In an interview with the UK edition of Marie Claire, Hendricks, 34, who plays curvy Joan Holloway in the hit US drama, admitted that one of her biggest disappointments was missing out on a role in one of Allen’s flicks.

She said: ‘It’s always been a dream of mine to work with Woody Allen. I had an audition last year, but didn’t get the role, and it kind of hurt my heart.”

She added: ‘He [Allen] said I was too sweet. I guess if you’re not going to get something, that’s a good reason, right?’

© Monsters & Critics

Hendricks’s doll captures the redheaded office manager Joan Holloway’s coiffed hairdo, fitted skirt and signature accessory: a pen necklace. One notable difference, however: Not even Barbie could compete with Holloway’s curves. This doll appears much less buxom than her on-screen inspiration.

View the other dolls here.

Please visit www.clothesoffourback.org to place a bid and support the Haiti releif cause. The auction ends February 17.

Woman of the Hourglass
Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks finds talk of her body boring. A minority opinion, to be sure. Particularly this season.

Christina Hendricks thinks all the talk about her body is a little embarrassing. It’s not as if she has an extra limb, after all. She just has an especially attractive version of the same thing women have had forever—curves—but she happens to have them in a profession where women haven’t for quite some time.

“It kind of hurt my feelings at first,” she says. “Anytime someone talks about your figure constantly, you get nervous, you get really self-conscious. I was working my butt off on the show, and then all anyone was talking about was my body!”

You can see why all the focus on how big the chest, how narrow the waist, how round the hips could drive an actor—anyone—insane, but people were only noticing Christina Hendricks’s body because they were finally noticing Christina Hendricks. Her portrayal of Joan Holloway, the complicated office queen of Sterling Cooper (Draper Pryce!), on Mad Men is properly captivating for its combination of total competence and heartbreaking vulnerability. And she delivers the spectacular performance while looking extremely different from the other women we’ve grown used to seeing on television, in movies, on the covers of magazines. “It might sound silly,” she says, “but I didn’t realize I was so different. I was just oblivious. Sometimes I would go on an audition and someone would say something like, Girl, you’re refreshing! That was it.”

And it’s not Hendricks’s fault that she’s come to everyone’s attention as an actress at a time when bodies are very much an issue—if not the issue—as far as fashion is concerned. There are the various attempts by fashion cities like São Paulo and Milan to police model weight; there are press conferences, BMI restrictions, mandatory turkey sandwiches backstage at every show. But lately there have also been baby steps taken toward the (unfortunately) radical idea that looking good need not involve so much rejection of the naturally occurring female shape. Glamour has begun to mix models of various sizes into its regular editorial shoots. A recent issue of V concerned itself with shape, pointing out that clothes—even fashion clothes—can look good on differently sized people.

But too often the size discussion becomes almost grotesque, as if the only alternative to being as lean as a skinless Perdue chicken breast is to veer wildly (and unhealthily) in the opposite direction (Gabourey Sidibe, Beth Ditto). One can’t help wonder if the fashion world’s obsession with those two women, both of whom deserve prominent coverage for their talent first and foremost, isn’t in some sense overcompensation, an attempt to atone for the terribly thin models who still hold sway everywhere. Either way, it becomes a game of extremes.

There is a spectacular other path. And Hendricks working the Emmy’s red carpet in formfitting L’Wren Scott is terrific PR for the opinion that Hollywood success should not be determined by one’s ability to Pilates one’s hips up, off, and away. None of this is meant to suggest that Hendricks is big. She is not. (That the New York Times seemed to endorse a stylist’s description of her as “a big girl” in its coverage of the Golden Globes was mystifying and strange.) It is also not to suggest that her figure is attainable to the average duck. She looks the way movie stars used to look. She is, in that sense, proof of how certain bodies go in and out of fashion.

