At one time, Amy Smart was one of the most popular actresses in Hollywood since she managed to get some of the best roles and was definitely worth the effort since she ended up becoming someone that was easy to cast and played in a lot of roles that utilized her not just for sex appeal but also for her intelligence and the fiery temper that her characters could bring to the table. A lot of times it’s more fun to watch actresses that aren’t just used as eye candy, especially if they can perform that role while still being strong, independent, and fully capable of letting the male characters in the movie know that she’s not a pushover and can’t just be discounted as another pretty face. Now, if you can vibe with all of that, then you can understand why Amy Smart was definitely a good choice for a lot of the roles she’s played over the years. She’s had her turn in a few coming of age movies that have cast her as someone that likes to have fun, is definitely sexy and is also very intelligent and compassionate in a lot of different ways. But she’s also been able to play a very troubled character as well since some of her roles have seen her be insanely aggressive while others have sent her along an emotional rollercoaster in terms of the character she’s played.
One good example of this is the movie The Butterfly Effect which is something of a cult classic since it raises a lot of good questions that people have wanted to answer over the years. She plays the young woman named Kayleigh Miller, who is initially sexually abused by her pedophile father, along with her young friend Evan, played by Aston Kutcher. When she and Evan grow up and Evan tries to reconnect with her, however, Kayleigh commits suicide after Evan reminds her what happened back then. Things only get worse when Evan begins to realize that he can go back in time using the blackouts that he’s been experiencing since childhood, which he does with the type of reckless abandon that makes everything take a sudden turn as his meddling in the past continues to make everything turn out even worse than what came before until eventually, he ends up accidentally killing Kayleigh when they’re children. But the character of Kayleigh goes from being a highly neurotic and insecure woman to a sorority girl to a scarred-up, drug-abusing prostitute, to finally being someone that doesn’t know Evan at all since his final act is to simply get Kayleigh and her brother Tommy away from him so that he doesn’t cause them any more harm.
A movie that kind of makes use of her as a pretty face and not much else is Crank, in which she plays the role of Eve Lydon, the girlfriend of Chev Chelios, played by Jason Statham. Eve is kind of a ditz since she spends a lot of her time getting stoned and hanging out with Chev it would appear. The first movie makes Eve into little more than Chev’s girlfriend, a role that’s more for sex appeal than anything else and definitely sexualizes her in a big way. However, when Crank 2: High Voltage comes alone, Eve is still a bit of a ditz but she’s a lot tougher since when a guy that thinks he’s her boyfriend tries to ‘lay the hammer’ down, in other words, teach her not to speak back to him, Eve loses it and kicks the living hell out of him, leaving the guy on the side of the road as she storms off. Another fun role comes in Rat Race when she plays the character of Tracy Faucet, a woman that catches her man cheating and trashes his vehicle before taking off with Breckin Meyer’s character as they’re headed off to retrieve a small fortune that lies at the end of a race that’s been put together and is being bet on by a group of very rich and dubious individuals.
She’s been in so many movies that it’s hard to list them all, but another role that was fun was Jules Harbor, the sister of Lance Harbor, played by the late Paul Walker, who was the star quarterback in Varsity Blues, alongside James Van Der Beek, who was Jules’ boyfriend in the movie. The thing about Jules was that she was a fun character since she didn’t get into the whole football mess that everyone else in the town did, but she would hang around them because of her boyfriend John Moxon, and because a lot of them were her friends. But when it came to Moxon standing up to his coach, the ruthless Bud Kilmer, played by Jon Voight, she gave him some of the best advice possible and became one of the wisest characters in the whole movie. As she’s continued to act she’s kind of become harder to notice thanks to the roles she’s taken and the lack of interest of a lot of people, but she’s every bit as good as she’s been throughout the years.
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