Jill Bennett's gay roles

Today I saw the trailer for And Then Came Lola, the unfinished feature film starring out actors Jill Bennett and Cathy DeBuono. I don't know how good this movie's going to turn out to be, but I don't care. I know I'm going to buy a copy as soon as it's released on DVD because that is how much I adore Jill Bennett. She's gorgeous, she's opinionated, she's smart and funny. You know the cliche about watching someone read the phone book? That was invented for Jill Bennett.

Hence this week's list: five gay characters Jill has played in various media.

1. Andrea, 3Way -- 3Way is an online comedy series about three lesbians sharing a house with a straight woman. Andrea butts heads with both Geri, her girlfriend's ex, and Siobhan, the straight woman who never wanted Andrea or Geri in the house in the first place. Jill's character is deliciously ascerbic, sometimes to the point of meanness, and delightfully uninhibited, even when it comes to her own exes. The chemistry between Jill and her co-stars makes this unconventional series fun to watch.

2. Sharon, In Her Line of Fire -- Okay, this movie is never going to win any awards or show up on any best-of lists. It's pretty lame. Its only saving grace is Jill's presence as a fiesty reporter whose verbal sparring with the vice president's stone-faced bodyguard escalates when they're marooned on a remote island together. Sharon is hot (because Jill is hot, duh) but she more or less functions as a typical "damsel in distress" in this highly predictable action-drama. She's the girl the hero fights to save, and the only original bit is that the hero's also a girl.

3. Michelle, Dante's Cove -- This role is about two things: sex appeal and campy extremes. Definitely not about plot or character development. Dante's Cove is a supernatural-themed gay soap with tons of porny interludes. While Michelle only had one really hot scene, a makeout session with a character played by out actress Michelle Wolff (the male characters get to have way more sex), Jill did get to put in white contact lenses and be all possessed and evil, soap style.

4. Casey, And Then Came Lola -- I don't know anything about this one because the movie's not even done yet. The synopsis says it's about "a talented, but distracted photographer (Lola), on the verge of success in both love and work, [who] could lose it all if she doesn’t make it to a crucial meeting on time." Is Casey the girlfriend? In one promo picture, she's cuddly with Lola, but in another, she's on the verge of kissing Cathy DeBuono's character. I look forward to working out the sides of this triangle.

5. Various, We're Getting Nowhere -- I know this is stretching it, but in order to make five, I had to include Jill's awesome AfterEllen.com video blog with writers Dara Nai and Karman Kregloe. (It's entirely possible that she's played other gay roles; I just don't know of them.) The blog started out recapping/critiquing/parodying episodes of South of Nowhere, then moved on to America's Next Top Model and then The L Word. Jill got to camp it up as Bette Porter, Jenny Schecter and a bunch of other borrowed characters and she was never less than extremely entertaining.