The Year That…

The big-time biopics, the triumphant
albums (and killer comebacks),
the nerds who ruled the world, the
painfully (no, really, painfully) honest
memoirs, the hardest-working
actors in show business, the
apocalyptic plot twists, and all the
other entertaining, unforgettable
moments that made 2014
THE
YEAR
THAT
...
CONDÉ NAST A-LIST 9
THE YEAR THAT
famous actors played famous people
Music legends, obscure painters, crazy dictators—biography blows up on stage and screen.
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BENEDICT
CUMBERBATCH
+
SUSPENDERS
=
SOCIAL
AWKWARDNESS
ADRIEN BRODY
Every issue. Every page. 1892 to today.
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HAT HAIR
SHACKLES
HARRY
HOUDINI
(HOUDINI)
=
ALAN TURING
(THE IMITATION
GAME)
JESSIE
MUELLER
DAVID
OYELOWO
THROATY
VULNERABILITY
30 POUNDS
CAROLE KING
(BEAUTIFUL)
MARTIN
LUTHER KING
JR. (SELMA)
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FRIZZ
=
ANDRÉ
BENJAMIN
BRITISH
ACCENT
=
TIMOTHY
SPALL
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LEFT-HANDED
SHREDDING
PAINTING
LESSONS
′60S SWAGGER
GRUNTING
JIMI HENDRIX
(JIMI: ALL IS BY
MY SIDE)
J.M.W. TURNER
(MR. TURNER)
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RANDALL PARK
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CENTER PART
-
LOTS OF
DOUGHNUTS
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KIM JONG-UN
(THE INTERVIEW)
FURROWED
BROW
VOLUME
CONTROL
LYNDON B.
JOHNSON
(ALL THE WAY)
G E O R G E H OY N I N G E N - H U E N E / © CO N D É N A S T
BRYAN
CRANSTON
=
TOBEY MAGUIRE and LIEV SCHREIBER as BOBBY FISCHER and BORIS SPASSKY (Pawn Sacrifice) • EDDIE REDMAYNE as STEPHEN HAWKING
(The Theory of Everything) • PAUL DANO and JOHN CUSACK as BRIAN WILSON (Love & Mercy) • BENICIO DEL TORO as PABLO ESCOBAR
(Escobar: Paradise Lost) • TOM SKERRITT as ULYSSES S. GRANT (Field of Lost Shoes) • AMY ADAMS as MARGARET KEANE (Big Eyes) • PIERRE NINEY
as YVES SAINT LAURENT (Yves Saint Laurent) • NICOLE KIDMAN as GRACE KELLY (Grace of Monaco) • ÉDGAR RAMÍREZ as SIMÓN BOLÍVAR
(The Liberator) • KEVIN KLINE as ERROL FLYNN (The Last of Robin Hood ) • CHADWICK BOSEMAN as JAMES BROWN (Get On Up) • MICHAEL PEÑA
as CESAR CHAVEZ (Cesar Chavez) • AUDRA MCDONALD as BILLIE HOLIDAY (Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill)
To subscribe, go to VogueArchive.com. Offered worldwide through
10 CONDÉ NAST A-LIST
THE YEAR THAT
celebrity
kids
became
bona fide
stars
They might have grown up
in homes decorated with
Oscars and Emmys, but
these up-and-comers have
enough talent to make us
forget who their parents are.
ALLISON WILLIAMS
AGE: 26
DAUGHTER OF:
Brian Williams
MADE HER OWN NAME:
Playing hot mess Marnie
Michaels on HBO’s Girls
and donning green
spandex to become the
boy who never grew up in
NBC’s Peter Pan Live!
SCOTT EASTWOOD
AGE: 28
SON OF: Clint Eastwood
MADE HIS OWN NAME:
Starring opposite Brad Pitt
and Shia LaBeouf as Sergeant Miles in David Ayer’s
World War II drama, Fury.
