Whatever you may think of Grace Jones' acting career (and, admittedly, she hasn't starred in many films), she has one of the most powerful and iconic images ever to grace cinema. Her appearances in Conan The Destroyer and A View To A Kill are among the most memorable of the era - and it's primarily because she represents a form of femininity that has still yet to be replicated onscreen. Her image shook the world in the mid- to late-1980s, completely breaking from the sexist and racist Hollywood norm of foregrounding innocent looking blonde women and voluptuous mysterious brunettes. Jones may have been problematically exoticised to some extent, but she highlighted forms of beauty and womanhood that the film industry had largely overlooked. Sadly, few have followed in her footsteps, and Hollywood seems to have treated her few filmic appearances as anomalies. But for a brief time, she was one of the most important actresses around, and remains beloved by cult film fans worldwide.
