Since the trailer hit the Internet, people have been wondering how much skin Heroes talent Hayden Panettiere would be showing in I Love You, Beth Cooper. (Here’s a hint: it’s rated PG-13.) We have nothing against exposed nipples and rear ends, but every once in a while directors need to be called out for their lazy use of nudity to keep viewers’ attentions. Read on for a list of the most egregious examples of gratuitous nudity ever captured on film.

Jason Segel, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Did Segel have to go full monty for his scene opposite Sarah (Kristen Bell) at movie’s beginning, in which his devastated character is confronted fresh out of the shower by the girlfriend who’s about to break his heart? OK, it’s hilarious. But it’s also engineered to be icky — particularly when he tries to entice the clearly uninterested Sarah by making his member dance. (And yes, there are sound effects. Of course.)

Daniel Craig, Casino Royale (2006)
Very few people complained when the impossibly buff Craig shed his clothes for an interrogation scene in this James Bond flick. While a naked-torture sequence might not be the stuff of which fanboy fantasies are made, it’s still a nice chance for Craig to show off his manly assets. Was the nudity necessary? Of course not! Surprisingly enough, Craig’s co-star Eva Green managed to avoid baring her bits as a Bond girl — no mean feat.

Halle Berry, Swordfish (2001)
Usually actresses come up with coy excuses for why they went nude in a particular role. Not Berry: She explained her decision to bare it all as a way of conquering her fears about how it would affect her image. More power to her! If only she’d trusted her assets with a more competent team — this John Travolta action flick was a dud on just about every conceivable level, including the way Berry’s nude scene gets plunked into the plot for no discernible reason.

Kevin Bacon, Footloose (1984)
OK, so whether Bacon is actually nude in this movie’s shower scene is impossible to tell, but he’s certainly surrounded by a surfeit of male posteriors. Why on earth such exhibitionism was necessary in a teen movie about a bunch of Christian kids who just want to dance is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the director, Herbert Ross, was trying to make an artistic statement about the suppression of natural life in movies? Doubtful.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Trading Places (1983)
Sure, her character in this comedy is a jailed prostitute who teams up with the desperate Winthrop (Dan Aykroyd) in an effort to improve her lot in life. It still doesn’t exactly follow that she would need to go topless to do so. Nonetheless, topless she goes! In this particular case, there may have been personal preference involved: The actress also appeared sans shirt at the age of 50 for an issue of AARP The Magazine.

Linnea Quigley, The Return of the Living Dead(1985)
It’s hardly unusual nowadays for women in peril to randomly shed their clothes in schlocky horror movies, nor was it back in the ’80s, when this zombie flick came out. But the notion of a slasher heroine deciding to do a striptease in a graveyard in the middle of a party full of punk-rockers surely puts this movie in a gratuituous-nudity class of its own. Of course, Quigley went on to score plum screen-queen roles in the decade that followed, so more than a few people were fans of her nude debut.

Sissy Spacek, Carrie (1976)
Before things go awry — in the form of Carrie receiving her monthly visitor for the first time and getting pelted with tampons by the ruthless mean girls in her class — this Brian De Palma classic sets the scene for the coming horror via a super-slow-mo, soft-lit scene in which a bevy of beauties go full frontal in a locker room. Which would be all well and good, if not for the fact that they were supposed to be teenage girls at the time.

Britt Ekland, The Wicker Man (1974)
Though Swedish actress Ekland did appear topless as a pagan seductress in this supernatural movie’s weird dance-musical scene, the filmmakers actually used a shapely body double for all of the more revealing shots. Her fellow actresses did everything from sobbing (naked) in graveyards to leaping (naked) over bonfires in order to try to get pregnant. This one’s a veritable gratuitous-nudity bonanza!

Review in a Hurry: Supremely dorky high-school valedictorian Dennis (Paul Rust) decides to tell it like it is in his commencement address, trashing bullies by name and declaring his love for head cheerleader Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere). We’ve seen nerds pine for less-unattainable-than-expected hotties before, but rarely does it feel this real…and funny.

The Bigger Picture: After a decade or so of death throes under the watch of generic cutie-pies like Amanda Bynes and Hilary Duff, the teen comedy makes a strong comeback in this adaptation by Larry Doyle of his own comedic novel.

Rust is no hunky actor pretending to be nebbish under glasses and a bad hairdo—he is genuinely strange-looking, and his Dennis is so realistically awkward and askew that you can understand why people might not want to hang out with him. As is his best friend Rich (Jack Carpenter), a possibly closeted movie geek who thinks Jack Nicholson impersonations are the height of hilarity.

