Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren has been cornered into queenly roles during her entire career, playing three in the past decade (Queen Charlotte in 1994's The Madness of King George, Queen Elizabeth I in 2005's Elizabeth I and of course the Buckingham Palace monarch in last year's The Queen). But now the 64-year-old dame is about to get a little spunky in her glory years. She's about to appear opposite Nicholas Cage in the adventure romp National Treasure: Book of Secrets, set for release on Dec. 21.  read more »

"It's likely that what you remember is the performances," writes Lynn Hirschberg in Feb. 11 editions of The New York Times Magazine, since the movies of 2006 were "dominated by sequels, animation and the broken yellow VW bus from 'Little Miss Sunshine.'"

This is the fourth year in a row that the Times Magazine has found a reason to salute that often-forgotten element of the movie industry--its stars!--with a series of photo-portraits of actors in the big movies of 2006.

Last year, the reason was that the actors and actresses were forgotten in Oscar season: "[The] spirit of the contest seems to take precedence over artistic achievement," Ms. Hirschberg wrote in her introduction to this feature last year. "The New York Times Magazine has tried to eschew this notion of competition by saluting the performances that moved, surprised and thrilled us, regardless of whether they were nominated for awards."  read more »

See some of our favorite portraits--with our own little tributes to each of the subjects--after the jump!