Dancing Mattress Productions: Celebrity Crush: Rachael Leigh Cook

11 February 2010

Celebrity Crush: Rachael Leigh Cook

Here's an actress who didn't really catch my eye until she started a guest gig on Psych, some time after she first came to prominence.

Name: Rachael Leigh Cook (images)
Hometown: Minneapolis, according to her Wikipedia profile
Best Known For: Rachael's best known for the teen romantic comedy She's All That and for a memorable This is Your Brain on Drugs public service ad (which saw her trash a kitchen).

Other works include the comics-based Josie and the Pussycats movie with probable future celebrity crush profilee Rosario Dawson, the TNT miniseries Into the West and the Emma Roberts-starring Nancy Drew movie, plus lots of indie films and TV guest shots.

She's had a recurring role on Psych since the third season (continuing into the current fourth season) as Abigail, a girl Shawn Spencer stood up as a teenager and started dating after their high school reunion.

(Her character has headed off to Africa in recent episodes, a move that probably is coincidental to the actress announcing in December that she's pregnant. But it means we'll probably see her less often, which is a pity. As much as I adore fellow celebrity crush Maggie Lawson, I thought Rachael had good chemistry with series lead James Roday.)

Humble Beginnings: Early roles included a Baby-Sitters Club movie, playing Becky in the Mark Twain-based film Tom and Huck, an episode of The Outer Limits and playing a young actress in an early episode of Dawson's Creek.

Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: She was probably too skinny at the start of her career, but she seems to be a more healthy weight now. So that's probably caused her to catch my eye now, whereas she didn't originally.

Beyond her looks, though, her time on Psych has shown her to have good comedic timing -- a necessity for keeping up with James Roday and Dule Hill's antics and fast delivery of lines. (You know they've got to be doing a LOT of takes on that show just to keep straight faces.)

And she campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008, which is always a plus in my book.
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Psych - Psych, Season 4