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Overview of
our 15th annual list:
The
most salient feature of the 2013 list is that almost
none of the best nude scenes were in theatrical
films. Rosario Dawson did take the top spot for her
daring performance in Trance, but that and Riddick
were essentially the only top movies on the entire
list. The rest of the scenes came from cable shows,
a mini-series, an art project, a music video, and a
bunch of non-theatrical and/or sub-6.5 movies.
(The
Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle came out too
late to be considered in the balloting.)
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Another
interesting feature of this year's list is that it
includes many actresses performing their first nude
scenes after their 30th birthday: Ivana Milicevic is
nearly 40; Shiri Appleby and January Jones are in
their mid-30s; Katee Sackhoff, Elisabeth Moss, Kate
Bosworth and Gaby Hoffmann are in their early 30s.
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It is nice to see that the brief
puritanical streak that entered the movie world in
2008 has now run its course. In that
year there was not a single significant
actress who performed a frontal nudity scene, and
barely a crotch to be seen in mainstream films all
year. Our list of top nude performances for
2008 was populated by relatively ordinary topless
scenes.
In contrast, Rosario Dawson shaved,
stripped stark naked, and allowed herself to be
photographed up close and personal in good light in
2013. And Rosario wasn't the only woman getting
completely undressed While that may have been the
best full-frontal scene of the year, it was by no
means the only good one, as seen below.
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I expanded the list to 25 scenes
this year, simply because that happened to be a spot
where there was a nice clear break in the balloting.
All of the top 25 scenes received some fairly
significant support (six first-place votes or more)
while the lower finishers received fewer than five
votes. That doesn't mean the lower finishers were weak
entries. It was just a highly competitive field. You
know it was a strong year because Tuppence Middleton
received no votes at all for her appearance in The
Look of Love, and that was a fairly strong nude
performance.
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| 25 |
Thandie
Newton in "Rogue"
season one
Thandie
had been one of the leading ladies of screen nudity in
the late nineties, with a powerful threesome of roles
in Gridlock'd, Beseiged and Beloved, but she had shown
almost nothing in the decade and a half since - just
brief flashes of nipple in The Truth About Charlie and
For Colored Girls.
2013 marked her naked comeback with several topless
scenes in the DirectTV original series, "Rogue," a
dark, gritty look at the members of an Oakland crime
family and the undercover cop working to bring them
down.
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| 23t |
Léa Seydoux
in Blue is the Warmest Color
8.1 at IMDb
Blue
is the Warmest Color, a lesbian coming-of-age romance
adapted from an eponymous French
graphic novel, was the unanimous choice for the
Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2013.
Per Wikipedia, "It is the first film to have the Palme
d'Or awarded to both the director and the lead
actresses, with Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos
becoming the only women apart from director Jane
Campion to have ever won the award."
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| 23t |
Kate Bosworth
in Big Sur
5.8 at IMDb
Frankly, this is not an especially
impressive nude scene, but Kate looks great and it
represents our first chance to see Lois Lane the way
Superman can see her with his x-ray vision.
We had to wait until she turned 30 for that sight, and
we were ready!
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| 22 |
Gaby Hoffmann
in Crystal Fairy
5.8 at IMDb
You
may remember Gaby as a child actress in films like
Field of Dreams, Uncle Buck and Sleepless in Seattle,
or perhaps from a sitcom called Someone Like Me. You
may not remember that her mother is Viva, one of Andy
Warhol's proteges at The Factory back in the 1960s.
Gaby took several years off from film acting to get
her college degree and to pursue a career in the New
York theater scene, but is now 30, and back on the big
screen in roles that clearly establish her as an
adult.
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| 21 |
Gwendoline
Taylor in "Spartacus"
final season,
"War of the Damned"
The Spartacus
series, which was original programming from the
Starz network, presented full-frontal nudity and
Roman erotic shenanigans from a variety of actors
and actresses. This beautiful Kiwi, Gwendoline
Taylor, was one of the sexiest.
