Latest news with #DangerousMinds
Daily Mail
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
She starred in iconic 90s teen drama that made household names of her co-stars... can you guess who it is?
This actress embodied the quintessential girl-next-door in a fictional Massachusetts coastal town on a legendary 90s teen drama - a groundbreaking series that catapulted many of its stars into lasting Hollywood fame. Think you know who it is? Born in Texas and raised in Illinois after her parents' separation, this star discovered a passion for the performing arts early on and went on to pursue a modeling career in New York City after graduating high school. Before ever stepping onto a film set, she quietly built a presence behind the scenes - appearing on product packaging like a Conair hair crimper and on the covers of five books in the iconic Nancy Drew mystery series. In 1996, she finally made her television debut in a Tylenol Sinus commercial, a small but significant step that opened the door to future roles on screen. That same year, her modeling career soared as she landed spots in a wave of television commercials and magazine ads for major brands, including L'Oreal hair-care, Disney Resort, Huffy bicycles, Ford cars, and Mattel toys. Her early modeling success quickly led her to a real film set, where she stepped into the role of a confident, determined young teacher facing the harsh realities of a tough inner-city school in an episode of ABC's Dangerous Minds. Her growing exposure soon earned her a small recurring role on the short-lived 90s drama Sunset Beach, where she played a pregnant teenager navigating life in a tight-knit California town where everybody knows everybody's business. However, it wasn't until her sun-kissed blonde hair, approachable smile and all-American charm landed her a series regular role on a beloved '90s drama that she truly cemented her place in television history. This actress portrayed a cheerful, high-achieving blonde teenager who, beneath her sunny, determined exterior, wrestled with profound personal struggles - including anxiety, depression and complex family trauma. Navigating Capeside High School alongside her friends as they transitioned to college and adulthood, she quickly became a fan favorite over three seasons - her character playing a pivotal role in reshaping how television addressed mental health. With a career spanning over 25 years, this star has amassed more than 80 acting credits across a diverse array of films, television shows and guest appearances. Have you been able to guess who it is yet? It's Meredith Monroe! The now 55-year-old actress masterfully captured the vulnerable and emotionally layered essence of 14-year-old Andie McPhee - the somewhat stubborn, preppy blonde teen at the core of the hit 90s drama, Dawson's Creek. Running for six seasons, the series saw Monroe become an essential presence after joining the main cast in season two, where she was introduced as fiercely intelligent but troubled girl with an unrelenting drive for success. Her arrival at Capeside High School added a new layer of emotional depth to the series, as she stepped into the story while grieving the loss of her brother, Tim, and caring for a mentally ill mother. Andie was one of the earliest characters on mainstream TV to openly grapple with mental health struggles - a bold and groundbreaking departure from the norms of TV at the time. She embodied the kind of character who tries to fix everything - when she's quietly unraveling herself. Though she cared deeply for her group of friends, Andie brought a layer of realistic complexity to the teen series, as the show portrayed her own gradual downfall under the weight of family trauma and the pressure to maintain good grades. Monroe's character also marked a turning point for Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson), whose relationship with her sparked significant emotional and academic growth, helping him mature in ways the series hadn't previously explored. She also played a legendary role in one of the most revolutionary LGBTQ+ storylines on television at the time, with her unwavering support for her brother Jack after he came out. Throughout Monroe's time on the show, her character's mental health steadily deteriorated, ultimately leading her to push Pacey away at times. Her notable departure from the show come Season 4 was intricately aligned with her character's arc, as she chose to study abroad after years of grappling with her own emotional well-being. She also played a legendary role in one of the most revolutionary LGBTQ+ storylines on television at the time, with her unwavering support for her brother Jack after he came out serving as a powerful message of acceptance After leaving the show in 2000, she returned to the Dawson's Creek universe to film the graduation episode. The beloved show served as a launching pad for several actors who would go on to become household names including Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson. While Monroe didn't achieve the same level of Hollywood fame as some of her co-stars, she has maintained a steady and consistent television career since her departure. Since then, she has found success with the ABC film The One, a major role in ABC series Married to the Kellys, and a small appearance in Minority Report. More recently, she has landed recurring roles on Criminal Minds, Hart of Dixie and 13 Reasons Why, along with numerous guest appearances on a variety of popular shows. In 1999, Monroe married Steven Kavovit, a massage therapist. Together, the pair have two children together and reside in Calabasas, California.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Michelle Pfeiffer turns 67: a look back
Actress Michelle Pfeiffer, best known for her roles in "Dangerous Minds," "Batman Returns," 'Scarface," "What Lies Beneath" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp," turns 67 on Tuesday. Here's a look back at her career through the years.
