Now that every Mary Sunshine in town has torn apart the McSteamy not-sex tape with her Lee press-ons, maybe it's time to take a deep breath, sigh, scratch our chins thoughtfully, and remark about old Rebecca Gayheart's dead-in-the-water career. Poor Rebecca Gayheart! Once so full of promise! Even after that hit-and-run. Maybe she was never destined to rise above B-list infamy. And that's fine. In her briefish time on-screen -- both big and small -- Gayheart's portrayed a wide array of similar-seeming characters with aplomb and a dubious likeability.

  • Beverly Hills 90210 - Back on the original 90210, Gayheart portrayed Toni Marchette, a mobster's daughter who falls in love with and eventually marries Dylan McKay. Then she meets an untimely end when one of her father's dimmer hitmen accidentally guns her down instead of McKay as intended. All this over the course of eight or so episodes.

  • Jawbreaker - In this flick, Gayheart (along with Rose McGowan and Judy Greer too) provided an early prototype for Mean Girls' pernicious princesses. But then her character defects and we soon learn Gayheart is basically capable of two emotions: nice and barely-threatening. We also learn that she acts mostly with her bugged-out eyes.

    • But while co-stars Eric Dane and Kari Ann Peniche will probably bounce back, Hollywood tends to be cruel to actresses of a certain age who find themselves in flagrante delicto--that is, not Vanessa Hudgens'. And while Gayheart's had a storied list of uneven acting gigs -- from bit parts to prominent guest-starring roles -- it's worth it to single out a few highlights as we send her off to Tijuana or wherever has-been Hollywoodsters go to get put out to pasture.

  • Nip/Tuck - Then there's Nip/Tuck's Natasha Charles. The character of Charles is what everyone would call a breakthrough for a performer like Gayheart, who's usually saddled with uninspired options. Mostly because it's the first role where her character's blind and she can't therefore act with her eyes. Essentially, her character is a powerful perfumer falls in love with Dr. Troy and has some bizarrely heightened sense of smell like a bloodhound because she's blind and all that's somehow makes for steamy foreplay. But alas! The good doctor later rejects her when he can't put aside his own hang-ups. And a breakthrough it is, people, because those are real tears on Gayheart's face!

  • Dead Like Me - But then, more breakthroughs! Because in Dead Like Me, she plays a grim reaper originally bowing from the Jazz Age. And we don't have to suspend disbelief to buy that premise. More importantly, as with all her other roles, Gayheart basically plays a glorified version of herself. More to the point, she does it well this time around. Although that makes her monologue about finite personalities, below, no less dramatically ironic.