MARGARET QUALLEY
AGE: 20
DAUGHTER OF: Andie
MacDowell
MADE HER OWN NAME:
As Jill Garvey, Justin
Theroux’s perfectly
disaffected teen daughter
on HBO’s The Leftovers.
COLIN HANKS
AGE: 37
SON OF: Tom Hanks
MADE HIS OWN NAME:
Earning a supporting actor
Emmy nod for his role
as hapless police deputy
Gus Grimly in FX’s Fargo.
DYLAN PENN
AGE: 23
DAUGHTER OF: Sean Penn
and Robin Wright
MADE HER OWN NAME:
Signing a deal with Premier
Model Management, the
agency that helped turn
Cindy, Naomi, and Claudia
into supermodels.
12 CONDÉ NAST A-LIST
GIRLS AND
PETER PAN LIVE!
STAR ALLISON
WILLIAMS
CONDÉ NAST A-LIST 13
THE YEAR THAT
NERDS WERE WITTY,
PRETTY, POPULAR!
“WEIRD AL”
YANKOVIC
artists made killer comebacks
Whether band members hugged it out or soloists reemerged after a little
soul-searching, we were more than ready to download these albums.
JENNY
LEWIS
G-UNIT
INTERPOL
QUIET FOR:
6 years
BACK WITH:
The Beauty
of Independence, a
surprise
six-track
digital release.
QUIET FOR:
4 years
BACK WITH:
El Pintor,
recorded at
Jimi Hendrix’s
Electric Lady
Studios in
New York City.
QUIET FOR:
6 years
BACK WITH:
The Voyager,
a captivating
collection
of nostalgic
narrative songs.
PRINCE
QUIET FOR:
5 years
BACK WITH:
Art Official Age,
a solo album
that includes
everything from
new-wave funk
to slow jams.
DAMIEN
RICE
QUIET FOR:
8 years
BACK WITH:
My Favourite
Faded Fantasy,
produced
with industry
giant Rick Rubin.
APHEX TWIN
QUIET FOR:
13 years
BACK WITH:
Syro, 12 richly
layered electronic tracks
recorded
over the past
few years.
QUIET FOR:
3 years
BACK WITH:
Mandatory
Fun, a brandnew crop of
parodies that
debuted at No. 1.
These days the higher your IQ, the more
likely you are to dominate pop culture.
THE PUNK CODER
BETTE
MIDLER
Between her Bad Brains singalongs and her big-brain codecracking on AMC’s Halt and Catch
Fire, MACKENZIE DAVIS proves that
′80s computer hackers weren’t all
dudes with neckbeards.
QUIET FOR:
8 years
BACK WITH:
It’s the Girls!,
her renditions
of girl-group
hits from the
’30s to the ’90s.
THE SEXY SPACEMAN
MACKENZIE
DAVIS PLAYS
FEISTY
HACKER
CAMERON
HOWE ON
HALT AND
CATCH FIRE.
NICKEL
CREEK
QUIET FOR:
9 years
BACK WITH:
A Dotted
Line—eight
new acoustic
bluegrass tunes
and two covers.
PINK FLOYD
QUIET FOR:
20 years
BACK WITH:
The Endless
River, featuring Stephen
Hawking’s
voice and
other surprises.
The universe holds billions of stars
but barely contains the charm of
Fox’s Cosmos host NEIL DEGRASSE
TYSON—the only astrophysicist
who makes a lecture about the
Pleiades seem like pillow talk.
THE TV TRUTH SEEKER
Literary fantasy fan NIC PIZZOLATTO
was influenced by cult horror writer
H. P. Lovecraft, Hieronymus Bosch,
and medieval plague masks when
creating HBO’s True Detective. As
GQ put it, you might have had a
nerdgasm while watching and not
even known it.
No matter how much we want them to.
GUNS N’ ROSES The Axl–Slash cold war won’t be patched up
“in this lifetime,” Rose has said.
THE FUGEES Said Pras: “You will have a better chance of seeing
Osama bin Laden and [George W.] Bush in Starbucks having a latte.”
THE WHITE STRIPES Only if, said Jack White, “we went bankrupt
or really needed the cash.”
