I know that a lot of people prefer Julie Newmar, but I think that Lee Meriwether brought an amazing amount of feline appeal to the horrid Batman movie.
Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Perfect combination of Ivory Girl and Gutsy Dame. How could you not fall in love with her (or, in my case, want to be her)?
Darryl Hannah in Splash: http://jamieatlas.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/darryl-hannaho.jpg
Kathleen Turner in Body Heat: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews25/a%20body%20heat%20kathleen%20turner/old%20body%20heat%20kathleen%20turner%202034.jpg
Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life: http://buttondown.mattalgren.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/donna-reed-jimmy-stewart.jpg
Embeth Davidtz in Matilda: http://www.kinoweb.de/film97/Matilda/pix/honey.jpg
Jennifer Connelly in Dark City: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_C_8M2WVWfgM/STQoLjfsRMI/AAAAAAAAAf4/JiiN_sQjEjs/s320/jennifer-connelly-dark-city.jpg
Great film. It has such a relaxed demeanour; one that seems to be almost impossible to replicate nowadays.
I totally disagree. Elektra is Greek, with an obviously Mediterranean, exotic look. Jennifer Garner got the attitude about right, but the look was all wrong. She looks entirely too Anglo-Saxon and boring.
I see Elektra more like this.
Oh God, no. I’d take Robin Wright over Darryl Hannah any day of the week. I think it’s hard to do much better as Buttercup than they did. Is she without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the world? No, but that’s pretty hard to find, and cast, and have someone with good dramatic and comedic timing (even though she plays it straight most of the film). I also love that Buttercup wasn’t a stringy stick figure with sunken eyes that seems to pass for beauty too often nowadays.
Wintertime beat me to mentioning Rita Hayworth in Gilda. It is certainly memorable.
I liked her in The Shining but you gotta admit the woman was born to play Olive Oyl (her casting being one of the very few justifications for the Popeye movie).
Julie Christie in Dr Zhivago
Grace Kelly in Rear Window
I can assure you that she looks even more gorgeous in life, but she is not at all athletic, so I can’t see Monica as Electra. But I consider her the perfect choice in Giuseppe Tornatores Malèna.
I agree with Grace Kelly in Rear Window; Hitchcock also chose well, when he opted for Kim Novak in Vertigo; no other of Hitchcock’s blondes would have fit.
And since it was an iconic role: Jane Fonda as/in Barbarella.
Hedy Lamarr was Delilah
She’s not as detrimental to the film as “Tony, the talking finger”, but I do find her an irritating distraction. Aside from Nicholson & certain select scenes, I find The Shining to be a big disappointment.
Though I always enjoy watching Jennifer Garner, especially when she’s encased in red leather, I have to agree with one reviewer who said that she was supposed to be some super-badass but looked like she was thinking of kittens most of the time.
Because Wonder Woman got mentioned earlier in the thread so I’m thinking of super-heroine movies, I really think that Charisma Carpenter needs to play WW. She’s got the look, she’s definitely got the body, she’s got the action chops from Buffy and Angel.
Matilda May in Lifeforce pretty much drop-kicked me through puberty in about 5 minutes. 
I thought that Catherine McCormack did well in Dangerous Beauty. I don’t know what the actual courtesan (Veronica Franco) was supposed to look like, but she was believable as a courtesan to me -
Beyonce in Austin Power’s “GoldMember”. She was the perfect Foxy Cleopatra.
Even though she disowns the role now, Michele Pfeiffer in Grease 2 was my first childhood crush.
That role wasn’t supposed to have a beauty filling it. She was supposed to be a harried wife, coming out to this hotel in the middle of nowhere, hoping for a second chance with her recovering (?) alcoholic husband who’d broken their son’s arm previously, and who lost his job. Plus if you’re matching attractiveness in partners, Nicholson has never been (well, perhaps when he was young) an absolute stunner in looks.
(Agreed on the Olive Oyl resemblance mentioned by another poster, though.)
That link has shifted to the opening page of a DVD seller. Instead, try: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LP_YP0I7zZY/SddW4OhEiWI/AAAAAAAAB28/4sLwOdBMYQ8/s400/Kathleen-Turner-Body_l.jpg
Coincidentally, “Elektra” was on TV yesterday and we watched it during braks in the game.
Jennifer Garner was just fricking awful. There were scenes where, to be perfectly honest, she looked like a high school kid acting for the third time in her life. It was a bad script, and she’s acted well in other stuff, so I’d have to conclude that she just was not suitable to carry the role in a full length movie.