Model/actress Jackie Old Coyote

While there are many famous models of color, models of American Indian descent are few and far between.  Fortunately, there is Jackie Old Coyote.

A Crow/Winnebago Indian from Montana and an engineering prodigy, Jackie Old Coyote was discovered by photographer Bruce Weber and was persuaded to go to Miami, where she took part in a shoot for Calvin Klein. Two of her photos were included in a five-picture ad spread. The pose she struck was striking enough to catch the attention of movie director Frank Rodham (after seeing the Calvin Klein ad) tracked Jackie down and flew her to Los Angeles to audition for a role in the movie War Party. She passed. :-) 

She went on to be a top model for photo shoots and runways of Paris and Milan fashion shows. She continued to pursuing acting as well, earning roles in Geronimo: An American Legend and The Last Samurai.

She is a graduate of Montana State University.

TV newswoman Octavia Mitchell

Octavia Mitchell is an anchorwoman for WCBD-TV, which serves the Lowcountry region of South Carolina.

Ms. Mitchell anchors the early-morning and midday reports on the Charleston-based station.  A native South Carolinian herself, she has been with WCBD-TV since 2002.

She covers education stories, including segments focus on positive and effective programs and community initiatives in local schools. 

Model/actress Suzanne Lanza

Suzanne Lanza is a model who made a move to acting later on. :-)

Acting was actually her first endeavor.  Her acting teacher referred her to the Wilhelmina modeling agency, and she began her modeling career there.  Ms. Lanza worked through several other agencies, and she also lived in Paris for awhile. :-) 

But a career as an actress remained her major goal.  She got herself a couple of roles in movies in the nineties, most notably The Night We Never Met and Strays.

Suzanne Lanza turns fifty in March 2015. 

Model Janet King

Janet King is a model from the 1970s who was based in London.

She was represented by the Askew International and Eileen Green agencies.

Model Brit Hammer

Brit Hammer is another well-known model from the 1980s.

She was represented for many years by the Elite Modeling Agency and had an exclusive contract with Clinique Cosmetics, as well as appearing in ads for such clients as DeBeers Diamonds and appearing in television commercials.

In the twenty-first century, Brit Hammer has continued to model.  But she's worked as an account executive for TV stations in Tulsa as well.

And she'd probably be the first to tell you that neither modeling nor television are as glamorous as they seem.    

New Link Announcement - Catherine Roberts Site!

I don't normally interrupt my own A-Z series of pictures of new subjects with an announcement, but when I do, it's usually for something important.  And this announcement is very important indeed.

Catherine Roberts has long been a favorite subject of mine on this blog since I first featured her here in December 2009.  She is an esteemed model best known in the fashion and beauty trades for her print ads and commercials for cosmetics and jewelry . . . though she's been more known by her face than by her name outside the fashion and beauty trades, mainly because commercial models rarely if ever get credited and she's rarely done editorial work.  My posts of Ms. Roberts have been an effort to help correct that situation and make her name as recognizable as her face - a face that is undoubtedly one of the loveliest and most unforgettable faces in modeling. :-)   

Now, Catherine Roberts is promoting herself.  She recently launched her own Web site, "Catherine Roberts - Iconic Supermodel," chock full of pictures (including a few I haven't shown here before), biographical information, and professional credentials.  The link, like all links to modeling and photography sites on this blog, is just below the members list and the blog archive field in the upper right hand corner of the screen - six spaces down the list.

Catherine Roberts was one of the first models I connected with and befriended as a result of this blog, and my association with her has been a happy one.  So I am just as happy to add her site to my list of permanent links and help get more people to it.

And so, to celebrate the addition of this link, I propose a toast . . . from the woman herself!  :-)   

A continued long and prosperous career for one of the most astonishing women in the modeling profession . . . I'll drink to that. :-)

Broadway actress/singer Sutton Foster

Sutton Foster has been one of Broadway's brightest stars since the late nineties.

She got her start on the Great White Way as an understudy for the role of Sandy Dumbrowski in the 1996 Broadway production of Grease, and she has since distinguished herself in the title role of the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, as Millie Dillmount, a girl who comes to the big city to marry a wealthy man.  She also played Jo March in a 2005 production of Little Women, Janet Van De Graaff in the musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone, and Princess Fiona in Shrek, the Musical.  Among other roles. :-)

More recently, she played Violet Karl in the 2014 Broadway production of Violet, a musical whose title character travels to Oklahoma on a bus to be healed of a disfigurement caused by a childhood accident.  Ms. Foster played the role without prosthetics, encouraging the audience to imagine her disfigurement.