THE SMITHS Said Morrissey: “I would rather eat my own testicles than
re-form the Smiths, and that’s saying something for a vegetarian.”
—GQ
14 CONDÉ NAST A-LIST
superhero to the women’s rights
movement, endearing herself to
comics fanatics and feminist scholars everywhere.
THE ACADEMIC
NEWS ANCHOR
MSNBC’s popular left-leaning host
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY not only
posts an online syllabus for every
single lesson-packed episode of
her show, she also encourages
thoughtful discussion via Twitter
using #nerdland.
NERDIVERSARIES
Dartmouth-grad directors PHIL
LORD and CHRIS MILLER used dorky
inside jokes and what GQ calls “ADD
antics” to turn a cheesy TV-show
adaptation (22 Jump Street) and a
cartoon about a kid’s toy (The Lego
Movie) into big-screen hits.
THE GALLIC GENIUS
In Boyhood, Ellar Coltrane aged twelve years in three hours.
As his character, Mason, grew from first grade to college,
we cried, we cringed—and we developed an impossibly high
standard for future coming-of-age films.
In her book The Secret History of
Wonder Woman, Harvard historian
JILL LEPORE connects the beloved
THE DYNAMIC DORK DUO
BANDS THAT WILL NEVER (EVER) REUNITE
ACTING WENT
TIME-LAPSE
THE NOT-SO-NUTTY
PROFESSOR
Economist THOMAS PIKETTY deserves serious props. It’s one thing
to come up with a dense economic
theory on wealth redistribution. But
it’s quite another to turn it into a
700-page best-seller wonkily titled
Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
THE MENSA SUPERHEROES
In CBS’s drama SCORPION, a
brilliant eccentric assembles
a whole team of off-the-charts
intellectual heavyweights. The
result? Nerd-dom’s answer to
The Avengers—saving the world
one keystroke at a time.
This was a banner year for
our dweeby forefathers.
We’d like to wish the roleplaying game DUNGEONS
& DRAGONS a happy 40th
birthday, but someone
stole our twelve-sided dice
and shoved us in a locker.
The original Geek WishFulfillment Fantasy, REVENGE
OF THE NERDS, has been
inspiring bullied brainiacs
not to get mad but to get
even for 30 years. Steven
Spielberg’s tale of dinos run
amok, JURASSIC PARK, is now
old enough to drink. (To celebrate, hipsters stampeded
to buy the re-released
soundtrack pressed on amber vinyl.) And Mike Judge’s
ode to cubicle sad sacks,
OFFICE SPACE, has been making us do spit-takes on our
TPS reports for fifteen years.
Isn’t it time someone gave
Milton his stapler back?
CONDÉ NAST A-LIST 15
The tenderness that
made us
Relive it on
Her
Sam Smith,
In the Lonely Hour
Eleanor & Park
Disco Zoo
The sentimental warmth of experiencing love
vicariously. It’s tender and heartwarming. We find
love in the expected, the unexpected, the cute
and cuddly. 2014 warmed our hearts.
Rediscover the year’s most inspiring
entertainment at g.co/play2014
THE YEAR THAT
we binged
on fringe
SEX STARRED
Gone are the days of sly innuendo. Check out the year’s hot-and-bothered
highlights, on a scale from blatant to downright pornographic.
From synthy hip-hop to frat-boy
country, niche became mainstream.
TEENS CROWNED
EDGIER QUEENS
The young women of
2014 had sharper elbows
and more talent than the
bubblegum girls of
years past. Electro-pop
phenom Charli XCX sang
about “getting high and
getting wrecked” in
“Break the Rules,” Jessie J
had one of summer’s
biggest hits with bad-girl
anthem “Bang Bang,” and
everyone freaked over
Zola Jesus’s dark, operatic
“Dangerous Days.”
