The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 7: Patricia Arquette

Look, I'm not saying that I don't like Rosanna Arquette. She's awesome in Pulp Fiction and the David Cronenberg Crash. She is, undoubtedly, a beautiful woman. But for me, when I think of the Hanukkah hotness that is the Arquette family, I can't help but fixate on sister Patricia.

Bonus Hanukkah hottie: Rosanna Arquette. Photo by Rita Molnar, Wikimedia Commons.

Three words:

Stigmata.

True Romance.







Stigmata is a particularly bold choice, in which Arquette played a contemporary, female St. Francis of Assisi, receiving the wounds of Jesus on her body. This happens not because of Frankie's personal holiness - she doesn't even believe in God - but because she's been chosen as the messenger of a dead priest who discovered a suppressed gospel written by Jesus himself. The Church will do anything to keep the hidden gospel hidden, a plotline that anticipates The Da Vinci Code. The subplot is a romance between Frankie and Father Andrew Kiernan, a scientist/priest/investigator of alleged miracles, played by Gabriel Byrne.

If you watch American TV, you may have seen her recently on Law and Order: SVU as a prostitute assisting the SVU team in catching a spree killer who was one of her johns. Like P!nk and Jamie Lee Curtis, Arquette has taken her turn as a horror film vixen, appearing in the third Nightmare on Elm Street film, Dream Warriors.

For me, her most memorable turn as a literary character was her appearance in Holes as the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow. When I worked in a school, one of the books we read out loud to the 7-12 year olds was Louis Sachar's novel. The Kissin' Kate parts were my favorites, especially her sad romance with Sam the Onion Man.


She has also appeared in the film adaptation of Eric Schlosser's muckraking nonfiction book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

If you remember Patricia Arquette as a regular from a TV drama, you probably remember her as Allison Dubois on Medium. The TV character was based on the real Allison Dubois, an alleged psychic medium who has written several books about her experiences, including We Are Their Heaven: Why the Dead Never Leave Us.