Sutton Foster has also made a move to television; "Younger," a comedy-drama about a middle-aged single mother who can only get a job after making herself over to look like a twentysomething and then gets hired as a publishing assistant.  Sutton Foster plays Liza, the middle-aged mom in question.  The series premiered on TV Land earlier this month (January 2015).

"Younger" is based on the novel of the same name by New Jersey author Pamela Redmond Satran.  Full disclosure requires me to state that I know Ms. Satran.  But I don't know Sutton Foster.

Model Susan Deren

Susan Deren is a model from the early eighties.

She worked in Germany and was represented by the Talents/Inge Schuckmann agency in Munich.

Model Keri Claussen

Keri Claussen is a model from Missouri who began her career at the age of fifteen.

Her credits include advertisements for Cortefiel clothes, Emporio Armani, and Victoria's Secret, and she's appeared on magazine covers in Britain and Germany. :-)

Television actress Megan Boone

Megan Boone is the star of the breakout NBC drama "The Blacklist."

In that series, she plays Elizabeth "Liz" Keen, a rookie profiler at the FBI who's assigned to work with Raymond "Red" Reddington (played by James Spader), a former U.S. naval officer who became a criminal and now helps the FBI hunt out dangerous criminals and terrorists that the agency's counter-terrorism director isn't even aware of.  In addition to immunity from prosecution, Reddington insists on working with Keen as a condition for his cooperation, explaining that she's "very special" to him.  Hmmm . . ..  

The mysteries of Reddington's interest in Liz have been revealed little by little as the series has progressed.

Before her breakthrough on "The Blacklist," Ms. Boone appeared in one-shot roles on other TV shows, such as CBS's "Blue Bloods," as well as in movies like Step Up Revolution, About Cherry, and Leave Me Like You Found Me.

Weather forecaster Llarisa Abreu

Llarisa Abreu is one of the many lovely women who does video forecasts on AccuWeather's Internet site, and her inviting presence makes foreboding forecasts for storms go down easy.

As a woman of Hispanic origin, Ms. Abreu is bilingual, and she files online weather reports in both English and Spanish. :-)  

A New Year and New Numbers

As of today, New Year's Day 2015, I have posted pictures of 871 different women on this blog.  Obviously, I am way ahead of myself.  

That said, I'm going to try to slow things down a bit for 2015.  If I add too many new subjects at once, it may seem like overkill, and I don't want to entertain that possibility.  I will, though, be repeating women I have featured here before - the so-called "retrospectives" - and I may devote a whole week to a retrospective of one woman, which I have done before.  But I won't devote a month to a retrospective of one woman; that would really be overkill. 

In the meantime, here are my latest statistics showing the ten most popular posts on my blog.  Feel free to click on the image below to enlarge it.

The top seven posts haven't changed; those entries are in the same places as before.  Numbers eight, nine and ten have changed considerably, thanks to the rapid rise of a post that hadn't been on this chart back at the end of October 2014.   Model/photographer Barbara Minty and TV reporter Atia Abawi have dropped from numbers eight and nine to nine and ten, respectively, and British actress Lesley-Anne Down is out entirely, returning the top ten list to a condition in which not one actress primarily known for movies appears on it.  (The actresses represented here are best known for their TV work.)  Coming out of nowhere, and taking a place at number eight, is my March 2014 post of on-camera meteorologist Stef Davis of AccuWeather.com, coming in her at 2,430 views.

A lot of people have clearly demonstrated that they like Stef Davis, despite the fact that the weather service she labors for is known for only partially accurate forecasts and entirely flippant attitudes toward severe-weather reports.  I have thus demonstrated with equal clarity that I was unaware of how popular she is; I posted that entry with scant information available about her, thinking that she was a minor figure and that the entry wouldn't get much attention.

So yes, Stef Davis is popular.  And given the volatility of the weather that's expected this winter, she could become even more popular - both here and at AccuWeather.com. 

So who else could be entering the top ten soon?  Well, my original post of another Davis, model Kathy Davis (whose association with yours truly you already know about), from May 2011, is only a few hundred views away from making the list, and my post of legendary Philadelphia TV news anchor Beverly Williams, who retired from broadcasting in 2006, is showing surprising strength.  And I have no idea why . . . all I can say is that I have no idea what became of her.

All right, then . . . it's a new year, and I have some new pictures.  Check back here this weekend, I plan to have something up as early as Saturday (January 3).  Happy new year, everyone.