After swanning through six seasons of Gossip Girl as Upper East Side teen queen Serena van der Woodsen, Blake Lively made some smart choices. Aside from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies--the first of which she shot before becoming a small-screen star-- and Green Lantern--which, if little else, hooked her up with current hubby Ryan Reynolds, she?s kept her head down, delivering credible supporting turns for directors like Rebecca Miller, Ben Affleck, and Oliver Stone. A poised blonde whose statuesque beauty is softened by kind, squinty eyes and a melancholy spaciness, Lively is an odd screen presence ? somehow both warm and cold, accessible and recessive. She?s long been ripe for a breakthrough lead role that allows her to stretch and surprise.
Her new film, The Age of Adaline, about a woman whose physical appearance stops changing just before she hits 30, doesn?t quite give her all that, but it?s a significant step in the right direction.??
