Natasha Henstridge: The Henstridge Maneuver

https://lebeauleblog.com/2021/07/21/natasha-henstridge-the-henstridge-maneuver/

Natasha Henstridge made her acting debut as the alien babe in the sci-fi thriller, Species. Her follow-ups, including a sequel, didn’t enjoy the same success as her first movie. At the time of this profile in the October 1999 issue of Movieline magazine, Henstridge was promoting another movie that wouldn’t make much of an impression. But at least she was stretching beyond the babe roles that launched her career. She was also filming her next movie which would prove more successful, The Whole Nine Yards.

There’s always been more said about Natasha Henstridge’s body parts than her acting ability. First it was her deadly tongue in 1995’s Species; then her breasts in 1995’s Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, then her legs in 1996’s Jean-Claude Van Damme kick-boxing/kung-fu caper Maximum Risk, and then her breasts again in 1998’s Species II. It’s an age-old dilemma for beautiful young actresses, particularly those who come to Hollywood not quite fully prepared.

Henstridge was 14 when she left the trailer park in the small oil town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, where she’d been raised by her biker/contractor father and her housewife mother, and moved to Paris. After starting a modeling career there, she went to New York and landed TV commercials for Old Spice, Oil Of Olay and Lady Stetson. Then, at age 20, she won the part of the knockout with nasty alien DNA in Species, and overnight she became the goddess of a massive male following. She quickly made two more films, Maximum Risk and Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, both of which tanked, and those disappointments were compounded by the failure of her brief, impetuous marriage to actor Damian Chapa. Then the sequel to Species, the film that made her, bombed. Now on the other side of a hard spate of self-doubt, she’s testing her range by starring in the independent comedy Dog Park with Luke Wilson, as well as the upcoming comedy The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry and Rosanna Arquette. Henstridge is also moving on with her personal life–she’s engaged to actor Liam Waite, with whom she now has a baby son.