So when Dennis decides to talk smack in front of the whole school, seizing his final opportunity to say everything he was always afraid to utter, he might as well be painting a target on his head, especially in the eyes of Beth’s psychotic, Terminator-built military boyfriend Kevin (Shawn Roberts). Fortunately, Beth takes enough pity on her sad-sack suitor that she saves him and Rich from a massive beatdown, and along with her sidekicks—plainspoken Cammy (Lauren London) and nymphomaniac Treece (Lauren Storm)—they spend the evening crashing parties while fleeing not just from Kevin’s posse, but also the numerous other aggrieved parties from graduation, all while avoiding the parents (one even played by former Ferris Bueller BFF Alan Ruck).

I Love You, Beth Cooper pushes the limits of PG-13, with some very frank sex talk and even brief nudity. Yet that isn’t the main reason it feels so honest: The secret weapon here is Panettiere, who may lure in the boys with her looks, but who is also a genuinely formidable actress who renders in Beth a complex soul. (Fans are advised to rent her little-seen, off-kilter kids movie The Dust Factory).

If the credits didn’t say so clearly, we’d never have believed this movie was directed by über-sentimentalist Chris Columbus, who’s usually content to replace life’s complications with simplistic smiles and tears. Columbus has long been associated with John Hughes, most notably on the Home Alone films. Here, at last, he channels the best of his mentor.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Impressionable kids should probably be kept away, as the movie’s teen heroes break multiple laws, wreak massive havoc and aren’t even remotely punished; their experiences prove almost entirely rewarding. If you like morals to your movies, this ain’t the one.

MTV News caught up with Panettiere to talk about the Chris Columbus-directed teen flick, her work as an animal-rights activist and whether she really was like Beth Cooper herself back in high school.

MTV: I’m guessing you were a fan of the book the movie’s based on from the get-go?
Hayden Panettiere: I actually had never read the book.

MTV: What was it like working with author Larry Doyle, who did the screenplay as well?
Panettiere: Larry was great. He was on set all the time, and we all had fun. We were a big happy family. It’s more the collaboration of him and Chris and everyone. I had less interaction with Larry when it came to the process of creating the film than others did.

MTV: Did you have a lot of input into the character Beth Cooper? Was there room for improv?
Panettiere: We definitely, definitely had fun with it and put our spins on it. There wasn’t a massive amount of improv or changing of dialogue or anything like that, but it was pretty great right off the bat anyway. There was not much changing that needed to be done.

MTV: Did you relate to it? How close was this to your high school experience?
Panettiere: In ways, it was very close. I had a great high school experience. I had a lot of fun, and I was wild and went crazy and was reckless, but I didn’t have the traditional high school experience. I was going through home schooling. But I went to prom, and I went to homecoming, and I was in the yearbook. No crashing of cars. I went to games and all that good stuff.

MTV: What’s next for you after this?
Panettiere: I’m in the fourth season of “Heroes.” We just started filming, and we’ll be filming for the next seven months, so that’s what we’re up to right now.

MTV: What can we expect in the next season of “Heroes”?
Panettiere: There’s something called the Carnival that’s coming in that’s sort of the opposite of what the Company was. There’s a lot of new cool characters.

MTV: Do you have a dream project or role that you can’t wait to play?
Panettiere: I mean, there’s a lot of them. I’ve never wanted to slot myself in just one category, one certain kind of character, genre, film, so there’s a lot that I’m still wanting to do and still excited to do, but I’ve never really tried to plan it out. I’ve always been more of the spontaneous type, like, I just can’t wait to see what comes my way.

MTV: I’ve always admired your animal-rights activism [working to end commercial whaling]. What is it like having the forum to communicate with people and get this message out there?
Panettiere: It’s great. There’s ups and downs to being in this industry and being in the public eye, and one of the great things is we get to speak out on behalf of things that we’re passionate about. We’re just chipping away at it, so it’s going to take some time. We’re going to keep on keeping on.

MTV: Do you ever see yourself going to the other side of the camera? Do you ever want to write or direct?
Panettiere: Definitely, maybe someday. Someday, when I get my fill of acting for a bit. There’s a lot more to learn when it comes to becoming a director, but you have the experience of being an actor working with directors and getting to work with brilliant ones, and you get to take a lot from them.

“I Love You, Beth Cooper” is out now in theatres.

After much speculation, “Heroes” will be making an appearance at this year’s, 2009 Comic Con. Although the enitre cast, including Hayden, will not be appearing. Details below.

WHAT: Comic-Con International 2009 fans will be the first to watch an exclusive trailer for Heroes Season 4, titled “Volume Five: Redemption,” created just for the annual event in San Diego.

WHO: Following the trailer, creator Tim Kring and cast members Jack Coleman, Masi Oka, Adrian Pasdar and Zachary Quinto, as well as guest stars Robert Knepper, Dawn Olivieri, Ray Park and Madeline Zima, will participate in a Q&A session.

