Vanessa Lengies was just a kid when she got her start in the business, but she definitely grew up over time since she turned out to be a knockout. Unfortunately, her career has been kind of up and down since she’s been given some impressive roles and she’s done just fine, but then she’s kind of disappeared now and again as she goes back and forth between the movies and TV appearances. She’s taken on a few voice roles throughout the years as well, so it can be said that she’s a well-rounded actress that has learned how to work in different ways. But for one reason or another, it does feel as though she should be standing in the spotlight a little more often. She has the talent and the look, but strangely enough, we don’t get to hear about her all that often. While she is still working, she’s become one of the many whose career is on the down-low more often than not and isn’t seen that often unless it’s in TV shows and movies that don’t get a whole lot of attention. There are a couple of roles in lesser-known movies that she’s helped to create that weren’t starring roles, but were still pretty memorable.
Her first movie role was in a movie that a lot of people that have worked in the food industry swear by since like it or not, this is how some restaurant employees feel about people, especially when said people have no trouble being as rude or as obnoxious as they possibly can. It’s like Monty, who is played by Ryan Reynolds, says “Don’t **** with people that handle your food.” It’s a cardinal rule alright, and while people might not agree with it, what happens in Waiting does happen in real life at times, and usually for the same reason, because people that abuse the notion that they’re right when they walk into a place think that they can walk all over restaurant workers. Playing the part of Natasha the hostess, Vanessa was there for the sex appeal as well as to round out the cast, since she was the first person that people saw upon entering the place and had to let servers know when they had new tables and had to get the bussers to clear the tables when people were done. As someone that’s worked a hosting job, I can state that this is one of the most thankless positions in the restaurant, but it’s also one of those that carries a good deal of responsibility. The difference in this movie is that flirting with the boss isn’t the best idea, no matter if it’s all in play, and hooking up with people one works with is usually a worse idea, but it does happen quite often. She showed up for the sequel as well, but by that time the cast was different as a few key people from the first movie didn’t show up.
Another movie that was fun to watch her in was the gymnastics-based movie titled Stick It, in which she played a stuck-up young woman by the name of Joanne Charis. In this movie the main actress, Missy Peregrym was making a forced comeback to avoid going to jail or doing any community service but was forced to re-enter a world that she’d walked away from after she had walked out on her team at a particularly important event, which earned her the enmity of gymnasts everywhere. Upon entering the gym, Joanne was an instant enemy of Haley, played by Missy, as she was openly antagonistic and wasn’t about to be told twice. In a way, this movie kind of gave a bad impression of gymnasts since it painted several of them as being stuck-up and entirely narcissistic, but what training was shown feels fairly accurate for those that are competing at a high level. Vanessa’s character did eventually become a great example of how repressed and removed from the world some gymnasts can be since due to their training, a lot of individuals that are looking to compete at those high levels don’t have much of a life since they’re in the gym for hours at a time at least once or twice, or more, per day, and don’t have a lot of downtimes. This also can have the effect of stunting their developmental growth, but one can imagine that over the years things have changed quite a bit, since top athletes or not, kids need to be able to develop strong social skills too.
Her career has been a pretty steady thing since the 90s, but it would be great to see her ascend to the heights in order to see what she could really accomplish. Maybe one of these days it will happen, she’s still relatively young.