Buzz Feed
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
"I Can't Believe It Got Made Then, Much Less Now": 33 Movies That Aged Worse Than Milk On A Hot Summer Day
A while back, Reddit user mnightshamalama2 asked r/moviecritic about movies that have aged poorly, and there were a LOT — ranging from the '80s right up until just a few years ago. Here are some people can't even stomach watching in 2025. 1. 1988's Big, starring Tom Hanks, which has a romantic plot revolving around a child (in a grown man's body) with an adult woman: "It's super creepy with the romantic interest and implied sex. And then when Tom Hanks turns back into a kid, the adult girlfriend drops him off near his house and watches him walk home." — u/downhillderbyracer "Aww, she just fucked a 13-year-old in a man's body, then watched him turn back into a 13-year-old…" — u/fasting4me 2. 1994's Blank Check, which includes an FBI agent in her twenties kissing a child: Walt Disney Pictures / Via 3. 2017's The Greatest Showman, which paints P.T. Barnum, played by Hugh Jackman, in a way better light than he deserves: " The Greatest Showman is a wonderful musical movie that immediately falls apart if you know anything about how much of a piece of shit PT Barnum was. Like most of the movie is totally decoupled from reality, so why is Hugh Jackman playing P.T. Barnum specifically? Why not make a name with a similar cadence so that the whole movie is clearly fictional? E.G. Tartan would be a totally fine name for this fictional inspirational circus ringleader." 4. 1994's Milk Money, which includes a sex worker (played by Melanie Griffith) showing preteen boys her bare chest: " Milk Money (1994), where preteen boys pay a sex worker (Melanie Griffith) to see her topless. She goes along with it, and then one of the kids tries hooking his Dad (Ed Harris) up with her. If genders were reversed, it would never be shown again." — u/No-Building-3798 "It was creepy when it came out; now it's another level of messed up." — u/Coffeecupsreddit 5. 1995's Dangerous Minds, which is just a massive white savior movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer as a teacher in a disadvantaged community: "I was at a cabin with a bunch of VHS movies, and we picked Dangerous Minds. It was some more white savior bullshit. The part that got me was when Michele Pfifer's character was confronted by the mother of some of the kids, saying something along the lines of, 'My kids don't need no school! They gots bills ta pay!'" — u/superanx 6. And 2011's The Help, starring Emma Stone and Viola Davis, which centers on a white woman in a story about Black maids in the South: 7. 2001's A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, which is just extremely inaccurate: "A Beautiful Mind is basically a hit piece on John Nash and did him dirty. Basically, most of the stuff they used to portray him as out of his mind was not factual in any way. No, he didn't see invisible people... for fuck's sake, man. If you rewatch it now, it is wild it won Best Picture." — u/drawkbox 8. 2015's Stonewall, which completely erased the role of trans people and BIPOC in the Stonewall riots, replacing them with a cisgender white man played by Jeremy Irvine: 9. 2016's Me Before You, which stars Sam Claflin instead of a disabled actor in the leading role, and also has a super problematic message: " Me Before You has the underlying message that you are better off killing yourself if you are disabled with a non-disabled partner because ending your own life is the romantic thing to do. ... Disabled actors still suffer a lot of prejudice and rarely get cast in roles where disability is not the storyline, and yet non-disabled actors took most of the disabled roles." — u/Imaginary-Mammoth-61 10. 2011's Crazy Stupid Love, starring Steve Carell, which ends with a 17-year-old giving a 13-year-old her nudes: "For the most part, the movie's alright — not great but alright — but holy shit, the ending. How was that allowed? In the movie, there are a bunch of different love triangles. ... Steve Carell's children's babysitter, who is 17, is in love with him, and his son, who is 13, is in love with her. Steve Carell doesn't know she's in love with him, so to get his attention, she takes nudes. This is already fucking weird for a movie, but here's where it goes from fucking weird to illegal. At the end of the movie, when Steve gets back together with his wife in this standard rom-com format, the kid goes and talks to the babysitter. They have a parting moment, and she gives the kid her nude photos to look at. Keep in mind she's 17 in the movie, and he's 13. And Steve Carell and his wife are fine with it. I'm like wtf, how did Chris Hanson not appear and make them take a seat?" — [deleted] 11. 1999's American Beauty, which stars Kevin Spacey as he develops a sexual obsession with his daughter's teenage friend: "Kevin Spacey seduces a teenager who was more talk than she was action and ultimately was unprepared for an adult relationship. Yeah…" — None "The plot point about Kevin Spacey being mistaken as a closeted gay man that preys on teenage boys is too on the nose." — nbwoodelf "I tried watching that twice in the last year, but I couldn't get past the first quarter of the movie. I keep hearing what a great movie it is, but I'm not feeling it." — u/Comfortable-Owl-5929 12. 