She has also appeared in some TV series in her
native New Zealand, and her next project is a
feature film called Someone
to Carry Me, also lensed in New Zealand, in
which she will play the female lead.
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| 17t |
Rose McGowan in "Wild Rose"
short art
project
Rosie, one of
the bad-girl indie darlings of the mid 90s, lifted
herself into pop culture infamy by
wearing virtually nothing to the MTV Awards in
1998. She is forty now, but she certainly has
not reduced the amount of flesh she is willing to
let the public see, as she was amenable to dance
around her L.A. house stark naked for a portrait by
photographer Marlene Marino, who captured Rose for
the latest issue of a lifestyle title named
Apartamento.
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| 17t |
Katee Sackhoff in Riddick
6.5 at IMDb
In addition
to her starring role on TV's "Longmire," Katee has
carved out a niche for herself as one of the major
female players of sci-fi.
She got interested in the genre when she watched
Star Trek as a child; she got famous in it as
Starbuck in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, and
she got naked in it in the latest chapter of Vin
Diesel's Riddick chronicles.
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| 17t
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Gracie
Gilbert in "Underbelly"
season six
Gracie was only 20
when she filmed her appearances in this show, which is
not well known outside Australia, but in spite of her
age and the show's obscurity, she made our annual
list.
Why?
Oh, I dunno, maybe ... spectacular breasts?
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| 17t
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Anna
Hutchison in "Spartacus"
final season
Through three seasons
and a prequel, with two different Spartaci, this
series offered viewers a juicy, salacious look at the
familiar sword-and-sandals story. There was plenty of
stylized violence, plenty of Roman scheming, plenty of
battles for honor, and plenty of frontal nudity from
both men and women. Anna didn't join the parade until
the tail end, but her trim body impressed many voters.
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| 15t
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Lili Simmons in
"Banshee"
season one
Cinemax's Banshee
series came out unheralded, but quickly emerged as a
cult favorite because of an interesting story line,
great action scenes, and assertive women. The bonus
for us, of course, is that those women were quite
often nekkid.
The lovely Lili will continue as a series regular in
the second season of Banshee, and will also undertake
a character arc in HBO's heralded True Detective,
another show which is reputed to weave copious nudity
into the action.
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| 15t
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Lake Bell in Black
Rock
4.7 at IMDb
Lake Bell is making
her second appearance on our annual list, and this is
her first full-frontal nude scene. She finished 4th in
2011 for exposing her lovely, large breasts in How to
Make it in America.
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| 14 |
January
Jones in Sweetwater
6.1 at IMDB
In addition to her Emmy and Golden
Globe nominations for her role as Betty Draper on Mad
Men, January Jones has been in movies for about ten
years. Perhaps you remember her as Candace in American
Wedding. In all that time she had not done any
previous nude scenes, but she seems to have decided
that age 35 was a good time to start! Maybe we'll get
lucky and she'll follow the career nudity path of
Laura Linney, who didn't get naked until 35, but then
didn't seem to get dressed again for years.
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| 13 |
Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons
4.1 at IMDB
There is really nothing more to say
about Lindsay. She's only 27, but she's been in the
business 17 years, and in trouble almost as long.
Because her career began about the same time that
people discovered the internet, there have probably
been as many words published about her as about
Abraham Lincoln or Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes
those are words of praise for some of her earlier
work, but all too often they are words of
condemnation, and lately they seem to be words of
sorrow for a beautiful young girl who was devoured by
fame.
Whatever else you may think of her, you will find it
difficult to deny that she has a great chest.
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12
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Rose
Leslie in "Game of Thrones"
season three
Having appeared in
both Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones, the gorgeous
ginge has now played a character on what may be the
two most talked-about shows of the present day.
People love her. There was plenty of nudity elsewhere
on Game of Thrones, but Rose and Emilia Clarke are the
ones who got the votes, and that means they are the
ones we wanted to see.
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| 11
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Ivana Milicevic in
"Banshee"
season one
Interesting woman. She
was born in Bosnia and grew up in Michigan, where she
modeled. She moved after high school to LA, where she
entered show business as ... wait for it ... a
stand-up comedian.
