Let's start this article off with some good news - Scarlett Johansson is single again. Now I'd never crow about a relationship dissolving but it's fair to say that Ryan Reynolds' loss is the world's gain. The stunning Scarlett first came to our attention in Ghost World but has carved out a career for herself as a truly A-list star. 2010 saw her appearing in only one film, but it was one with a huge amount of nerd cred - Iron Man 2, where she played the bodacious Black Widow.
Here's a little tip about this list: you don't have to be super-famous to make it. But in the case of California model Shay Maria, you might be on your way. The buxom Chilean-German-Irish model from Buena Park exploded all over the Net in 2010, with her insanely hot photoshoots popping up on innumerable sites. With a hot face, a slamming body and an awesome attitude, I'd say this 19 year old hottie has a great future ahead of her.
We like funny girls - as long as they're hot - so naturally a place has to be made on this list for Dianna Agron, who plays pregnant cheerleader Quinn Fabray on Glee. Quinn's status as the meanest of the mean girls lets her get away with saying some absolutely noxious stuff ("I had sex with you because you got me drunk on wine coolers and I felt fat that day. But it was a mistake.") and she looks great doing it.
Selita Ebanks has been hot for a while - she was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 2005 to 2008, after all - but 2010 was a breakthrough year for her. First she competed on Celebrity Apprentice, but her real triumph was starring in Runaway, the 35-minute short film written and directed by Kanye West. Playing a humanoid phoenix opposite Kanye would be a stretch for even the best actor, but Ebanks pulls it off with aplomb.
Yum, models. Brooklyn Decker hit the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2010, which is just about the pinnacle of achievement for a hot chick. The Ohio-born model has had a pretty great year, being one of the names under consideration to replace Megan Fox in Transformers 3 and winning Esquire's "Sexiest Woman Alive" bracket.
Carey Mulligan burst onto the scene last year with her role in An Education, where she was nominated for a huge spread of awards. She's kept the hype train rolling on 2010 with Never Let Me Go, the weird dystopian drama directed by Mark Romanek, as well as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The pixie-cut Brit has an impressive mix of elegance and youth and is only getting better as she goes on.
The 2000s were a decade where nerds got a lot of love. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog helped make the red-headed Felicia Day a massive viral star - and her work on The Guild didn't hurt. Day spent 2010 doing exactly what a girl in her position should be doing - starring in a SyFy original movie that transformed Little Red Riding Hood into a werewolf hunter. Hey, work with what you know!
Eva Mendes had a pretty good 2010, but when you look like Eva Mendes I'd assume you'd have a pretty good year every year. The Cuban-American actress ended '09 on a crazy note with a role in Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans opposite Nicolas Cage, but rebounded hard with The Other Guys, by far the funniest buddy cop parody of the year (sorry, Kevin Smith). Playing Will Ferrell's way-too-hot wife, she demonstrated as yet unrevealed comic chops.
So Jessica Paré got a serious bump on the list with the Mad Men season finale, which saw her character (secretary Megan) get engaged to Don Draper. But let's just say that real fans got a little more of this Canadian hottie in the summer's Hot Tub Time Machine, which saw her totally topless in a wild hot tub sctup sequence with The Office's Craig Robinson. Try to get those bouncing boobs out of your head once you've seen them - I dare you.
Let's face it - Miley Cyrus is played out. Disney Channel's moved on to new stars with less baggage - but still some baggage. Selena Gomez turned 18 this year, and celebrated with a star turn in Ramona And Beezus, a film adaptation of a classic Beverly Cleary novel. She also signed on for Monte Carlo, an upcoming rom-com about three friends posing as wealthy socialites.
Former Page 3 girl Keeley Hazell had a pretty fine 2010. After giving up her regular appearances in the British newspapers, she traveled to America to take acting lessons. That hasn't stopped her from taking lots of photographs in skimpy outfits, though, for which we are thankful. The current buzz about the busty Brit is that she's being considered for a role on a Baywatch relaunch, which would be simpy brilliant.
So Entourage is limping to a sad conclusion, but there's still a good reason to watch the show. Yeah, I'm talking about the gorgeous Emmanuelle Chiriqui, who plays Eric's unlikely fiancee Sloan McQuewick. As ridiculous as the plotlines get, we know that we'll still have a few minutes every week to gaze upon this Canadian hotness. She also earned some nerd cred this year for doing voice work on Call Of Duty: Black Ops.