WHEN: Saturday, July 25 at 3:15-4:15 PM

WHERE: Indigo Room @ Hilton San Diego Bayfront (1 Park Blvd., San Diego)

Hayden Panettiere hopes to become a respected actress. The Heroes star says she wants to be best known for her acting ability and not her private life. And Hayden, 19, cites 15-time Academy Award nominee Meryl Streep as her inspiration.

“I love acting,” she said. “It’s something I respect. It’s something that makes me want to be respected for what I do. I’m working toward being a respected actress. Meryl Streep is it for me. Just because I’m in the spotlight doesn’t mean I’m God’s gift to the world. I do have cameras in my face all of the time. Fame leaves you no room to mess up even slightly, and things get turned around on you. That’s why I feel you really do have to live your life conscious that people are watching. There are certain things you just can’t do.”

Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, Hayden also revealed she is worried about being typecast.

“You don’t play villains unless you’re Sharon Stone when you’re blond and you look a certain way,” she said. “I think it would be exciting for me to play the bad guy in a movie. It would be a blast. I think it’s so much fun to play bad.”

It may be hard to believe, but celebrities go through tough times too, and Hayden Panettiere is not afraid to talk about hers.

The “Heroes” star admits she struggled with her dad’s 2008 arrest for felony domestic violence against her mother after it was reported that he smacked his wife across the face, leaving an undeniable bruise.

The 19-year-old tells Seventeen magazine, “I mean, it’s hard enough going through it personally within your family, let alone when the entire world knows about it. I know that I’m strong enough to deal. I’m less concerned about myself. But when it involves my family or people I care about, I mean, I’ll fly off the handle for my family.”

Hayden added later that it kills her to think that her father has a reputation for being an abusive person because that is not how he is at all.

FHM has released their, The 100 Sexiest Females” list and Hayden made it.

#18 – Hayden Panettiere
“In an age of conflict… in a world of uncertainty… a hero will arise.” TV trailers tell us this, but they didn’t say she’d be a button-cute New Yorker who’d debut in FHM’s very pages.

Since her first men’s mag shoot, she’s split her time shooting a further two series of Heroes and campaigning with PETA to stop people beating up whales and dolphins. Yup – she’s the ethically-inclined nerd’s dream woman.

Julianne Hough, the two-time champion of “Dancing with the Stars“, is officially in talks to join the cast of Paramount Pictures’ remake of “Footloose“. The Hollywood Reporter came out with a story that the singer/dancer is pursuing to make her film debut and join Chace Crawford in the project.

Hough was previously rumored to have auditioned for the role of Ariel Moore which was once made famous by Lori Singer. About her, director Kenny Ortega has said during his appearance at 2009 MTV Movie Awards, “I love her. I adore her. I’m a big fan of hers. Not only how beautiful but how deep her talent goes.”

Beside this 20-year-old, other famous celebrities who reportedly also were considered for the Ariel role were Hayden Panettiere, Amanda Bynes and Miley Cyrus.

“Footloose” centers on a rebellious outsider who moves into a new town where music and dancing are forbidden. The outsider then proceeds to shake everything up. Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer previously co-starred on the original movie.

Kenny Ortega, the man who directed “High School Musical” series, will helm and produce the film. Also joining him are “Agent Cody Banks” and “Hairspray” producers Neil Meron and Dylan Sellers as well as Craig Zadan, who worked on the 1984 original.

Panettiere recently chatted with press about her thoughts on being a role model.

She tells, “I think the only problem with attempting to be a role model is the fact that you just want to go, ‘okay, I’ll be a role model for you. I’d love to, but don’t expect me to be perfect because I’m not and I do screw up and I do make mistakes and I can’t always think of everyone else and what they’re going to say’.”

Continuing on, Hayden adds, “Because at the end of the day the only person you can make happy is yourself. No matter whether it’s wrong or right or looks good or looks bad, somebody will hate it. Somebody will.”

What happens when you combine a powerful, incendiary message with terrific artistry? The answer could very well be “The Cove”, a documentary about the Japanese slaughter of thousands of dolphins every year off the coast of Taiji.

The New York Times calls the film “part heist movie, part environmental exposé,” as famed activist and dolphin trainer Richard O’Barry leads a team of divers and filmmakers to the secret cove where the dolphin population is cruelly controlled, out of sight of Japanese citizens and media.

“The Cove” is a documentary helmed by Louie Psihoyos, written by Mark Monroe and produced by Fisher Stevens and Paula DuPré Pesman. The cast includes Joe Chisholm, Mandy-Rae Cruikshank, Charles Hambleton, Simon Hutchins, Kirk Krack, Isabel Lucas, Richard O’Barry, Hayden Panettiere, Roger Payne, John Potter and Louie Psihoyos.

Catch this on July 31st in limited locations.