Backlash against Blonde new movie stars are no more Blondes.

The hottest young actresses aren�t blond or conventionally pretty�they�re surly and wisecracking. Nicole LaPorte on the geeky ladies who are taking the industry by storm.

�I�m not nearly as smart as I think I am,� misunderstood teen Olive Penderghast�played by star-on-the-rise Emma Stone�says in the new high-school comedy, Easy A, this generation�s answer to Clueless.

But unlike that film, which celebrated the strange brilliance of a certain kind of bimbo-ness, as embodied by the amazing Alicia Silverstone, Easy A, which is due out Friday, unapologetically champions its heroine�s nerdy know-it-all-ness. Not to mention her�very funny�wiseass-ness. In the movie, Olive becomes something of a celebrated outcast, but still very much an outcast, when she promotes the false rumor that she�s sleeping with pretty much the entire school.

�I remember having to battle certain executives and how insulting they were about certain actresses,� says casting director Allison Jones. �All they cared about was their looks. They didn�t care about their acting talent. They were people who couldn�t judge by anything other than how big (the actress�) breasts were.�


It used to be that girls like Olive, and the actresses who played them (Stone is certainly very pretty, but is far more real than ethereal) were relegated to the sidelines. They were the BFFs, the sisters, the cousins visiting from out of town�not pretty enough, by conventional standards, to play the lead, and too edgy for the soft-contours of a teen movie. (Films in the John Hughes oeuvre excepted.)

But lately, it seems a revolution has been afoot, and the smart, surly girls have stormed the high school prom and stolen the crown from the blond, queen bee babes.

Last month, one of the hottest Hollywood roles to come around in a long time�the lead in the American adaptation of Stieg Larsson�s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy�was awarded not to the gorgeous glamour pusses who were up for it (Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman), but Rooney Mara, a gangly pixie with a dark, edgy vibe, who until now had been routinely turned down by studios for major roles. And this summer�s alterna-hoodie-fest, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, revolved around a blue-haired, wise-to-the-world rebel played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart, the progenitor of the genre, starred in three films this year: Twilight: Eclipse, The Runaways, and Welcome to the Riley�s.

On TV, actresses like Aubrey Plaza, the assistant on Parks and Recreation, who gives off a vibe of numbed astonishment at the idiocy around her, and True Blood�s Lizzy Caplan, who played the cynical cater-waiter on Starz�s sadly short-lived Party Down, are chewing up the scenery and inspiring cult followings. (Just Google the words �Lizzy Caplan� and �girl crush.�)

Offbeat girl roles are, of course, nothing new. Everyone from Christina Ricci to Zooey Deschanel has mastered the art of being simmeringly annoyed with the world over the course of 90 minutes, while eviscerating anyone within range with withering zingers. In the 1990s, Janeane Garofalo was a poster child for the Reality Bites generation.