How Landman’s Ali Larter’s career kickstarted her career with a hoax

She’s earned a new legion of fans with her work in Paramount+ series, Landman. 

Yet Ali Larter, 50, has been a firm fixture on the showbiz scene since the Noughties after starring as Clear Rivers in the Final Destination Franchise. 

But Ali had a very unusual path to fame. Rather than breaking into the industry with a starring role or blockbuster film, she was propelled into the limelight with a genius hoax that fooled the world. 

When she was 20 years old she took the world by storm as she posed as the cover girl for Esquire Magazine, but she wasn’t posing Ali on the glossy cover, she was known as ‘Allegra Coleman’. 

Stumbling across the cover, one fan recently took to Twitter as they penned: ‘looked up the name “Allegra” on Wikipedia and learned about “Allegra Coleman,” a fictitious actress (portrayed here by Ali Larter) invented by Esquire magazine for a hoax article in 1996. 

‘why?? it wasn’t even an April Fools thing, it was November’.

Why indeed. Portraying a made up character, the magazine curated Allegra as ‘Hollywood’s next dream girl’ and described her as one of the industry’s most in-demand model. 

Fabricating details of her life, they made up that she had an on-off relationship with Friends star David Schwimmer, that Woody Allen was desperate to have her in one of his movies, and even featured comments from Indian-American author Deepak Chopra. 

Suddenly everyone was obsessed with Allegra, and if they thought she had come out of nowhere, it was because she had. 

American journalist Martha Sherrill used Ali as a social experiment that satirised celebrity culture, presenting them with a vapid star that the world soon jumped out due to her blonde looks and completely imaginary connections. 

Even the copy poked fun at Allegra and the shallow nature of celebrities. One quotation read: ‘I am having thoughts. Really getting into thinking’.

Lucky for Ali the experiment worked, and it wasn’t long before she began landing acting roles herself, but as Ali, not Allegra. 

Reflecting on the cover on Dinner’s On Me in January, Ali said: ‘They really made it look like it was a profile on this rising actress’.

The motivation for the article was ‘Hollywood’s fixation on making it girls,’ and it was ‘[Esquire’s] big old joke.’

But the joked worked. ‘People bought it, and I got a manager, and then, other doors opened,’ added Ali. 

In 1999 she made her film debut in the coming of age dramedy Varsity Blues as she wowed in a whipped cream bikini while starring alongside Dawson Creek star James Van Der Beek. 

After starring in House On Haunted Hill, in 2000 she bagged her role in Final Destination which won her the Best Breakthrough Performance by a Female at the Young Hollywood Awards. 

There was also a big role on Heroes with Hayden Panettiere from 2006 until 2010.

Most recently she has starred in Landman as Angela Norris, the sex-crazed ex-wife of Billy Bob Thornton’s fixer Tommy Norris.

On Sunday, Ali set the red carpet ablaze when she arrived at the 32nd Annual Actor Awards, in a burgundy off-the-shoulder dress with a plunging neckline.

Turning 50 one day before, she works hard to maintain her incredible looks, previously opening up about her strict exercise regimen and healthy eating habits.

She said on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast: ‘I take care of myself. So that’s what I do. But also, when I say I go to the gym, yes, you need to strength train.

‘You know, as you get older as a woman, it’s part of it. You have to do it.’

Ali continued: ‘But I’m also there, babe. I am like getting through my terror of life. Like I’m working my anxiety out.

The actress explained how she usually starts the day with celery juice and a coffee and then hits the gym.

She said: ‘I get up an hour and a half before call time before I get picked up. I just do it. I do the Peloton trainers.

‘I fit it in when I fit it in. I don’t do a lot. Sometimes I’ll do half an hour. Sometimes I do 20 minutes.’

She continued: ‘For me, after I exercise and I sweat, I’ve burned off a lot of my fear and I spent a lot of time just breathing, and it just gets so much oxygen into my body, and then I just feel better about myself.

‘Like, I’ve already won the day. For me, it’s a life-changer, and I’ve never been this disciplined ever in my whole life.’