You know which actress has a great face for an action heroine? Jennifer Garner. Something about the chiselled, squared-off symmetry of her features evokes the super-human. A future version of human, perhaps. Maybe a little bit alien. A little bit cloned.

Whatever it is, even without considering her performance, her look alone was perfect for the part that made her famous: CIA officer Sydney Bristow in Alias.

But as series creator J.J. Abrams revealed this weekend, someone at the TV network wasn’t so sure.

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in <i>Alias</i>.Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in Alias.

You see, there’s one big box that female protagonists have to tick in TV-land, regardless of the role they’re playing or how well suited they are to it in pretty much every way you can think.

And that box is: hotness.

(I know, I know, Jennifer Garner is a smoking hot babe that no mortal looks like anyway. But that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? TV land is a crazy, crazy land and evidently a terrible place for women.)

Speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival with Chris Rock, Abrams told the audience he actually created the role with Garner in mind.

„She had actually been on Felicity and my wife had said, ‘You’ve got to write something for her, she’s got such a spark’,” he said.

„And I wrote Alias thinking about her but I didn’t quite know. Then I finished it, and she came in and was amazing. And I remember someone at the network was like…’Is she hot enough?'” How depressing.

You could comfort yourself with the thought that things have changed since Alias first hit our screens in 2001, but then Chris Rock told Abrams he’d heard a female TV exec remark that „Kerry Washington’s getting a little big,” and well, no. The world of TV may be changing and growing, but it’s still an incredibly hostile environment for women.

Forrás: http://www.dailylife.com.au