Halloween celebrity crush: Maggie Grace

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With this Monday being Halloween, prepare for a deluge: This Lost veteran is the first of seven new entries today and tomorrow, all featuring actresses associated with horror (or at least somewhat spooky) movies or TV shows, even if they've gone on to do work outside that genre.

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Name: Maggie Grace (images | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Born and raised in Worthington, Ohio, until she dropped out of high school to move to Los Angeles with her mother to pursue her acting career after her parents divorced, according to her Wikipedia profile.
Best Known For: On the small screen, Maggie's longest run to date was playing the somewhat bratty Shannon Rutherford on Lost. I've included the entirety of the series in the links below, because it's a heavily serialized show where you need to see what came before to grasp the payoffs of what came at the end, but she was only a regular in the first two seasons and then returned in seasons three and six for one episode each.

Her movie career includes playing Liam Neeson's kidnapped daughter in the action film Taken (with rumors of involvement in a sequel), popping up in Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz's action film Knight and Day, and acting alongside Smallville star Tom Welling in the horror remake The Fog (notable for showcasing the 5'9" actress' long, toned legs -- and some computer generated special effects that were a little less special by comparison).

More lofty, perhaps, was her main role in the movie The Jane Austen Book Club. And she'll be in the final two Twilight movies late this year and sometime in 2012. (Y'all enjoy that; I'll just wait for a Taken sequel.)

The Lost producers apparently felt that Shannon
had limited storyline options. I think that shows
a failure of imagination. She could have offered all
sorts of snarky dialogue while modeling an endless
variety of bikinis, far more than she could reasonably
have had in her airplane luggage, further proof of
The Island's strange, sexy, supernatural powers.

Humble Beginnings: Maggie was acting on stage as a child and teen, Wikipedia notes. At 16, she appeared in a production of The Crucible before heading to California.

In 2001, after going west, Maggie starred in Web series Rachel's Room, created by a Dawson's Creek producer. The Fox sitcom Septuplets -- one in a row of series greenlit and canceled unaired by the network around the turn of the century -- followed, along with guest appearances on CSI: Miami and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (the latter in the same season that Lost premiered -- hedged bets or something in the can before the series pickup, I dunno). She was in a single Celebrity Crush Nexus episode of Cold Case that also featured Amber Benson, Marisol Nichols, and Katee Sackhoff.

Given that THIS gentleman
prefers brunettes, her look in
Taken was a positive step.

Maggie caught attention in a 2002 TV-movie titled Murder in Greenwich, based on a true story, playing a 15-year-old murder victim; Tom Selleck played her father. And the second season of the charming, but short-lived Oliver Beene saw her play an alluring foreign exchange student. (Whoa. I remember that. Didn't realize it was her. Or that Oliver Beene went back that far.)
Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: Shannon wasn't an easy woman to love, but Maggie gave it her best. She's developed a niche in the action and spooky genres that fits her well, and she's beautiful on top of all that. (If she and fellow crushes Emily Rose and Emily Vancamp -- who all have a similar look -- wanted to play sisters in something, I could watch it forever even with the volume off and never have to watch anything else. Heck, add in Maggie Lawson -- two Maggies, two Emilys, prettiest show EVER.)

TV and Web Series Credits: Lost, season 6 (Amazon | iTunes) * Lost, season 5 (she's not in it, but for continuity's sake...) (Amazon | iTunes) * Lost, season 4 (she's not in it, but for continuity's sake...) (Amazon | iTunes) * Lost, season 3 (Amazon | iTunes) * Lost, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Lost, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, season 6: "Obscene" (Amazon | iTunes) * Oliver Beene, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Cold Case, season 1: "Volunteers" (Amazon | iTunes) * Like Family: "My Two Moms" (Amazon | iTunes) * Miracles (2003): "Mother's Daughter" (Amazon | iTunes) * The Lyon's Den: "Beach House" (Amazon | iTunes) * CSI: Miami, season 1: "Spring Break" (Amazon | iTunes) * Rachel's Room (2001 Web series) (Amazon | iTunes)

Film and TV-movie Credits: Relative Insanity (pre-production) (Amazon | iTunes) * The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012) (Amazon | iTunes) * Decoding Annie Parker (filming) (Amazon | iTunes) * Lockout (post-production) (Amazon | iTunes) * The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (Nov. 2011) (Amazon | iTunes) * Faster (Amazon | iTunes) * The Experiment (Amazon | iTunes) * Knight and Day (Amazon | iTunes) * Flying Lessons (Amazon | iTunes) * Malice in Wonderland (2009) (Amazon | iTunes) * Taken (2009) (Amazon | iTunes) * The Jane Austen Book Club (Amazon | iTunes) * Suburban Girl (Amazon | iTunes) * The Fog (2005) (Amazon | iTunes) * Creature Unknown (Amazon | iTunes) * Twelve Mile Road (2003 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Murder in Greenwich (2002 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Shop Club (Amazon | iTunes)