Actress Grace Park

Today I'm visiting Grace Park - and no, that's not a place to have a picnic lunch! :-D

Grave Park is a Canadian actress (born in California, interestingly) who has appeared in various television shows in the United States and Canada.

Ms. Park, who's of Korean descent, first gained recognition for her roles as Sharon Valerii and as a humanoid Cylon robot in a remake of the seventies TV series "Battlestar Galactica."

Appearing in remakes of 1970s TV shows has obviously become her forte, as she now plays plays detective Kona "Kono" Kalakaua in the new version of "Hawaii Five-O."

Television presenter Uschi Nerke

Uschi Nerke is a heroine to classic rock fans all over the Western world. She hosted the German popular music show "Beat-Club" from 1965 to 1972, and many clips from the show - among the finest TV appearances in all of rock and roll - have aired on cable music channels and are readily available on YouTube. The show developed a reputation for its innovative and colorful backdrops after it switched from black and white to color. It was one of the most important TV programs for British and American rockers to appear on.

Like "Entertainment Tonight"'s Mary Hart in the United States many years later, Ms. Nerke had a slew of male co-hosts on "Beat-Club," one of whom was David John "Dave Dee" Harman of the British pop group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. She was the show's solo host in its last two years.

Among the acts that appeared on "Beat-Club" were the Beatles, Cream, the Who, the Bee Gees, Manfred Mann, Harry Nilsson, Canned Heat, Ike & Tina Turner, Family, Alice Cooper, Richie Havens, Santana, Billy Preston, and too many more to list here.

Ms. Nerke, who turned 67 in January 2011, now hosts a radio version of "Beat-Club" on German radio and appears as a presenter at oldies events.

Fun fact: Uschi Nerke is also a trained architect, having studied architecture in Bremen.

Actress Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore is easily one of the most accomplished American actresses in recent history.

One of the most regal and refined stars in Hollywood, Ms. Moore has graced many a movie with her presence. While she's well known for roles in the Jurassic Park and Hannibal Lecter series (she replaced Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling in 2001's Hannibal), she has also distinguished herself in cult favorites such as Benny and Joon and in small movies such as the 1994 film version of Anton Chekhov's Vanya on 42nd Street, in which she played Yelena.

She received a multitude of accolades for her performances in two 2002 releases - as 1950s suburban housewife Cathy Whitaker in Far From Heaven and as Laura Brown in The Hours.

Fashion model Janet Lowe

Janet Lowe is a model who was primarily active in the 1980s.

She was represented by no fewer than three different agencies in her heyday - Elite and Legends in New York, and Reinhard in Philadelphia.

Actress Diane Keaton

Although she's appeared in movies as diverse as The Godfather, Reds, Mrs. Soffel, and Something's Gotta Give, Diane Keaton is mostly thought of as the quintessential seventies woman she personified in many of the movies she made with Woody Allen, especially Annie Hall.

The same year that masterpiece came out, 1977, Ms. Keaton also starred in Looking For Mr. Goodbar, about a reserved teacher that hangs out in bars at night and becomes sexually adventurous in search of the perfect man, which summed up the dark side of 1970s popular culture.

Although she turned 65 in January 2011, Diane Keaton is one Baby Boomer elder who's not likely to retire any time soon. :-)

And she always has good fashion sense. :-)

Fashion model Belinda Johnson

The name "Belinda" means "beautiful," and that certainly describes Belinda Johnson, one of the Wilhelmina agency's most distinguished models of the mid-1980s.

She has appeared in advertisements for various products, ranging from women's razors to shoes.

She remains active as a model today.

Actress/singer Jennifer Hudson

Just when you're ready to bitch and complain about the plethora of "talent" shows on the American airwaves, like "American Idol," along comes on one of those shows a contestant who actually has talent. And Jennifer Hudson, who was a contestant on the 2004 edition of "American Idol," certainly has talent to spare. She can act and sing.

Ironically, she placed seventh in the competition. But she went on to have an A-1 career.

The Chicago-born performer parlayed her appearance on "American Idol" to winning the role of Effie White in the film version of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, for which she won the 2007 Best Supporting Actress Oscar and got more then twenty other awards and nominations. In 2008, she released a record album and appeared in The Secret Life of Bees.

