Cherry Hill ‘Heroes’ star is ‘Fun Fearless Female of the Year’
Person of the year. Athlete of the year. Most influential people of the year.
Person of the year. Athlete of the year. Most influential people of the year.
Those are honorifics we've all heard of.
But "Fearless Fun Female of the Year"?
That's what Cosmopolitan is calling its February cover queen, Ali Larter, who grew up in Cherry Hill and is best-known as a triple threat on NBC's sci-fi fantasy Heroes.
The mag also names 11 "Fun Fearless Males of 2009," including Maroon 5's Adam Levine and The Office's Rainn "Dwight Shrute" Wilson, without picking a top dog.
Larter's the only woman so designated, but the issue never exactly explains how she came to be named.
But editor-in-chief Kate White yesterday explained: "Ali Larter is talented, gorgeous and totally on fire in both her career and personal life. She is also gutsy, authentic and very down to earth - someone that our readers can both relate to and admire.
"Those are all qualities we look for when choosing our Fun Fearless Female of the Year winners - a list that includes Katherine Heigl, Eva Mendes and Beyonce."
Larter's interview is your basic gushy glam-girl piece.
Citing an upcoming film and her year-long engagement to actor Hayes MacArthur, Cosmo writes, "the former teen model has hit her stride ... and not just professionally."
Larter, 32, met Hayes while working on the National Lampoon film Homo Erectus.
In Obsessed, due out in the spring, Larter stalks the husband of a character played by Beyonce Knowles.
"Long gone are the days when she was known simply as the girl in the whipped-cream bikini in 1999's Varsity Blues," Cosmo writes.
Larter talks about love ("I've been in a lot of fiery relationships"), glamour ("I enjoy putting on a sexy dress and heels"), and even the Garden State:
"There's a directness and a feistiness to being from Jersey," she said. "That, to me, is sexy and fun."
NBC's Heroes clearly loves Larter, too. The show killed off two of her characters - and still brought her back.
As last season ended, an explosion apparently blasted to smithereens the body shared by Larter's good-and-evil characters, Niki and Jessica Sanders.
No matter. Larter's back this season as Tracy Strauss, a dead-ringer for Niki-Jessica but with her own special ability: One icy touch can shatter a person to death.
Brrr.
Larter's filmography includes roles in Legally Blonde, A Lot Like Love, Final Destination, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, House on Haunted Hill, and Resident Evil: Extinction.
She once described her first commercial, at age 13, to The Inquirer's David Hiltbrand: "I was a girl in a pool and another girl gave me tickets to a Phillies game."
Before that, she was a "little tomboy," she said. "I played soccer and softball. I was one sock up and one sock down with dirty, scraped-up knees."
Funny, but Cosmo interview begins with Larter talking about "dirt all over me, twigs in my hair, and blood and scrapes covering my face."
Those souvenirs, though, were from shooting a scene for Heroes.