THE CONTINUED RISE
OF BRO-COUNTRY
The dude revolution
known for its cocky
cornball songs about
booze and babes in boots
grew even stronger thanks
to new releases from
Jason Aldean, whose
single “Burnin’ It Down”
subbed an R&B-style
bass line for banjos; the
tattooed, party-loving
duo Florida Georgia Line;
and Eric Church, the
outlaw who incorporated
rap beats and guitar riffs in
The Outsiders. Somewhere
Hank Williams is turning
over in his grave.
XXX
XXXX
“ANACONDA” &
“BOOTY”
WELCOME TO
NEW YORK
LOOKING
Trainspotting author
Irvine Welsh leaves
Scotland for South
Beach and puts his
two heroines—one fat,
one fitness-obsessed—
through all sorts of
sadistic, sociopathic
shenanigans.
Music videos in which
Nicki Minaj and Jennifer
Lopez with Iggy Azalea
employ the rear-view
perspective (and many
well-oiled extreme
close-ups) to see who
has the most junk in
her trunk.
XXXXX
A trove of alternative
artists crooned their way
onto the charts with a
modern sound that’s
nothing like your daddy’s
’70s R&B. The Weeknd
and pop princess Ariana
Grande created the sultry
duet “Love Me Harder,”
retro-cool Tinashe
released the club hit “2 On,”
and Banks bewitched
us with her melancholy
debut album, Goddess.
START
NOAH
You’re dead
if you’re not
on this boat.
A L IE
GIRLFRIENDS OFFERED HARD-EARNED WISDOM
Our favorite female philosopher-kings cashed in with book deals—and gave us lots to think about.
Lars von Trier’s
exploration of female
sexuality runs the
gamut of threesomes,
pedophile-shaming,
sapphic experimentation, and good oldfashioned graphic sex.
Come back, Christian
Grey. All is forgiven.
KILLER SH
“Getting naked
feels better
some days than
others. (Good:
when you are
vaguely tan.
Bad: when you
have diarrhea.)”
Lena Dunham,
Not That Kind of Girl
“One has to have
the stomach
to take the
roller-coaster
lurches from
failure to
success and
back to failure.”
Gail Sheehy,
Daring
N BABIES
THE LAST
SHIP
You’re dead
if you’re not
on this U.S.
Navy boat.
THE
LEFTOVERS
Where did
everyone go?
(And why
didn’t I go
with them?)
A RK
S
EXTANT
Space travel
is even more
terrifying now
that you can
be unwittingly
knocked up
by an alien.
SHARKNADO 2:
THE SECOND ONE
Which is scarier—
the return of
flying sharks
or the return of
Tara Reid?
UNDER
THE DOME
Your biggest fear
is realized: You
are trapped in
your hometown.
SNOWPIERCER
Not even a
train speeding through a
futuristic ice
age is safe from
battles between
the haves and
have-nots.
THE STRAIN
Why worry
about Ebola
when there’s
a virus turning everyone
into zombievampires?
Amy Poehler,
Yes Please
Z NATION
The zombie
apocalypse continues! And now
you must battle
the undead all the
way from New
York to California
for the cure.
LEFT BEHIND
“Stay away from
orgies. They
just take so
much organizing, and I feel
like your time
could be
better spent.”
Seriously,
where did
everyone go?
(And why
didn’t Nicolas
Cage go
with them?)
END
MASS
18 CONDÉ NAST A-LIST
NYMPHOMANIAC:
VOLUMES 1 & 2
HBO’s attempt to
deliver a Sex and the
City for gay men gave
us some of the year’s
hottest guy-on-guy
action as well as racy
bathhouse throwbacks
and several new
meanings for the
phrase “story climax.”
What could be more
très-risqué transgressive than a movie
“loosely” based on
the Dominique
Strauss-Kahn affair?
Rampant disease, climate chaos, zombie apocalypse—
our harrowing journey through a year of living dangerously.
TINASHE
Hillary Rodham
Clinton,
Hard Choices
XX
THE SEX LIVES OF
SIAMESE TWINS
we had more than
enough to worry about
ICYMI: R&B
“Never rest on
your laurels.
Never quit.
