Ali Larter

Ali Larter's first famous role was not a role. In 1996 she appeared in Esquire as Allegra Coleman, a rising starlet invented whole for a magazine hoax, and real television guest work followed through the rest of the decade. Then 1999 delivered both halves of her career at once: Darcy Sears in Varsity Blues and Sara Wolfe in the House on Haunted Hill remake.

Horror kept her. As Clear Rivers she survived Final Destination and came back for the sequel, which is the harder job of the two, since a returning survivor has to carry the exposition, the dread and the audience's memory at the same time without turning into a lecture. Larter plays her tired rather than traumatised, and it works. Legally Blonde in 2001 is the other proof: Brooke Taylor Windham is written as the sorority blonde the plot expects you to dismiss, and Larter gives her enough steel that the film's whole argument lands.

The 2000s ran on that combination. Claire in Resident Evil: Extinction, Tracy Strauss in Heroes, and the fixated stalker of Obsessed, which is the role that shows how much she enjoys being the problem rather than the victim. Since then she has largely moved to television, with a doctor on The Rookie and, since 2024, Angela Norris in Landman, the most fun she has looked in years: a woman with no interest whatever in being the sensible one.