Kelly Preston vs. Kelly Lynch
Battle of the Colorless Kellys

We all know which female actors are in Hollywood's lofty first tier. They get called first for every leading-lady role and get nominated for all sorts of fancy awards and post on the covers of glossy magazines. The second tier of Hollywood actresses is more amorphous; an actor can spend a lot of time in the second tier, making occasional, short-lived forays up to the first tier, or getting pushed down to the third tier.

The third tier of Hollywood actresses is bloated with inventory for many reasons. For one thing, if you're passably pretty and have the ability to deliver dull dialogue in a moderately believable manner, you can probably keep your career alive for a pretty long time. For another, since female actors of a certain age often choose to take some time off in order to have kids, there's always someone dropping out of the tier, making room for someone else. The third tier is also the repository for famous male stars' less-famous dilettante wives -- the Rita Wilsons and Kate Capshaws who show up only occasionally in small, no-buzz movies in order to prove that they're more than their husbands' appendages. Hollywood's third tier of actresses is a sad place to be, and a hard place to escape.

Kelly Lynch and Kelly Preston are both firmly ensconced in the third tier of Hollywood actresses, though not for the same reason. Kelly Lynch is in Hollywood's third tier because she's just another in a long line of models-turned-unspectacular-actresses; we don't know whether she's failed to live up to her potential as an actress because we've barely seen any evidence that she has any potential as an actress. Sure, she was great in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. But then she capitalized on all that indie cred by starring in Curly Sue. Curly Sue, people. And that's typical Lynch fare. Either she has a bad agent, or no agent, or she has no taste, because when you find yourself on the set of Virtuosity, and then White Man's Burden, and then Mr. Magoo...you know, you have to take a good, hard look at yourself and admit that mistakes have been made. And when you appear in Charlie's Angels, and you're not one of the Angels, and you're a woman -- basically, Hollywood now considers you to be a hideous crone. We're not saying we think Kelly Lynch is a hideous crone, but as far as "babe" roles go, it's over.

Kelly Preston, on the other hand, is a Hollywood wife. We're more likely to see her gripping husband John Travolta's hand and gazing at him adoringly as he tells Barbara Walters all about his abiding faith in Scientology than we are to see her in a movie. Why? Because she tends to star in movies like Addicted to Love, Holy Man, and Jack Frost -- and in the battle between her career moves of Kellies Preston and Lynch, we're not sure which movie is assier: the one with Leslie Nielsen and his comical vision impairment, or the one where Michael Keaton gets reincarnated as a snowman.

So which Kelly should prevail? Ordinarily our prejudice would rule against anyone who'd appeared in Battlefield Earth. But we are nothing if not realists. Even if we did think Kelly Lynch was the more talented of the Kellies -- which we don't; we'd say they're about even -- the fact is that as long as Preston remains married to John Travolta, she's guaranteed to get preferential consideration over any other third-tier Kelly that may come down the pike. You don't mess with a Friend of L. Ron, dude.

Advantage: Preston.