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We'll always have New Rose Hotel. And The Last Mistress. And her latest film, Boarding Gate, and pretty much all of her other output with the exception of xXx. Alas, intrepid siren Asia Argento says she is giving up screen nudity lest that reputation precede that of her more, well, natural dramatic gifts:

"There's a limit," Argento says in a smoky voice on the phone from her home in Rome. "And luckily I'm getting more dignified and old as time goes on. My rebellious years have come to a halt. And I'm sick of having to justify myself for work that I do. It mixes the person that you are and the persona of what you are on the screen."

"The last thing I want is to be pigeonholed into doing the same role for the rest of my life, like Bela Lugosi did," adds Argento. "I don't want to end up sleeping in the coffin like him."

While we're not sure if it's luck or the far less volatile rules of biology that make Argento is get "old as time goes on," we cannot blame her for fleeing such typecast ignominy. Female nudity is on the way out anyway, according to Demetrios Matheou, the Guardian blogger whose tasteful recent inquiry "The Elusive On-Camera Erection" invokes crossover porn legend Rocco Siffredi, Brown Bunny perv Vincent Gallo and a mere handful of others in his case for more masculine forays into baring all:

The latest thesp to put his manhood under scrutiny is the wonderful French actor Mathieu Amalric. In his recent review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, in which Amalric excelled as the paralyzed French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, Peter Bradshaw commended "one of the most beguiling screen faces." I would agree. But in The Story of Richard O, for possibly the first time ever, you take your eyes off it. ... Perhaps, after playing Bauby, Amalric was keen to assert that there was life beyond his left eyelid.


Knowing what we now know of bathhouse warrior Viggo Mortensen and having seen Jason Segal's own swingset on display in the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which the MPAA's R rating classifies as "graphic nudity," whereas, say, Run Fat Boy Run co-star Dylan Moran's twice-shown bare ass is tame enough for a PG-13), we have to agree with Matheou that mainstream dicks might be a milestone whose time has come. But who should — or will, rather — take the lead among A-list American members to make their ways onscreen? We have our own ideas, but we'd sooner defer to your imagination. Vote with your comments; Hollywood is listening.