Why I Love Mandy Moore

There are three famous women that I feel absolutely certain I would be great friends with if ever we met - Jennifer Garner, Lauren Graham and Mandy Moore. I...have a type I guess.

Anyway, I've always felt like I needed to explain my love for Mandy Moore for some reason. Like, ok, she's not the most talented actress or singer in the world, but she makes more good career choices than bad, she doesn't seem to struggle with any substance abuse issues, she's not more well known for her partying than for her movies or music and...well, the list of people who've seen her lady parts does not include "the entire internet-having world." So whatever, I'm not defending it anymore. I have a girl crush on Ms. Moore and I'm damn proud of it.

Because of said girl crush I make a point of seeing all of her movies. Last night I watched Dedication which was an "independent" (or what I prefer to call "festival") film which seemed, on the surface, to have several things going for it: Tom Wilkinson, Diane Wiest, Amy Sedaris, Bobby Cannavale, Billy Crudup (who is, almost certainly, a total shit as a human being - what with dumping his long-time girlfriend 7 months into a pregnancy in favor of shacking up with a starlet 11 years his junior - but is quite a good actor) and a first-time director who I quite adore as an actor in Justin Theroux. Not to mention Mandy.

And let me tell you, she looked STUNNING in this movie. The things that I would do to have her hair or her skin or her eyes, would surely get me arrested in at least 40 states. I thought she did good work playing opposite someone whose character was bat-shit crazy. Make no mistake, Billy Crudup is what that movie is about. Billy Crudup having a nervous breakdown, flexing his "ticks of a nut-job" muscle, reciting monologue after over-wrought monologue. Still, in every scene the two shared, she didn't seem like another set-piece for him to chew up and spit out. She held her own, even when the only thing she had to work with was silent emotion. The movie gave her little to do - and gave Cannavale, Sedaris and Wiest almost NOTHING to do, Theroux should be ashamed - but she did it wonderfully.

And did I mention how absolutely gorgeous she is?