Battle of the Brit Beauts

[[L O O K S]] * To each his own, I guess. A commercially sponsored poll to determine the “greatest British beauties of all time” is topped by India-born actress Vivien Leigh, best known for her role of Scarlet O’Hara in 1939’s Gone With the Wind. Second place honors go to Elizabeth Taylor, who was born in Hampstead, London, to American parents. The whole list looks like this:

1. Vivien Leigh
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Catherine Zeta-Jones
4. Princess Diana
5. Julie Christie
6. Honor Blackman
7. Kate Moss
8. Sienna Miller
9. Elizabeth Hurley
10. Jane Seymour

I can definitely get behind the choices of Hurley and Zeta-Jones, and I enjoyed Sienna Miller’s performance in the too-short-lived TV series Keen Eddie. But Kate Moss? She’s a stick figure impersonating a woman. And Honor Blackman never did as much for me as she did for James Bond. Where, instead, is the winsome Kate Beckinsale, of Underworld and Serendipity fame? Or Rhona Mitra, one of the original Lara Croft models? Or Kristin Scott Thomas? Or, going back a bit further, Diana Rigg and Jill Ireland?

The survey of 1,000 men and women (so small a sample? No wonder they missed a few noteworthy candidates) was sponsored by the Bottlegreen Drinks Company.