The July issue of Essence includes an interview with Kerry Washington. She comes across as strong, smart and generally awesome — like a survivor. Narrowly miss a tsunami in Thailand? Sure. Overcome an eating disorder? Definitely. Handle the hassles of fame? Yep: "I don't live my life based on bloggers; I live my life based on what my heart is telling me to do."

Washington's career has featured a couple of lesbian roles, in She Hate Me and The Dead Girl.

Dania Ramirez as Alex and Kerry Washington as Fatima in She Hate Me … continue reading

The Dead Girl, rated 75% fresh by rottentomatoes.com, appears straightforward enough at first. The title would seem to say it all. But writer/director Karen Moncrieff (Blue Car) veers off the beaten storytelling path and instead rushes headlong into the prickly bramble of human relations. If you could shove troubled people under a microscope, this is pretty much what you would find on the slide. [Warning: Spoilers ahead.]

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Told in five interconnected vignettes, the movie begins with "The Stranger." Toni Collette plays Arden, the hangdog caregiver to her foul and vile mother (Piper Laurie, playing up the crazy every bit as much as she did in Carrie). While out on a walk, Arden discovers the mutilated corpse of a young woman, Krista. Arden alerts the police, which serves to earn her nothing more than her mother's ire and venomous tongue.