You may not have noticed her before Banshee, but she's
been working steadily in movies, modeling and TV for
more than twenty years (without doing any previous
nudity!) She doesn't look it, but she'll turn 40 this
spring! As you can see to the right, she certainly
hasn't let herself get out of shape.
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| 10
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Emilia
Clarke in "Game of Thrones"
season three
This is the second
time that the spectacularly beautiful Khaleesi has
made the top ten in our annual lists. She also
finished tenth in 2011 for a nude scene that may have
been my favorite of that year - when she emerged from
a fire with her clothes burned off but her flesh and
her pet dragons unharmed.
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9
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Adèle Exarchopoulos
in Blue is the Warmest Color
8.1 at IMDb
Adele, aged 19 at the time of the
2013 Cannes festival, became the youngest person ever
to win the Palme D'Or - and she's not even a director!
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7t
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Laura Prepon in "Orange is
the New Black"
season one
This is the second consecutive
year in which Laura has finished 7th in our poll
(2012- Lay The Favorite). I guess it is a lucky number
after all, at least for her.
She has managed to pull that off with mediocre topless
scenes, which reflects her tremendous level of
popularity and sex appeal. If she ever does a full
frontal scene while she's still young, she'll
definitely be a contender for the top spot.
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7t
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Elisabeth
Moss in "Top of the Lake"
7.6 at IMDB
(mini-series)
What are the chances
that two popular Mad Men actresses, neither of whom
had even done a nude scene, would enter our annual
lists together? (January Jones placed 14th this year.)
I don't know the odds, but I'm glad we beat them.
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6
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Lizzy Caplan in "Masters of Sex"
season one
Lizzy is one of our favorites.
Sixth place is not even her best showing in our annual
polls. In 2008 she placed fourth when she exposed her
flawless body during her run on True Blood.
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5
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Amanda Seyfried in
Lovelace
6.1 at IMDB
Amanda is a former winner in our
annual polls. In 2010 she tied for first place by
delivering a naked and curvy performance in Chloe,
which included some girl-on-girl action with Julianne
Moore. She isn't as curvy now, but we still love
lookin' at 'er!
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4
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Riki
Lindhome in Hell Baby
4.8 at IMDB
I was surprised to see this scene
finish so high, but not because it's a weak entry.
It's a nice full-frontal in good light, and Riki is
adorable. What surprised me was that there was so much
voter enthusiasm for a relatively obscure 34-year-old
actress in a low-budget horror comedy that was never
released theatrically and had not been issued on
Blu-Ray or DVD at the time of the voting. Her
comedy/music act, "Garfunkel and Oates," must have a
tremendous following!
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3
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Shiri
Appleby in "Girls"
season two
A petite brunette with a "girl next
door" look, Shiri made her first TV series appearance
nearly 30 years ago, on the "Santa Barbara" soap
opera, and was doing TV commercials for years before
that. In all those decades she had never done a
topless scene, but this year she and January Jones
each joined the club of actresses doing their first
nude scenes at 35.
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2
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Emily Ratajkowski in "Blurred Lines"
music video
Actress and Ford model Emily
Ratajkowski, at the tender age of 22, rose to global
prominence after uncovering her assets in Robin
Thicke's controversial, R-rated "Blurred Lines" music
video. At one time YouTube had banned the
uncensored version of the video for violating its
guidelines regarding sexually explicit material, but
the internet giant reconsidered and subsequently
reinstated it.
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1
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Rosario Dawson in
Trance
6.9 at IMDB
Rosario won the balloting by
perhaps the largest margin in the history of our
annual polls. (This is our 15th year.) She had more
votes than the three nearest competitors added
together. How did she do it? The picture to the right
is more or less self-explanatory. She's a beautiful,
curvy woman and an established mainstream actress who
allowed herself to be photographed up close, in good
light, with nary a pubic hair to impair our view.
This marks her second appearance in the upper echelons
of our list. She finished #6 way back in 2004 for her
stark naked appearance in Alexander.
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