1999's American Pie, which features sex crimes played for laughs: "When they filmed the exchange student undressing, they were creating child sex abuse images." — u/reckless-ryean "A friend and I watched this movie recently, excited to relive it after watching it as teenagers. When they set up that webcam to spy on Nadia, we were fucking mortified. I genuinely forgot about that movie and looking back now, good lord is that scene fucked-up. Not just the child sex abuse images, like you said, but the utter violation of her privacy. Gross." — u/Positive_Laugh6946 13. 2016's Passengers, which features a man (played by Christ Pratt) accidentally waking up on a 120-year-long trip to another planet, then condemning a female passenger (played by Jennifer Lawrence) to the same fate by waking her up as well because he's lonely: "Chris Pratt forces Jennifer Lawrence to wake up from induced sleep meant to get her to a new planet and condemns her to spend the rest of her life with him as there's no way to put her back to sleep. Then she falls in love with him anyway, even after she finds out what he did." — u/Unusual_Resident_784 "It's a great premise…for a horror movie." — u/zorionek0 14. 1984's Revenge of the Nerds, which uses a rape scene as a triumphant moment for a main character: 15. Similarly, 2005's Wedding Crashers, which includes a scene where Gloria (played by Isla Fisher) rapes Jeremy (played by Vince Vaughn): 16. 2011's Horrible Bosses, which also plays male rape for laughs when it comes to Jennifer Aniston and Charlie Day's characters: New Line Cinema / Rat Entertainment / Via "The female boss sexually harasses Charlie Day's character, and we're supposed to think it's funny because she's Jennifer Aniston, and she's hot." — u/Xalbana 17. 2000's Dude, Where's My Car, starring Seann William Scott and Ashton Kutcher, which has a bunch of racist moments: 20th Century Fox /Courtesy Everett Collection "I still love this movie despite it all, but I showed it to my best friend, who's Asian, with her younger brother. I felt so embarrassed to have hyped up the movie so much; I definitely didn't catch all the racist remarks because I just looked at it like a goofy movie. It opened my eyes in a bad way." — u/pombasion 18. 1994's Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, starring Jim Carrey, where the villain (played by Sean Young) turns out to be a man living as a woman to escape capture by the to this moment when Ace realizes he kissed a man: Morgan Creek Productions / Via — u/Cthulus-lefttentacle 19. 2003's Anger Management, starring Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler, which is just offensive all around: Columbia / courtesy Everett Collection "I'm frankly a little horrified that I ever found Anger Management even slightly amusing. It's sexist, anti-gay, and treats sexual assault like a joke. That film is fucking disgusting." — u/LordCamelslayer 20. 2009's 17 Again, starring Zac Efron, which includes multiple scenes of a teenager unknowingly trying to seduce her own father (who is in a 17-year-old's body): New Line Cinema / Offspring Entertainment / Via "A 40-year-old goes back to high school, and his own daughter tries to hook up with him…no thanks." — u/BoldNorthMN 21. 2010's The Switch, starring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston, where a man switches in his sperm for his friend's chosen donor's sperm, leading her to get pregnant with his child instead: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Via "Bateman's character fathers Aniston's character's baby without her knowledge/consent by replacing the donation sperm she uses to self-impregnate with his own. The movie plays as a romcom, and I can't believe it got made then, much less now." — u/pheboglobi 22. 1995's Heavyweights, which is about a children's weight loss camp: Richard Cartwright / Buena Vista Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection "Not in the same vein as a lot of the others mentioned, but Heavyweights was a 90s DISNEY movie about a kids 'fat camp' starring Ben Stiller, and in today's body-positive times, I feel it wouldn't have been received the same way." — u/mountlax12 23. 1995's While You Were Sleeping, which is about a woman (played by Sandra Bullock) pretending to be a comatose man's fiancé: Hollywood Pictures / Caravan Pictures / Via "Getting fake-engaged to a vegetable is creepy. Keeping up the charade and nearly tricking him into marrying you for real after he wakes up is downright rapey. Then you get engaged to his brother whom you've known for all of 1-2 weeks? That's only marginally better. Also, it's set in Chicago, but you only see 2-3 Black people in the entire movie." — u/Ms_Rarity 24. 2000's Road Trip, which features a man trying to intercept his sex tape with another woman before his girlfriend sees has lines like this: The Montecito Picture Company / Via "The plot is very dated. It is still a favorite of mine." — u/K-Toon 25. 2006's Lucky Number Slevin, starring Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, and Josh Hartnett, which is just constantly casually anti-gay: The Weinstein Company LLC/Courtesy Everett Collection "I just rewatched Lucky Number Slevin, and it's pretty jarring how casually anti-gay the main characters are. I can still enjoy the movie to a certain degree. But woof. Very bad in retrospect." — u/themilkywayfarer 26. 1987's Overboard, starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, which has a wildly problematic premise: MGM/UA Distribution Co. / Via "A rich married woman falls off a boat and gets amnesia. Her husband takes the opportunity to pretend he doesn't know her. Kurt Rusell shows up at the hospital, claims her as his wife, and then takes her home to help raise his four kids." — u/Modredastal 27. 