Rule 5 Saturday - Saved by the Showgirls - Elizabeth Berkley

This week's Rule 5 post is dedicated to Elizabeth Berkley, for approximately no reason whatsoever.

Some random factoids.

Her family is Jewish, she was raised in the Conservative tradition of Judaism, and at age 13 became bat mitzvahed.

Berkley was born with heterochromia, the condition of differently colored irises; her right eye is half green and half brown, and her left eye is all green.

You can even see that (sort of) in the photo to the left

In 1989, at the age of seventeen, she auditioned for the role of Kelly Kapowski in Saved by the Bell, but the producers of the show could not decide whether to cast her or Tiffani-Amber Thiessen. In the end, they created for Berkley the character Jessie Spano, a role she played from 1989 to 1993, as well as in both of the show's television film installments.

In 2000, Berkley was made the subject of a $45 million lawsuit when actor and screenwriter Roger Wilson took action against Leonardo DiCaprio, claiming that DiCaprio had encouraged his friends to assault Wilson in a street fight after he tried to defend Berkley, who had been the subject of DiCaprio and his friends' unwanted advances.

After leaving Saved by the Bell to try to break into film, Berkley auditioned for (and won) the role of Nomi Malone, a character in the controversial 1995 Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls. The sex- and nudity-laden film was given a controversial NC-17 rating in the United States (the first big budget film that was deliberately intended to receive this rating), was a box office bomb, and was widely panned by critics. Over the years, however, Showgirls has achieved cult status among film fans and ranks 36 on Entertainment Weekly '​s list of the Top 50 Cult Movies. It is also one of top 20 highest grossing films of all time for MGM.

It has been claimed that "Showgirls" ruined her career. Some NC-17 animated gifs from "Showgirls".

GOODSTUFF is back for his 220th issue with the gun smoking Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake) and the chick from U.N.C.L.E. (Stefanie Powers). Wombat-socho rounds up the Rule 5 world with "Rule 5 Sunday: Pre-Christmas Shopping Frenzy Edition" and "FMJRA 2.0: Achtung Baby."