Never stop
working to make
the world a
better place.”
X
U
S
RAP EMBRACED EDM
The thump-thump-thump
of electronic dance music
that’s been penetrating
pop also made huge
waves in hip-hop. Iggy
Azalea’s “Fancy” had pingy
synths, while A$AP Rocky
followed last year’s successful collaboration with
Skrillex by teaming up
with Gesaffelstein to create the otherworldly single
“In Distress” for the sci-fi
thriller Divergent. And we
can’t forget Wiz Khalifa’s
slow-burning euphoria
“Stayin Out All Night.”
KINK RATING
OD
EX
CONDÉ NAST A-LIST 19
The flames that
ignited our
Want again on
Masters of Sex
Lana Del Rey, Ultraviolence
Outlander
Tinder
A deep and passionate yearning. Swept away in fantasy.
Torn between two lovers. Time travel. A swipe in the
right direction. In whatever form lust delivered 2014,
it always left us satisfied.
Rediscover the year’s most inspiring
entertainment at g.co/play2014
THE YEAR THAT
PROMOTION
one role
wasn’t
enough
Call them workaholics or
prolific, these actors went
by many names this year.
7
7
5
5
COREY STOLL
4
3 EMILY BLUNT
• Bud Gordon, Glass Chin
• Jack, The Good Lie
• Sandy Bachman, Homeland
• Austin Reilly, Non-Stop
• John Bruno, The Normal Heart
• Ephraim Goodweather, The Strain
• Paul Altman, This Is Where I Leave You
• Rita Vrataski,
Edge of Tomorrow
• The Baker’s Wife,
Into the Woods
• Nahoko Satomi,
The Wind Rises
4
ALLISON JANNEY
• Dr. Bernice Deagan, Bad Words
• Elizabeth, Days and Nights
• Kathy, Get On Up
• Margaret Scully, Masters of Sex
• Bonnie Plunkett, Mom
• Ms. Grunion,
Mr. Peabody & Sherman
• Deb, Tammy
ROSARIO DAWSON
• Nicole Dunlop, The Captive
• Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez
• Mia, Parts Per Billion
• Gail, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
• Chelsea Brown, Top Five
MORGAN FREEMAN
• Dr. Cameron McCarthy,
Dolphin Tale 2
• Vitruvius, The Lego Movie
• Professor Norman, Lucy
• Alex, Ruth & Alex
• Joseph Tagger, Transcendence
MICHIEL HUISMAN
• Daario Naharis, Game of Thrones
• Liam McGuinnis, Nashville
• Cal Morrison, Orphan Black
• Jonathan, Wild
ANNA KENDRICK
• Jenny, Happy Christmas
• Cinderella, Into the Woods
• Cathy Hiatt, The Last 5 Years
• Erica Wexler, Life After Beth
THE HARDEST-WORKING (CHARACTER) ACTOR IN SHOWBIZ
We’ve got to hand it to TATIANA MASLANY, who has portrayed a dozen clones (so far) in BBC America’s riveting sci-fi series
Orphan Black. Here’s a rundown of her chameleonic transformations to date:
1. SARAH MANNING British
punk-rock thief and con artist
2. ALISON HENDRIX pill-popping suburban soccer mom
3. DANIELLE FOURNIER dead French clone
4. HELENA deranged Ukrainian assassin
5. KATJA OBINGER sickly German
6. BETH CHILDS wealthy, suicidal detective
BY STEFANO TONCHI
7. COSIMA NIEHAUS tattooed
lesbian scientist
8. RACHEL DUNCAN uptight corporate executive with daddy issues
9. JANIKA ZINGLER dead Austrian clone
10. JENNIFER FITZSIMMONS high school teacher and swim coach
11. ARYANNA GIORDANO dead Italian clone
12. TONY SAWICKI goateed transgender grifter
An in-depth look at W’s
most arresting fashion features.
With a foreword by Miuccia Prada
Plus an exclusive online access code for five fashion films
by Steven Klein, Tim Walker, Steven Meisel, and more
AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD
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