Celebrity crush: Karen Gillan

Here's the next to the last one of the entries featuring actresses previously profiled in multi-person posts. Amazon and iTunes links follow. Any affiliate payments earned from your purchase or rental will help pay the hosting fees for my podcasts, so please consider clicking.

Name: Karen Gillan (images | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Inverness, Scotland, according to her Wikipedia profile.
Best Known For: A small, character-driven English program called Doctor Who, barely noticed here in America. I'm not sure why she's on this list. (But I should also note that the childhood version of her character on that show was played by a cousin named Caitlin Blackwood.)

Just kidding. Doctor Who is going gangbusters, and her red hair and jaw-dropping legs -- plus some decent comedic timing and eyes I choose to call "expressive," rather than characterizing them as "buggy" as my friend Kelly does -- were a major part of the appeal of the rebuilding season five of the modern series.

(We'll hope the writing picks up some next year -- and that Neil Gaiman's script makes it to air eventually.)

Humble Beginnings: Urm ... well ... she went from modeling to ensemble sketch comedy to one of the biggest science fiction shows in the world in the space of about four years.

She appeared in the fourth (modern) series of Doctor Who, actually, playing an oracle at Pompeii in an adventure featuring Tenth Doctor David Tennant and Catherine Tate as his companion, before landing the gig as companion to Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor.
Obligatory Edgy Stuff: A few artsy lingerie photos are out there, and like I said at Facebook: Somewhere in the midst of The Doctor's travels with Amy Pond, I'm convinced they will encounter a Texas blues-rock band called ZZ Top in the late 1970s or early 1980s, leading to a song called "Legs." We might never see it on camera, but it would explain that tune's existence and indeed, that entire phase of their career.

Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: She's a young actress, just getting started, so I give her a little slack for the less than perfect moments. The red hair and those legs (oh, those legs!) are probably clouding my perception a bit, but I embrace my male weak-mindedness.
Film and TV-movie credits: Outcast (Amazon | iTunes) * New Town Killers (Amazon | iTunes) * Stacked (Amazon | iTunes)

Voice work: Doctor Who: The Adventure Games: TARDIS (Amazon) * Doctor Who: The Adventure Games: Blood of the Cybermen (Amazon) * Doctor Who: The Adventure Games: City of the Daleks (Amazon)
TV and Web series credits: Doctor Who, series 6 (Amazon | iTunes) * Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol (Amazon | iTunes) * BBC's Children in Need, 2010 (Amazon | iTunes) * Doctor Who, series 5 (Amazon | iTunes) * The Well (Amazon | iTunes) * The Kevin Bishop Show, series 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * The Kevin Bishop Show, series 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Doctor Who, series 4: "The Fires of Pompeii" (Amazon | iTunes) * Coming Up, series 6: "Thinspiration" (Amazon | iTunes) * Harley Street: "Pilot" (Amazon | iTunes) * Rebus, series 3: "A Question of Blood" (Amazon | iTunes)