instead to take interesting roles in smaller films). All that, plus her prodigious talent, has earned Winslet three Oscar nods so far (for Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, and Iris) and established her as one of the movies’ most magnetic presences. Witness her recent performances as the beautiful basket case Clementine Kruczynski in Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and as the Edwardian widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in Finding Neverland. In the months ahead, she will star in Romance and Cigarettes, which director John Turturro has described as “a savage musical,” and a new film adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s All The King's Men. Winslet’s favorite role, however, is her real-life one as a mother of two. Accordingly, four-year-old Mia and one-year-old Joe stopped by the shoot with Dad (Winslet’s husband, director Sam Mendes) to cheer on their marvelous mum.

CAROLYN BIELFELDT

V.F. covers are nothing new for Claire Danes. She shared the Hollywood Issue cover in 1997, when she was just 18, and had the whole space to herself in February of the following year (the accompanying cover line proclaimed her “Hollywood’s Teen Queen”). So it was pleasantly unsurprising that the now 26-year-old Danes— whose remarkable performance in Richard Eyre’s 2004 film, Stage Beauty, seemed to get overshadowed by the news of her romance with co-star Billy Crudup— brought to this year’s shoot the positive attitude and effortless aplomb of a seasoned pro. And while Danes did make an occasional reference to the man she calls “my boyfriend,” she seemed more eager to engage in small talk with Scarlett Johansson, one of several young actresses who were honored to be meeting her. Danes, who won a Golden Globe in 1994 for her career-making role in the ABC series My So-Called Life, will next be seen in Shopgirl, an adaptation of the novella by Steve Martin, in which she’ll play the title role opposite the wild and crazy guy himself. She is also filming a romantic comedy with Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker about a bohemian-family gathering gone awry.

MEG NOLAN

Scarlett Johansson arrived at the V.F. shoot looking like the youngster she is, then handed off her new pet Chihuahua, Maggie, and jumped into a gold Vivienne Westwood gown. In an instant, the 20-year-old was transformed into the superstar she also most certainly is. Johansson, who starred with Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer at age 14, has been on a roll since 2003, when she and Bill Murray re-invented the on-screen platonic romance in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. She was nominated for a 2004 Golden Globe for her convincing portrayal of a jaded teenager in A Love Song for Bobby Long, but the coming year could be her biggest yet. Over the next 12 months, she’ll star opposite a mind-boggling array of leading men: Ewan McGregor (in Michael Bay’s The Island), Josh Hartnett and Mark Wahlberg (in The Black Dahlia), Tom Cruise (in Mission: Impossible III), and, building on her success as a fictional Lolita, Tom Wilkinson (in A Good Woman) and Woody Allen (in his as-yetuntitled summer release).

ABBY FIELD

Ziyi Zhang, who first mesmerized audiences with her awardwinning performance in 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has since cemented her reputation as a woman with serious chops (acting and otherwise) in Miramax’s Hero and Sony Classics’ action-packed sensory extravaganza House of Flying Daggers. For fluid elegance, steely resolve, and fresh-faced beauty, the 26-year-old star would appear to be unrivaled. It came as a surprise, then, when a hip young thing turned up at Culver Studios decked out in a black skullcap, a bomber jacket, jeans, boots, and designer sunglasses. Her enthusiasm was all the more impressive, given that she’d been up until three that morning working on Memoirs of a Geisha, the adaptation of Madonna’s favorite book, directed by Rob Marshall and produced by Steven Spielberg. (Zhang’s other upcoming movies include Wayne Wang’s Good Cook, Likes Music and Wong Kar-Wai’s futuristic drama 2046.) Once she’d settled into her dressing room, Zhang flipped through her gift copy of V.F.’s Oscar Night, marveling at the images of old Hollywood glamour, which nicely complemented the new Hollywood glamour,

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EMILY POENISCH

The First time Rosario Dawson posed for the cover of V.F.’s Hollywood Issue, it was 2002 and she was gearing up for roles in two potential blockbusters: Men in Black II, which grossed more than $400 million worldwide, and The Adventures of Pluto Nash, which earned rather less than that. Since then, Dawson has marked out an adventurous path to stardom, taking roles both in independent gems, such as Spike Lee’s 25th Hour and Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass (based on an article that appeared in this magazine), and in the occasional big-budget gamble, such as Oliver Stone’s Alexander (which reached for the heavens but never quite cleared the roof). Her next big bet is Mimi Marquez, the sexy S&M dancer she’ll play later this year in Rent, Chris Columbus’s screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical. (Marquez’s best line: “They say that I have the best ass below 14th Street. Is it true?”) Next month, meanwhile, audiences can catch Dawson, alongside Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis, in Sin City, co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and the comicbook creator Frank Miller.

EMILY CREED

Though she has appeared in only four films to date, New York-born, London-raised Sienna Miller has already been compared to such blonde bombshells as Julie Christie and Brigitte Bardot. But when the 23-year-old actress strolled onto the set of V.F’s cover shoot, she exuded a radiant confidence all her own. The Chloe-clad starlet spent much of the shoot shaking her long locks in time to the on-set music, giving onlookers a glimpse of the energy and enthusiasm that helped her land a breakout role as a manic-depressive party girl in Paramount’s Alfie—and then land the Film’s leading man, Jude Law. (The two have since announced their engagement.) This year, Miller hopes to build on last year’s remarkable successes. First, she stars as Francesca, the woman who can’t be wooed, opposite Heath Ledger in Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova. Also in the works is Factory Girl, in which she’ll play the 60s glamour queen and Andy Warhol companion Edie Sedgwick—an entirely fitting role for a blossoming superstar.

JACQUELINE NEISS

Sparkling after a year that saw her transformed from a secondary player in a Spike Lee joint (She Hate Me) to a stormer of Hollywood’s inner sanctum as Della Bea Robinson—the second wife and emotional spine of Ray Charles—in Taylor Hackford’s Ray, Kerry Washington, 28, grooved to the tunes of other musical luminaries, from the Rolling Stones to Marvin Gaye, at Annie Leibovitz’s shoot. During costume and hair changes, Washington entertained a visitor, fiance David Moscow, whom filmgoers with long memories will recall from his portrayal of Tom Hanks’s 13year-old self in the 1988 hit Big. (His more recent Films include Just Married and Riding in Cars with Boys.) Washington’s good vibrations should continue in 2005 as she breaks away from the meditative roles of her early career to play a gun-toting assassin in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Perhaps it will be Kerry in ’05 after all.

JONATHAN KELLY

Kate Bosworth arrived at the studio looking smashing, as usual, with her boots over her jeans, a thrift-store-chic belt, and a simple cotton T-shirt. The only touch that could have improved her outfit was a matching iPod, and to her delight she discovered one in her swag bag. The 22-year-old actress, who is carrying on a golden Hollywood romance with actor Orlando Bloom, became fast friends with Sienna Miller, and the two spent the rest of the day chatting and laughing. It was only when their bonhomie threatened to violate the solemn formality (yeah, right) of the shoot that Bosworth Finally cried out, “Sienna, stop making me laugh!” Bosworth made her movie debut in 1998, in The Horse Whisperer. She traded in riding stallions for riding surfboards in 2002’s Blue Crush, her first starring role, and has been making waves in Hollywood ever since. Her recent leading men include Kevin Spacey, in the Bobby Darin biopic, Beyond the Sea, and Richard Gere, in the upcoming movie version of the novel Bee Season. Next, she’ll take to the sky, playing Lois Lane in the hotly anticipated Superman Returns.

JESSICA FLINT