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Lupita Nyong’o

For her turn in 12 Years a Slave, Nyong’o won the 2013 Best Supporting Actress Oscar becoming the first African actress to win the award and the first Kenyan actress to win an Oscar of any kind. It also happened to catapult her to the top of every magazine in the world’s ‘best-dressed’ and ‘most beautiful’ lists, where she has remained ever since.

Blake Lively

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Lively’s breakthrough role came in teen drama Gossip Girl, during the filming of which she dated her onscreen boyfriend – life imitating art and all that. She’s since appeared in multiple films including an impressive performance in The Shallows and married Ryan Reynolds. A lucky man.

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Zoë Kravitz

The actress and band front-woman who inherited her father Lenny’s swagger and musical talent, Zoë Kravitz recently appeared in the hit show Big Little Lies to widespread acclaim. She can also crochet, which is nice.

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Emma Watson

Harry Potter’s best friend, millionaire, actor, philanthropist, gender equality advocate and global book club founder (cool, hey?), there aren’t many boxes that 27-year-old Brit Emma Watson hasn’t ticked.

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

The original blonde bombshell, ‘B.B.’ was an actress, model and one of the biggest sex symbols of the 50s and 60s before becoming an animal rights activist and – somewhat regrettably – a convicted race hate inciter in her later years.

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Audrey Hepburn

“I don’t understand why people see me as beautiful” the British actress – regarded as one of the greatest screen icons of all time – apparently used to tell her son, leading to the obvious question: what hope is there for any of the rest of us?

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Natalie Portman

Oscar-winning actress and Harvard University graduate, Natalie Portman is someone with talent to burn who also happens to be one of the great beauties of the modern celebrity era. Oh, and she’s also a promising director now. Expect her to cure cancer around 2035.

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Freida Pinto

2008’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire was an over-rated film in all but one respect: it launched the career of Freida Pinto. A darling of fashion magazines ever since, she is also considered in her home country as “arguably the biggest global star from India.”

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Jessica Chastain

Over the past 5 years Jessica Chastain has quietly established herself as one of the most talented and versatile screen actress working today. We say quietly because – the odd jaw-dropping red carpet appearance aside – she keeps her private life private, preferring to let a growing body of work speak for itself.

M.I.A.

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London-born Mathangi Arulpragasam is a creative polymath: rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, director, visual artist, activist, photographer and fashion designer. Oh – and a model. Naturally.

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Ursula Andress

Best known as the original Bond girl having starred alongside Sean Connery in Dr. No, Ursula Andress’ entrance in that film as (cringe) ‘Honey Ryder the shell diver’ was voted #1 ‘greatest sexy movie moment’ in a Channel 4 survey some forty years later. “This bikini made me into a success. As a result of starring in Dr. No as the first Bond girl, I was given the freedom to take my pick of future roles and to become financially independent,” she later said of the white two-piece still etched into the minds of generations of movie-goers.

Monica Belucci

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Starting her career as a model, Monica Belucci moved into acting in the early 90s. You may know her as the star of The Matrix Reloaded, Enter the Matrix or The Matrix Revolutions – all the Matrix films that aren’t The Matrix, basically – or for making rather patronising headlines as ‘the oldest ever Bond girl’ in 2015’s Spectre. But perhaps her most interesting work known by English audiences was as a rape victim in Gaspar Noé’s extremely controversial Irréversible.

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Beyoncé

There is little new to observe about Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, arguably the most powerful female celebrity in the world. Celebrated musician, businesswoman and activist, in her spare time she makes Jay-Z look like the luckiest man in the world.

Halle Berry

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2002 was the Great Year of Halle Berry, when she’d just won a Best Actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball and had enough credibility banked to slum it as asex symbol in the ludicrous Swordfish and Die Another Day, which actually made Swordfish look like Citizen Kane. Anyway – then came Catwoman and Cloud Atlas and bunch of other crap and now she’s perhaps best known as looking better with short hair than any other woman in history.

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Marilyn Monroe

No name is as immediately synonymous with female beauty than Marilyn Monroe, the 1950s screen siren whose glamorous public life obscured an often tragic private life. Despite playing the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotype demanded by her era, off camera she was integral in building her own star power and in 1954 founded her own film production company because she was unhappy with the derisory contract offers from major studios.

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Marine Vacth

They say there is no beauty like a French beauty (it’s the French who say that, by the way), and in the case of model-turned-actress Marine Vacth they may have a point. The star of 2013’s foreign language hit Jeune & Jolie (‘Young & Beautiful’), her upturned gaze briefly adorned the sides of buses and tube stations across London causing more than a few commuter collisions.

Scarlett Johansson

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Many journalists have made fools of themselves over the years trying to capture the essence of Scarlett Johansson’s beauty in words, so we won’t. What we will venture is that beside the obvious, a lot of it is to with her voice: husky, sardonic and – would you guess it – beautiful when she sings. Still too much? OK we’ll stop.

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Miranda Kerr

The only celebrated Australian beauty known in Britain not to have once had a part on Neighbours, Miranda Kerr became at model at 13 and has never looked back, becoming one of the most bankable faces in the world for beauty companies, fashion labels and magazines looking to sell copies including, in 2013, us.

Carey Mulligan

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Anyone who has seen Carey Mulligan’s mournful 5 minute-long singing scene in Shame will be left in no doubt she deserves her place on this list. A BAFTA-winner with a string of quality films to her name, the fact she is married to one of Mumford & Sons can be taken as proof she has a generous heart and tolerant spirit, too.

Rihanna