Amanda Bynes
Amanda Bynes isn’t the most successful actress, but she’s one of the few from that era I actually want to watch. There’s something about her—timing, warmth, some ineffable thing—that makes even the worst material feel worth it. *What a Girl Wants* is an advertisement for teen pop-star fantasy that shouldn’t work, but she carried it with this effortless ease that made you believe in the whole thing anyway.
The sitcom is what really got me though. *Hallo Holly* had this unusual reach, getting picked up across different countries in a way those kinds of shows almost never do. She had this gift for making comedy feel lived-in, like these were actual friends with actual problems instead of characters hitting marks. Most young comedians lose that as they get older, start performing instead of just existing. She had it.
I don’t have some larger point about Amanda Bynes. I just think she’s good at what she does, and when I run into her stuff, I watch it. That’s the whole thing.