fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetitor.com, MGM UA Distribution photo credit
April 6, 2019,
Without knowing any real details about her past, especially when she was young, one thing we do surmise?
Elizabeth Berkley is the girl you would fall madly in love with in high school.
No doubt.
It sure is easy to fall in love with her on the big screen.
Remember Show Girls?
It wasn’t Gone With The Wind, but it sure was a lot of fun. The classic B movie with a predictable but enjoyable script that you would absolutely watch more than once, not because of the story, but because of the gorgeous woman who mesmerizes in the starring role.
Showgirls is a 1995 French-American erotic drama film written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven.
It stars Elizabeth, a former teen actress, Kyle MacLachlan, and Gina Gershon.
We might say an over the top Gina Gershon who added a lots of pizzazz to the friction.
The film centers on a “street-smart” drifter who ventures to Las Vegas and climbs the seedy hierarchy from stripper to showgirl.
Produced on a then-sizable budget of approximately $45 million, significant controversy and hype surrounding the film’s amounts of sex and nudity preceded its theatrical release. In the United States, the film was rated NC-17 for “nudity and erotic sexuality throughout, some graphic language, and sexual violence.”
Showgirls was the first, and to this day, only NC-17 rated film to be given a wide release in mainstream theaters.
Distributor United Artists dispatched several hundred staffers to theaters across North America playing Showgirls to ensure that patrons would not sneak into the theater from other films, and to make sure film-goers were over the age of 17.
Audience restriction due to the NC-17 rating coupled with poor reviews resulted in the film becoming a box office bomb, grossing just $37 million.
Here was a review found at our favorite review site rogerebert.com, “A sleazefest like “Showgirls” promises the inside dope on Las Vegas, stripping, hooking and all that stuff. What “Showgirls” delivers, however, seems basically to be Joe Eszterhas’ masturbatory fantasies.”
Hey now, don’t hold back. Tell us what you really think. Is there more? Of course.
They continue, “The screenplay is the fevered product of a very limited imagination, brought to a high gloss in a slick, expensive soap opera.
“Showgirls” is the first big-budget “adults only” movie in a few years and, to be sure, it contains so much nudity that the sexy parts are when the girls put on their clothes.”
Well, we are certainly not one to disagree with the master reviewers but actually our view of what was sexy in the movie was a little different.
Didn’t we say that it was type of movie you watch more than once?
Despite a negative theatrical and critical consensus, Showgirls enjoyed success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals, allowing the film to turn a profit and become one of MGM‘s top 20 all-time bestsellers.
See what we mean?
Anyway, it was the first time we saw Elizabeth since her teeny bopper days as Jessie Spano, a role she played on the TV series, Saved by the Bell, from 1989 to 1993.
From bopper to stripper.
Life is about transition, especially in the competitive acting industry.
Elizabeth’s life is a wonderful study in transition.
Our beauty was born and raised in Farmington Hills, a community located among Detroit‘s northern suburbs in the affluent Oakland County, Michigan.
From a young age she danced, and she practiced in a room that her parents arranged for her in the basement of their house.
She began to take part in several ballets, including Swan Lake and in 1983 she appeared in some musicals.
Elizabeth appeared for several seasons in the hit series CSI: Miami (2002) as Julia Winston, and in the final season of Showtime’s The L Word (2004).
It was in the film Roger Dodger that we discovered she was friends with another gorgeous girl.
Don’t the gorgeous girls always hang out together?
Roger Dodger is a 2002 American comedy-drama that explores the relationship between men, women, and sex. Directed by Dylan Kidd, it starred Elizabeth, Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, Isabella Rossellini, and drum roll please.
Super sensuous Jennifer Beals.
The film follows Roger Swanson (Scott) and his nephew (Eisenberg) during a night on the town in search of sex and conversations with gorgeous chicks.
Here is the story line.
After cynical New York advertising copywriter Roger Swanson (Campbell Scott) is dumped by his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Joyce (Isabella Rossellini), who by the way is also his boss, his painful work day is further complicated by the unexpected arrival of his 16-year-old nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg).
After asking to spend the night at Roger’s, Nick reveals that he has come to ask for help.
What kind of help?
He doesn’t want to be a virgin anymore.
Male and 16, who does?
Nick begs Roger for a lesson in the art of seduction. Embittered Roger then takes on the role of a nocturnal drill sergeant in an imaginary war between the sexes, starting Nick’s training at an upscale singles bar. There they meet two beautiful women (Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals) who turn out to be less malleable than Roger expects.
The scene between the four is priceless and memorable as the girls spar with the guys.
Please enjoy while it lasts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHQdl3iBhkE
Since the two girls are buds, Elizabeth would appear with Jennifer again in the loveable series the L Word.
Elizabeth is also making a name for herself in the information age as well.
In 2006, she set up a self-help program online for teen girls called Ask-Elizabeth.
She regularly chats with young girls to discuss different issues and topics and to help them with any problems that they are going through and shares some of her own challenges in her past life.
Ask-Elizabeth was also the working title of a reality series focusing on the program’s success and its continued efforts to help girls throughout the country.
The show, produced by MTV, featured Elizabeth traveling around the United States looking at the issues and topics most important to teenage girls. Amy Bailey, vice president of development in MTV’s News & Documentaries division, said Berkley approached MTV with the idea. “She does these workshops around the country with teen girls and gets them to really open up about self-esteem and body issues,” said Bailey.
You can read about it.
In 2011, Elizabeth published Ask-Elizabeth, a self-help book for teenage girls which drew from the workshops she conducted for the Ask-Elizabeth program.
Ms. Berkley is an animal rights activist and in 1997, donned a $600 form-fitting gown made entirely of collard greens for the “Lettuce Be Lean” campaign, sponsored by PETA to try to encourage people to embrace vegetarianism. In 2008 and 2009, she was among a number of celebrities included in an online poll by PETA to select the “Sexiest Vegetarian of the Year”.
Elizabeth is the Sexiest Girl of the Year no matter what she is adorned in or not.
Showgirls was proof of that.
~ ~ ~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showgirls
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/showgirls-1995
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dodger_(film)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000924/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
