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This time last year, the Pirelli Calendar swapped its risqué photographs in favour of featuring accomplished women like Serena Williams, Yao Chen, Patti Smith and Yoko Ono.
This year, the company will once again forego semi-nude shots and model-esque influencers, instead opting for actresses of different ages and backgrounds. The women in the 2017 calendar – Charlotte Rampling, Uma Thurman, Nicole Kidman, Léa Seydoux, Alicia Vikander, Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore, Robin Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Rooney Mara, Jessica Chastain, Anastacia Ignatova, Penelope Cruz, Helen Mirren, and Zhang Ziyi – represent Hollywood glamour at its utmost.
Of course, beauty is in no short supply among these spectacular actresses, but photographer Peter Lindbergh tells Vogue that he intended this year’s lineup to be a “counter message to [the industry’s] fake beauty ideal”, instead featuring “all the big names of actresses who are not known to do bimbo movies, but are known to do sensible films – most of them have got Oscars – and then let them be them.”
Lindbergh first worked for Pirelli in 1996 and last shot the calendar 13 years ago. Back then, his subjects were all youthful, up-and-coming actresses like Amy Smart and Brittany Murphy. This year, however, he wanted to make “a love song to the women I really know and really like, and there’s no exception. Everyone in this calendar, at one point in my life, I wanted to marry, and I didn’t have the balls to ask them!”
