7 Actresses Who Went Topless

Bipasha Basu: Bollywood's sultry siren made the boys swoon with this calendar photo shoot! Following in the footsteps of many Hollywood/Bollywood counterparts (Vidya Balan included!), she posed topless for Dabboo Ratnani's 2011 calendar and looks fresh and fun in this au naturel shoot!

Image courtesy: Dabboo Ratnani 

 

Kashmira Shah: Notwithstanding her own controversial nude and topless scene in Revati which Kashmira Shah wanted deleted from the movie, this item girl has posed topless for her new calendar titled 'Kashessential'. She sure knows how to stay in the news! 

 

Amisha Patel: We were surprised when Amisha Patel dropped the towel... ehm... posed topless on the cover page of The Man magazine's July 2010 issue. Not her best pose, but nevertheless worth a mention. 

 

Sayali Bhagat: Former Miss India and female protagonist of Jannat posed semi-nude for The Man magazine's February 2010 issue. She looks confident and at ease with herself. 

 

Natalie Portman: Oscar-award winning Hollywood actress Natalie Portman has us sit up and take notice when she went topless in a cute chic avatar for the Miss Dior Cherie perfume ad campaign. She was chosen to promote the new fragrance because it is believed that she aptly represents the values of luxury and the glamour of Dior. We agree! 

 

Rihanna: Rihanna is no Hollywood actress, but she's sure as famous as any other celebrity! Rihanna posing naked for Nivea's 100th anniversary ad campaign. Rihanna has always brought out her rebellion through her songs; now she's set to bring it out through this photo shoot as well! 

 

Kirsten Dunst: Best known for her role as Mary Jane in the Spiderman movie series, Kristen Dunst, reveals her wild side in a new perfume ad for Bvlgari's Mon Jasmin Noir. The actor is seen posing in the wild with a lion, wearing nothing but a satin sheet. She holds up a huge perfume bottle to cover her modesty.

No bold lip colours for Portman

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, who is pregnant with her first child, says she feels like a clown to wear bold lipstick but is now slowly trying to agree with make-up artists to wear more dramatic colours.

"I feel like a clown if I put on strong lipstick, but recently I've experimented with reds. Make-up artists have been urging me to try stronger lips, but it still doesn't feel like me. I'm working on it," femalefirst quoted her as saying.

Portman also revealed she developed an interest in perfume from her mother and believes it is important to include scent when "dressing up".

"My mum taught me to spray fragrance and walk into it. She has a sensitive sense of smell, so I've grown up with a great awareness. A scent that sets you apart makes you feel glamorous and elegant and gives you a different way of walking into a room - it's part of dressing up," she added.

Film: “Black Swan”; 

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder; 

Director: Darren Aronofsky; 

Rating: **** – a dark perfection.

 

Though weakness, fragility and ugliness are frowned upon, these are the elixir of life. For there could be no conception of strength or beauty without it. And it is the conception of these opposites — black and white, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, woman and her doppelganger that auteur Darren Aronofsky explores in “Black Swan”, beginning with the two words of the film’s name that stand for opposites.

Nina (Nataile Portman), a ballerina, is desperate for the part of the swan queen in the ballet Swan Lake. The director, though impressed with her discipline, does not think she has it in her to play the swan queen’s evil twin, black swan. And she indeed gets too easily intimidated by everyone. However, gradually she observes changes in herself.

After a rash incident makes her director choose her, her dark side takes over gradually and through schizophrenic hallucinations, she not only plays the black swan, but becomes it in her mind and achieves perfection.

While casting Nina, the director tells Nina: “What is the use of all that discipline. Let go. Transcend. Surprise yourself”. That is what Aronofsky, an extremely disciplined filmmaker, seems to be telling himself.

After he hangs Mickey Rourke mid-air in the last shot of his last film “The Wrestler”, here he lets his ballerina take her leap of faith and follows his camera to her fall to ecstasy. Taking a leap with Rourke in the last film and Portman in this, Aronofsky does reach his own perfection.

Aronofsky’s skills are evident in the way he tells the story; a good part of it through mere reflection. Nina sees her dark reflection on the glass of a suburban train. Later, when she sees Beth, who she has replaced, for the first time after her accident, she sees her as a reflection on a glass pane of a door. Both these reflection foreshadow her future.

Unlike “The Fountain”, where he traverses the universe, here he confines himself to the immediate space of his ballerina. As her split personality and schizophrenic hallucinations become more pronounced, the camera composes her tightly as the spaces keep getting more and more constricted, till the end where she flies away.

It is the nature of things that opposite enhances. White looks whiter near black, beauty shines more in the presence of ugliness, strength soars in front of weakness. And that is the intention of “Black Swan”, to enhance white, beauty and strength, by highlighting the opposite, but showing the protagonist reach these using the opposite.

Natalie Portman, who won an Oscar for this role, drowns herself in this dark tale of an obsessed ballerina. She’s fragile and evil in equal and delicate measure, a quality without which the film would not have worked. And with over a century-old composer in Tchaikovsky, whose compositions embody opposites, the film does manage to achieve its own cinematic perfection.