Speaking of movies and hot actresses...

Okay, we weren't talking about hot actresses, but you had to know it was going to come back to that eventually, right? It happens all the time. 'Hey, I saw a movie...it had that one hot actress...' or 'Wow, we're low on milk, isn't she a totally hot actress?'

See what I mean? Almost unavoidable.

This one is actually tied to a movie. The other night I watched 'A Very Long Engagement.' It's French and it's very good. What made it work was the fine directing by Jean-Pierre Jeunet that included some interesting cuts and the acting of Audrey Tautou.

Tautou is best known for her character Amelie from the movie of the same name. It was also directed by Jeunet. That's where I first saw her. The best way to describe her in that role is fetching and adorable. I know, 'fetching' isn't your typical description of modern actresses, but believe me it fits perfectly.

She's been in several other movies including, 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not', 'Dirty Pretty Things', and 'L'Auberge Espagnole'...and she's great in all of them.

She does an excellent job in 'A Very Long Engagement' too. In it, she plays a young woman who refuses to believe her fiance was killed during WWI. The movie weaves a mystery together into an interesting love story that centers around a group of men condemned to death for injuring themselves to get sent home from the trenches.

This is the quick low down on Audrey. It comes from AskMen.com because I'm far too tired to write much myself...

Audrey Tautou was born on August 9th, 1978, in the tiny town of Beaumont. She grew up in nearby rural Montluason, where, as a teenage girl, she already aspired to be a comedian or artist of some sort. With a high school diploma in hand, she moved to the grand city of Paris. It was there that she attended acting school at the Cours Florent and got a BA in literature.

Shortly after graduation, she landed roles in films for the French television network TF1, as well as in two short feature films, a specialty of her homeland. One of those projects, called Casting: Archi-dÃgueulasse, was featured in the 1998 Cannes festival. The following year, Tautou won the Best Newcomer prize from Canal Plus, after appearing in a competition similar to Star Search.

She went on to land a role in 'Venus Beauty Academy' and her career really started building from there. She was already a well-known name in France when she earned the role of Amelie. That film went on became an international hit and earned her more than a handful of calls from Hollywood.

Tautou, to her credit, has preferred to stay in France and work there, perfecting her craft. She once said in an interview that she was more interested in good roles for less money than good money for lesser roles.

"I've had a few opportunities, but it takes a lot of guts to do something big in English. I also believe there has to be some kind of a correlation - a truth - between who I am and what I can play," she said in another interview.

She did do an English movie, in 2002, 'Dirty Pretty Things', where she played a Turkish immigrant trapped in the seedy world of undocumented workers. And she is starring in the upcoming 'Da Vinci Code', which is due out next summer.

Add the fact that she doesn't see herself as a beauty, and she really becomes quite hard to resist.

"I don't consider myself pretty. I consider Julia Roberts or Monica Bellucci or those kinds of women as beauties. But me, I'm cute," she told one interviewer.

And, anyone who knows me will tell you...I adore cute. So, that ought to explain why Audrey Tautou is high on my list.

If there is a benevolent intelligent designer - and the existance of Tautou seems to indicate there is - then she'll be making movies for a long, long time.