Amanda Seyfried's had a pretty good year - starring opposite Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body, opposite Channing Tatum in Dear John, and in the erotic thriller Chloe. We've been fans ever since her work on Veronica Mars, so it's awesome to see the huge-eyed actress coming into her own on the big screen. Next up is Catherine Hardwicke's horror reinterpretation of Red Riding Hood, due next year.
Once again displaying our weakness for funny girls, Rashida Jones has been one of the forces making Parks & Recreation transform from sort of terrible to consistently funny over the last two years. We first saw her as Karen on The Office, but she was great in I Love You, Man as well. And, for extra-powerful nerd cred, she created her own comic book, Frenemy Of The State, which is published by Oni Press.
A lot of celebs took to Twitter this year, with varying results, but it's fair to say that Amanda Bynes' was one worth following. Why? Well, because the Hairspray starlet is completely bonkers. First there was a big kerfluffle about her announcement that she preferred to date Black dudes, and then there was her "acting retirement" in June of 2010 (she took it back a month later). Her career may be stalled out, but she still looks damn good, so she gets a spot on the list.
Ahh, Twilight. It will be nice to be three or four years into the future and have nobody ever talk about you again. But, for now, we're stuck with the vampire saga that captivated a nation. One good thing to come out of the whole boondoggle was more exposure for the lovely Ashley Greene, who plays Alice Cullen in the series. Greene, originally hailing from Florida, had some minor acting roles before Twilight, but the massive success of the movies have rocketed her into the A-list and into boyfriend Joe Jonas's lap.
From one vampire franchise to another - HBO's True Blood has been the network's biggest hit in years, mixing down-South sleaze with some intense gore and some very weird plot twists. And, of course, the chance to see Anna Paquin naked a lot. This girl's come a long way from her role as Rogue in X-Men, and we're happy she's in an environment where she can get down and dirty for our entertainment.
It would be hard for Zoe Saldana to top her 2009 - after all, with Avatar, she was part of the most money-making movie of all time. But she managed to carry on pretty well in the 2K10 with a role in the fun actioner The Losers where she got to show some more ass-kicking grit, as well as the remarkably good remake of Death At A Funeral. Moving on to 2011, she's set for the next Star Trek movie as well as both Avatar sequels, meaning a lot of space time.
From High School Musical to Sucker Punch - my, how far Vanessa Hudgens has come. The former Disney Channel starlet has had her share of nude photo scandals in recent years, but really, who hasn't? She's also earned cred by appearing on Robot Chicken and of course we're jazzed for her role in Zack Snyder's new eye-searing action messtacle, which drops in early 2011.
It's not a real common career arc to go from "the other woman" in a political scandal to an actual celebrity, but big ups to Ashley Dupre for pulling it off. Best known as the hooker who brought down Eliot Spitzer in 2008, Ashley Dupre has leveraged her hotness into a bona-fide career - being hired as a sex columnist for the New York Post, posing for Playboy and even starting a music career. Not bad for a prostitute!
Kaley Cuoco is a damn fine anchor for a sitcom - a hot blonde who can deliver a joke as well as she takes one. First breaking through in 8 Simple Rules, she's currently working it on The Big Bang Theory as the gorgeous Penny, the hot chick who tries to keep a pair of goony physicists in line. It looks like movies are the next logical step for Cuoco, as she's been cast opposite Cam Gigandet in Darkness Falls.
So 2010 will go down in history as the year Evan Rachel Wood finally stopped dating Marilyn Manson. Huzzah! After the brief scare that they got engaged in January, the lovely actress (last seen in The Wrestler) has finally moved on from the increasingly less relevant shock-rocker. She's been guesting on True Blood in the interim and has a pile of projects set to hit next year.
The World Cup was hot news in 2010, with football fans from all over the world converging on South Africa to cheer their country on. And, of course, there were the fans. It seemed like every nation was competing to see which could field the foxiest babe in the stands. One who really made a name for herself was Larissa Riquelme, who promised that she'd run naked through the streets if her native Paraguay won the Cup. Unfortunately, the other teams didn't do the right thing and forfeit when they heard that.
Olivia Munn finished off her year with a pretty important role in the Spike TV Video Game Awards. Besides that her spot on Attack of the Show! has kept her at the forefront of many a geek heart.
Is it just me or did England produce an inordinate amount of hotness this generation? We've already hit upon a few British beauties in this list, and here's another. Kelly Brook was all over the Net this year, both in the gore-filled Piranha 3D and on the page in Playboy, and her career is just getting started. Which is good, because I like to look at hot chicks. All day.