2005's Hitch, which stars Will Smith as a major creep: Columbia Pictures / Via "It's still held up as a cute romantic comedy, but Hitch is just fricken creepy. The first scene involves kidnapping a dog and pretending it gets hit by a car to trick a lady into liking the guy who 'saved' it. The whole movie's creepy." — u/TvAzteca 28. 2009's (500) Days of Summer, which unfairly paints Summer (played by Zooey Deschanel) as the villain even though Tom (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is clearly in the wrong: Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection "Horrible movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character is a proto-incel." — u/yourfriendkyle "I loved that movie when I was younger. The older I get, the more I realize how Summer was upfront about what she did and did not want, but Tom kept trying to force her into what he wanted. He even has the nerve to try and make it seem like she mistreated him and his feelings." — u/Remy149 29. 1999's Never Been Kissed, where a teacher falls for a student (played by Drew Barrymore) not knowing she's 25: Fox 2000 Pictures / Via "Never Been Kissed is about a teacher essentially grooming a student and then is angry with her when she isn't a teenager but is actually a grown woman." — u/highly88 30. 2010's Knight and Day, which features Cameron Diaz's character getting repeatedly drugged by Tom Cruise's character: Frank Masi / 20th Century Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection " Knight and Day?! Anyone?! I feel like no one sees this movie as problematic when it's literally based on Tom Cruise repeatedly drugging and kidnapping Cameron Diaz 😭😭 it always seriously disturbs me when I see it on TV." — u/sunny_d55 31. 2004's The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, which focuses on a wildly toxic love story: Gran Via / Via "The dynamic between the main couple was LOADED TO THE BRIM with red flags. And people thought THAT was romantic!?" — u/Far-Revolution3225 32. 1984's Sixteen Candles, which includes a guy "giving" his drunk girlfriend to a classmate: Universal Pictures/Channel Productions / Via "One boy gives another boy his unconscious girlfriend to rape, and everyone is just okay with it in the morning, including the girlfriend. So wrong." — u/StarMom94 33. And finally...2020's Hillbilly Elegy, starring Gabriel Basso, Glenn Close, and Amy Adams, which is a portrait of the people of Appalachia based on a memoir by one of the most hateful people on Earth: Lacey Terrell / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection "I'm going out on a limb and say Hillbilly Elegy." — u/kyflyboy "Looking like Hillbilly Elegy is on its way to turning into a hunk of gorgonzola." — u/MisterMasque2021 What movie do you think has aged really, really poorly? Let us know in the comments below! Comments have been edited for length/clarity.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The big picture: Hicham Benohoud frames the classroom as theatre
No doubt you can sympathise with at least one of the pupils in the image. She has her head down, working hard, so bowed in thought her face is almost pressed right against her paper. A few seats down, a boy adopts a similar pose. One girl has her ankles crossed, while another has hers splayed. Across the room, one girl's shoes are practical, while another's are oddly adult, sandals with heels, hand-me-downs, maybe. You remember how imagination allowed you to disappear, to escape, to take leave of the four walls of the classroom, of the uncomfortable wooden chair and desk at which you tried not to fidget. Or were you the boy breaking the peace, wild and unruly, hanging over a table while lying flat on your stomach, legs dangling, fixing us with your cheeky gaze, as in this image from the Moroccan photographer Hicham Benohoud's book The Classroom? The images were taken between 1994 and 2000 while Benohoud worked as an art teacher and found himself, like the students, stifled by the educational system. The teacher who inspires by introducing simple freedoms into a rigid educational setting is a familiar cinematic trope (To Sir, With Love, Dangerous Minds, Entre les Murs, AKA The Class). Benohoud makes it his own in quiet black-and-white photographs that show how students, when given the opportunity to play and experiment, can redefine their surroundings with the leanest of creative means. Chairs and tables become frames within frames, reveal and conceal faces, as do paper cutouts held up playfully. Strings and tape, cardboard and fabric become interventions in space or extensions of the body, curtains and shrouds, places to hide, to refuse to be seen. Benohoud's project and its emphasis on youthful self-authorship is as much about the present as the past, with how traditional curriculum meets ever-evolving post-colonial identity. 'As soon as I took my camera out, their faces would light up. 'What's he going to get us to do now?' I could feel their gaze on me: we had a real understanding,' the photographer has said of the new energy in the room. These images are portraiture as pedagogy, a reminder that how we see ourselves and others, see and are seen, frame and are framed, makes the world around us visible in myriad shapes and forms – like all the best educations should. The Classroom is published by Loose Joints (£42)