It is perhaps ironic then that Hendricks actually started out as a model—catalogues, mostly, but there was one season on the London runway that ended when her agent said, “Darling, did your boobs grow?” (One imagines that future seasons might see the question posed in the opposite direction.) Now, she is a fully working actor, with three new films in the can and several more under consideration. Curiously, she keeps getting called in to audition for roles as the mothers of people she isn’t nearly old enough, at 34, to have birthed—which has a lot to do with what she wears on TV. “The way we dress on Mad Men is so associated with old photographs, with people’s parents and grandparents,” she says. “In person, I wear jeans and flip-flops and people are so shocked. They tell me I look so much younger than they expected.”

Work on a new season of Mad Men is about to begin. “We’re really spoiled on Mad Men,” she says. “Lots of television actors use the down season to go out and get creatively fulfilled, but I feel the opposite. Anything else I get to do is just icing.”

As for the body question, she’ll answer it when asked, but mostly it bores her. “It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” she says. “Back when I was modeling, if someone said ‘I’m fasting,’ I would say, ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’”

© NY Mag

So how does Moss deal with being known as sartorial-snooze Peggy?

“It’s a little hard, being such a girly girl, when I see what Christina [Hendricks, who plays the agency's curvy office manager, Joan Holloway] and January [Jones, as housewife/babe Betty Draper] get to wear,” she says, “but at the same time, I love my character so much that if they put me in a paper bag and I got to play her, I would be fine with that.”

The busty redhead recently won an apology from a fashion blogger after a New York Times critic blasted her choice of gown for the Golden Globes last month.

Hendricks admits she always finds it hard to dress for high profile events as so many fashion brands refuse to associate themselves with larger ladies.

She tells Britain’s Glamour magazine, “It is difficult come award season and I need to find a gown to walk down the red carpet in, and there are only size zeros and size twos available. Then it becomes downright annoying. Because all these designers are saying, ‘We love Mad Men, we love Christina, but we won’t make her a dress.’”

The actress admits her size has also lost her acting jobs in the past, but she refuses to shrink down to fit in with her super-slender peers. She adds, “I have not got jobs because I was told I was too sexy, too voluptuous. But it’s just the way I am.”

“I was told I was very close to getting a job and they decided I was too heavy. I felt very embarrassed. But I thought, ‘I chose to live here (in Hollywood). I know how it goes. I can either lose weight or I can stay the same.’ I chose to stay the same.”

© SFGate

The actress, who plays Joan Holloway on the AMC drama, has admitted that she’s become a fan of the 1960s era of fashion.

Hendricks told Marie Claire: “I’m definitely learning from Joan. My personal style is very romantic. I’m drawn to things that have a feminine flair, whether it’s a ruffle or an embellishment.

“Joan is much more streamlined, so I’m learning how that works on my figure. I’m a fan of the pencil skirt now. I used to think they were so conservative, but then I realised if you wear one that’s tight enough, it’s really sexy.”

As for what her mantra for dressing is, she added: “Highlight the things you like. I like my small waist, so whenever I wear a dress or blouse, I always make sure you can see my waistline. It gives me more of an hourglass shape.”

© Digital Spy

© People

Hendricks teamed up with Degree(R) Women Ultra Clear to make a daring statement in red at the 2010 SAG Awards. Hendricks is not one to shy away from making a fashion statement on the red carpet, and this year, she let America vote on her style for Saturday’s big event. Every vote supported Degree Women Ultra Clear and a $50,000 donation to Clothes Off Our Back, an organization that is auctioning off Hendrick’s dress to support women’s causes. To bid on Hendricks red-carpet Carolina Herrera gown, visit www.ClothesOffOurBack.org.

© Examiner

Hendricks ranks at #52

Voluptuous redhead should make it clear why Christina Hendricks made our Top 99 list. Physical attributes aside, her perfect portrayal of a seductive secretary in the testosterone, tobacco and booze-fueled world of 1960s-era Madison Avenue in the first season of Mad Men helped her character, Joan Holloway, become more prominent in the second season, which aired in 2008. Christina Hendricks shared a Screen Actors Guild nomination for ensemble performance in 2008 with her costars, and we look forward to catching up with all of them again this year for the highly anticipated third season of Mad Men. She’ll also costar with Dermot Mulroney in the film Driving Lessons.