What's worse than rebounding back to Reality TV? Kristin Cavallari looked to be escaping the vortex when she didn't make the transition from Laguna Beach to The Hills, but her career sort of stalled in the interim. 2009 saw her eating a little crow and returning to the MTV reality empire, and her stint at least let us gaze upon the naturally gorgeous blonde every week for a little while. With her stint over, who knows what she'll do next, but maybe the second chance will do the trick.
You watchin' Fringe? If you're not, what the hell is wrong with you? The Fox mindbender is doing everything right that Lost did wrong, and it's a must-watch every week. Sepcial props go to Anna Torv, who plays one of our favorite ass-kicking women on TV as agent Olivia Dunham. I have much respect for anybody who's willing to play their own duplicate from an evil alternate universe.
So 2010 had the honor of crowning the first Arab-American Miss America in the form of Lebanon-born Rima Fakih. Naturally, this produced an explosion of idiocy from some of our stupider citizens. But how can you deny this natural hotness? Fakih was raised in the large Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan, and has used her reign to help aid religious tolerance in the States.
It's been a pretty good year for the UFC, despite Brock Lesnar's injuries and some less than exciting fights. And a good year for the UFC is a good year for ring girl Arianny Celeste, who has rode the organization to a level of fame. The Mexican-Filipino model has become the most identifiable female face of the organization, and her photo shoots for Stuff, Maxim and more didn't hurt. She also hit Playboy this year, appearing on the cover of the November issue.
Okay, I have to say that the myriad Emma Watson countdown clocks all over the Internet ticking down the seconds until the Harry Potter star became legal were... a little creepy. But, now that she's officially a young woman (and not jailbait), truth be told she's quite a looker. Especially with her new short hair. She's earned more than $20 million from the Potter films, so she never has to work again, but one hopes she'll continue to act in the future.
Paz Vega is the latest Spanish lovely to make a splash on these shores, having her American debut in Adam Sandler vehicle Spanglish before knocking our socks off in The Spirit. She had a pretty mellow 2010, but let's hope she's just taking some downtime to recharge her batteries to come back next year with enhanced vigor.
Melanie Laurent: played. Léa Seydoux: the new hotness. Sure, she was barely in Inglourious Basterds (as one of the farmer's other daughters in the opening scene), but she's developed into quite the little star in the last year. She looked great in the sort of messy Robin Hood, but the big roles are still coming - Woody Allen has her tapped for Midnight In Paris and she's playing the main villain in the Mission Impossible reboot!
So Hayley Williams from Paramore made the leap into full-blown adulthood earlier this year when she accidentally Tweeted a nudie pic to the Internet at large. Naturally, the blogosphere exploded, but they didn't tell us anything we didn't already know - the flame-haired singer is a stone cold rock fox. She guested on B.o.B.'s "Airplanes," one of the biggest hits of the year, so she got some respect back.
Is there a TV mom more hateable than Betty Draper? January Jones has accomplished a feat of acting that we would have previously thought impossible: making it hard to look at a foxy blonde with a great body. She had a pretty great 2010, from getting caught by paparazzi doing the walk of shame home to getting cast as Emma Frost in the upcoming X-Men reboot. That is, when she's not neglecting her 1960s kids.
Let's transition to a TV mom who we like a lot better - the insanely foxy Sofia Vergara from Modern Family. Dude, after so many years of Married With Children, Ed O'Neill finally gets to land a hottie, and Vergara's nice looks and great comic timing are one of the elements that make that show so good. Sofia started acting at 17 and worked her way up through small parts in movies like Soul Plane, and she's at the top of her game right now.
The insanely curvy Czech-born model Denise Milani has taken over the Internet with photoshoot after photoshoot showing off her tremendous rack. And the rest of her isn't too bad either. She's been modeling since 2004, but things really started to blow up for her this year. Sorry, dudes: she's publicly stated that she has no intention of posing nude.
The host of Chelsea Lately really had a pretty damn good 2010 - from hosting the MTV Video Music Awards to writing and publishing her third book. But the big thing was the rumored relationship with rapper 50 Cent, which would have been a pairing to be reckoned with. Alas, she denied the hookup, but anything's possible in the 2K11.
Are you psyched for Scream 4? I think enough time has passed that the franchise can seem fresh again, especially with a whole new cast. One I particularly like is Alison Brie, who is probably best known for playing Trudie Campbell on Mad Men but has some nerd cred for co-hosting G4's Attack Of The Show for awhile. Also she used to work as a party clown before she made it big, so extra humilation points there.
