2 Dollar Productions

I saw the preview for the new Charlize Theron vehicle, "North Country," last week and I can't say that I was too excited about the experience.

The film appears to be one of those Oscar-baiting, strip-mining, well-meaning, lesson-learning plots where Theron must fight to preserve her dignity as well as her right to work in some shithole mine somewhere in the north country where the days are long and the accents are silly.

"North Country" is already generating good buzz, and while I'd bet that it's a quality project, I still have very little desire to see it.

The mine looks dark, dank and depressing (why anyone would fight to work in this pit is utterly beyond me) and since Theron's character spends her days toiling there, she tends to resemble this putrid hovel.

Theron looks extremely average and it's hard to be even remotely sexy when you're covered in mine gunk all day long.

After the preview ended, I was a little sad about Theron's plight concerning this mining issue, but I was even more concerned with her continuation of a disturbing trend where actresses break onto the movie scene with a head-turningly sexy debuts and then spend the rest of their careers shunning the very hotness that caused them to leave their mark in the first place.

Theron first came to my attention after her part in "Two Days in the Valley." I didn't know who she was, but I certainly wanted to find out after watching her pummel Teri Hatcher and hump James Spader like a hyena.

Quite simply, she was phenomenal. She was also blonde and chiseled and wearing a white nightie for large parts of the film.

Theron is by no means an anomaly in this regard, however, as she is merely following in the footsteps of many other big stars who have never again looked as good as they did in their early movies.

A few examples:

Cameron Diaz - In the movie "The Mask," Diaz was voluptous and curvy with all of her facial gifts intact. She has never looked as good again as she has turned to period pieces, bad romantic comedies and apparently lost all her curves even before she started dating Justin Timberlake.

Julia Roberts - She looked great in "Pretty Woman" even if she did use a body double. Regardless, she was still damn sexy, and the only movie where she's come close to rivaling her work as Richard Gere's hooker was in "Erin Brockavich," a film where she played a legal crusader who merely dressed like a hooker.

Jennifer Connelly - Few people saw the Don Johnson classic "The Hot Spot," but it's definitely worth a rental as Connelly is simply smoking. How Johnson got with her and Virginia Madsen in the film is a secret I'd like to know, but Connelly has never again come close to her magic in this film (with the possible exception of "Career Opportunities").

Catherine Zeta-Jones - She is on the fence because she hasn't completely shunned her physical charms thanks to good-looking turns in "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Chicago" (except for the haircut). But for my money, she has never rivaled her role as a sexy Spanish senorita in "The Mask of Zorro."

That is just a partial list, but the message is clear - if you discover a young actress and believe her to be stunningly sexy then you better savor every minute of it because the only certainty is that she'll change.

She'll go period ("Mary Reilly") or Irish ("Michael Collins") or both ("Gangs of New York") or she may simply get herself stranded in the North Country and they never return the same way again.

-BDS