Celebrity crush: Megalyn Echikunwoke

Today's featured celebrity isn't just a beautiful woman -- she's royalty.

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She's totally bow-down-to worthy.

Name: Megalyn Echikunwoke (images -- some NSFW | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Born in Spokane, Wash., but raised on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, according to her Wikipedia profile. Her mother is Caucasian, her father Nigerian -- with her grandfather an Igbo tribal chief, making her technically royalty, according to her IMDB profile. She certainly LOOKS regal.

Best Known For: Megalyn has been featured as a regular cast member on The 4400 (playing a tremendously powerful metahuman who had aged from infancy to adulthood overnight without the emotional maturity catching up quite so fast) and CSI: Miami (playing a medical examiner for one season).

Other significant runs include a three-episode arc on legal drama Raising the Bar, multiple appearances in the first season of 24, eight episodes of That '70s Show, and the sole season of a multiracial comedy called Like Family.

She was also in two movies (Camjackers and Fix) that co-starred House actress Olivia Wilde ... who was Italian royalty (by marriage) at the time.

Humble Beginnings: Megalyn started appearing on television before she turned 18; those credits are not listed below. Other roles since adulthood include guest shots on Boston Public, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Veronica Mars, Supernatural, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she's in the upcoming Damsels in Distress with former OC star Adam Brody and -- more relevant to this blog -- fellow celebrity crush Aubrey Plaza.

Obligatory Edgy Stuff: Do topless beach photos -- spectacular but perhaps not even of her -- count? Just curious.
Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: She's a beautiful woman perfectly willing to play characters who are less than noble or heroic or sane. When she's good, she's very very good, but when she's bad -- well, you know how it goes.

Film and TV-movie credits: House of Lies (2011 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Damsels in Distress (Amazon | iTunes) * Who Do You Love (2008) (Amazon | iTunes) * Fix (2008) (Amazon | iTunes) * Camjackers (Amazon | iTunes) * Hitched (2005 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Great Lengths (2004 short) (Amazon | iTunes)
Music credit: "So Much" from Spyder Games soundtrack (Amazon | iTunes)
TV and Web video credits: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, season 11: "Anchor" (Amazon | iTunes) * Raising the Bar, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * CSI: Miami, season 7 (Amazon | iTunes) * The Game, season 2: "Take These Vows and Shove 'Em!" (Amazon | iTunes) * The 4400, season 4 (Amazon | iTunes) * The 4400, season 3 (Amazon | iTunes) * Supernatural, season 1: "Route 666" (Amazon | iTunes) * That '70s Show, season 7 (Amazon | iTunes) * Veronica Mars, season 1: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" (Amazon | iTunes) * Like Family (Amazon | iTunes) * Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 7: "The Killer in Me" (Amazon | iTunes) * What I Like About You, season 1: "The Parrot Trap" (Amazon | iTunes) * ER, season 8: "Bygones" (Amazon | iTunes) * Sheena, season 2: "Coming to Africa" (Amazon | iTunes) * 24, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Boston Public, season 2: "Chapter Twenty-Four" (Amazon | iTunes) * Spyder Games (Amazon | iTunes)