It takes a certain degree of hotness to replace Megan Fox in a movie, but it looks like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has what it takes. The Transformers 3 starlet beat out a bunch of other hotties for the part, but she didn't just pop up out of nowhere. She's been modeling for years and also was named a Victoria's Secret angel this year. She's also dating Jason Statham, one of our favorite dudes, so we can't get too upset that she's off the market.
Kim Kardashian had a bit of a turbid 2010, with lots of ups and downs. First it was revealed that she gets paid over $10,000 just to Tweet about consumer products, which seems like a pretty sweet way to make money to me. Then she got her own wax figure at Madame Tussaud's and started dating Gabriel Aubry, Halle Berry's babydaddy. A busy girl indeed!
Okay, so maybe Emma Stone didn't have the best year in terms of movies that actually came out - Easy A was all right, but then there was Marmaduke, about which the less said the better. But the Superbad hottie is looking real good going into 2011 with the announcement that she'll be playing Gwen Stacy in the much-hyped Spider-Man reboot. And don't worry about her hair - she's a natural blonde.
Glee's Lea Michele has done pretty well for herself this year, riding the Fox musical comedy show to the top of the A-list. She came to TV from Braodway, where she starred in such hit shows as Spring Awakening. She'll be playing Dorothy in a new animated version of The Wizard Of Oz and will make her film debut with the upcoming rom-com New Year's Eve.
As long as Jessica Alba is alive, she's going to be making "hottest women" lists. It doesn't hurt that she had a year that saw her in some compromising positions and some awesome movies. First and foremost, by appearing in Machete she proved that she's still got what it takes to kick ass. Speaking of ass, getting spanked by Casey Affleck in The Killer Inside Me was one of the hottest scenes of the past decade. Oh, and then there was Valentine's Day but whatever, girls have to go to the movies too.
Probably the hottest World of Warcraft player we know, Mila Kunis looked great this year in Black Swan, and looks to be set for life as the voice of Meg Griffin on Family Guy. She also did Date Night this year, as well as The Book Of Eli. Those are some pretty different movies! Did you know that she got her TV start as two different characters on two different episodes of Baywatch?
So Kristen Stewart basically never has to work again, right? After landing the plum role of Bella Swan in the Twilight series, the LA-born actress could retire and sleep on a bed of money. Thankfully, she's not, so 2010 let us see her as Joan Jett in the uneven but compelling The Runaways, where she brought a little snarl to her act with excellent results. The future sees her delving even farther back into the counterculture past with a role in the adaptation of the Jack Kerouac beatnik classic On The Road.
If we're going to pick a breakthrough rapper for 2010, it would have to be Nicki Minaj. Born in Trinidad but raised in Queens, Minaj dropped mixtapes and guest tracks, building buzz for her debut Pink Friday. And she worked with some serious guns in 2010 - Usher, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, Ludacris and more. And she's also pretty nice to look at, too - bonus!
Christina Hendricks got a lot of guff this year for just bein' what she is - an impossibly stacked redhead built like a real woman, not a stick insect. The Mad Men star was voted the sexiest woman in the world by Esquire readers this year, proving that maybe the human race isn't quite as messed up as we'd feared. What's next? Roles in a few films, including the upcoming Drive.
Okay, so Megan Fox didn't have the best year, career-wise - Jonah Hex was a flop (although I'm curious to see all the stuff Neveldine & Taylor had to cut out) and we haven't seen a whiff of Passion Play, her drama with Mickey Rourke. Plus she got married to David Silver from 90210. And yet, here she is on our Goddamned list, almost like a malevolent force from beyond the stars forced us to put her here. That force is called a boner.
Man, Kristen Bell works her ass off. Here's the short list of stuff she did in 2010. A few episodes of Party Down (great show, R.I.P.). Terrible rom-com When In Rome. Terrible comedy You Again. Terrible whatever the F Burlesque was Burlesque. Okay, so maybe the stuff the former Veronica Mars has been doing isn't necessarily good, but she sure has been doing a lot of it. And she's cute! 2011 looks better so far with Scream 4 and the bizarre Movie 43 on the horizon.
You know what, I could make all kinds of excuses for why I picked Victoria's Secret model Marisa Miller to top off this list, but you know what? I don't need any. She's an incredibly hot chick and you just looked at 49 other incredibly hot chicks and if you can make distinctions between their levels of hotness, I encourage you to do so in the comments. For me, it's like picking my favorite star out of the sky. They all twinkle and they're too far away for me to ever touch them, even if they didn't have restraining orders.