Oh yeah, and I understand she lost weight. :-)

Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar

The 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, about a teenage girl in California having to fight off vampires and other supernatural meanies, is a cult classic, but the TV series of the same name is even more so. And it was the television series that brought Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy, to the attention of TV viewers. A star was born.

(This series also made a star out of Alyson Hannigan, who was one of the first women I featured on this blog.)

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" ran for six years (1997 to 2003). Before that, Sarah Michelle Gellar was a busy child actress in both TV and movies. Since the series ended, she has appeared in movies such as Cruel Intentions and The Return.

She's married to actor Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Actress Sally Field

I like her. I really like her. Because even though Sally Field risked being typecast as a goofy yet sweet ingenue as the result of her sixties TV shows "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun" (the latter being notable for being set in Puerto Rico, a rare locale for American sitcoms), she proved herself as a versatile actress in the movies in the seventies and eighties.

Two of her best known roles are title role in 1979's Norma Rae, about a mill worker in the South who fights for the unionization of her factory, and as Emma in the 1985 romantic comedy Murphy's Romance. Both movies were directed by Martin Ritt. Places in the Heart, from 1984, in which she played a Texas widow trying to hold onto her farm and family - and for which she won the Oscar that confirmed how much we like her - was directed by Robert Benton.

And, of course, she was in 1994's Forrest Gump as the title character's mother. These days, Sally Field has come full circle in a return to television, playing Nora Walker (wasn't that the name of the mom in the Who's Tommy?) in the ABC series "Brothers & Sisters." But she hasn't abandoned cinema completely; as of this writing, she is to play Mary Todd Lincoln in a movie version of Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Abraham Lincoln. Maybe what's good gets a little bit better . . .. :-)

Singer/actress Linda Eder

Linda Eder achieved fame as a Broadway musical performer in the least likely set of circumstances - she starred in the New York production of Jekyll and Hyde, a musical based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel that had toured around the country before debuting on Broadway in 1997.

Raised in Minnesota, Ms. Eder, a daughter of immigrants from Austria and Norway, has also appeared in Svengali and in the world premiere of Camille Claudel, a musical about the famed French sculptress.

She's also released about a dozen solo albums.

Actress Hope Davis

Hope Davis is an actress who has been in numerous films along with a smattering of television work. She notably appeared in 2002's About Schmidt and in American Splendor, a biographical picture from 2003 about the late cartoonist Harvey Pekar. (She played Pekar's wife Joyce Brabner, who is also a cartoonist.)

The New Jersey-born Ms. Davis has also been a presence in theater, and she appeared a Broadway production of God of Carnage with Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels. Her performance as a mother of an unruly boy got her a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play.

Fashion model Pat Cleveland

Hello Cleveland! :-D

In the word of elite fashion modeling, Pat Cleveland is an unbridled force of nature. At times outlandish, other times outrageous, she's always out on life's stage with a healthy attitude. A fixture on runways and in print ads, she's also inspired a line of department store mannequins. Which is ironic, as she's probably one of the liveliest models of all time.

She writes poetry, and she also keeps a blog, Being Pat.

"Fashion gives you that extra something," she once said in a quote that sums her up nicely. "It helps make the world an interesting place to live in because it is part of life. Thank God for fashion."

Actress Bonnie Bedelia

Bonnie Bedelia is mainly known for her roles in the action movies Die Hard and Presumed Innocent, but her breakthrough role was as drag racer Shirley Muldowney in the 1983 biographical picture Heart Like a Wheel.

She now plays family matriarch Camille Braverman in the NBC drama series "Parenthood."

Fun fact: Her full name is Bonnie Bedelia Culkin, and yes, she's Macaulay Culkin's aunt.

Actress Khandi Alexander

Off we go into a new year with new subjects. So who do we have as my first beautiful woman for 2011?

I . . . want Khandi! :-D

Khandi Alexander is best known for two roles on broadcast television - as Catherine Duke in the NBC sitcom "NewsRadio" and as Dr. Alexx Woods in the CBS hit CBS drama "CSI: Miami."

Currently, she appears on the HBO series "Treme."

One little-known fact about Khandi Alexander is that she's a trained dancer and choreographer, and she choreographed Whitney Houston's concerts for four years (1988 to 1992).