Celebrity crush: Sarah Lancaster (revised)

Here's a revised entry focusing on the TV series Chuck's less-hyped lovely lass. Amazon and iTunes links follow. Any affiliate payments earned from your purchase or rental will help pay the hosting fees for my podcasts, so please consider clicking.

Name: Sarah Lancaster (images | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Overland Park, Kan., and later Mission Viejo, Calif., according to her Wikipedia entry.
Best Known For: Sarah's a former childhood actress who did 54 episodes of Saved by the Bell: The New Class as a teenager. As an adult, her longest-term role has been on Chuck, playing the elder sister to everyone's favorite electronics store employee-turned-spy since the pilot.

Other multi-episode TV appearances include 19 episodes of Everwood and 17 episodes of What About Brian, two shows that are included on the résumés of more than a few of my celebrity crushes. She also did three episodes of MTV's late-night soap Undressed (another show with a lot of the crushes from this list over its multi-year run) and three episodes of Scrubs across the years, playing a gift shop worker and crush of Zach Braff's character.

Speaking of Amy Adams...

Film roles include Catch Me If You Can and Smother, but she's mainly worked in television. (The straight-to-video Cruel Intentions 2 is listed on her IMDB profile, with a note that her scenes were deleted; that could mean she had been on board for the aborted Fox TV series Manchester Prep, whose existing episodes were edited into movie form after the network decided against airing the series. That TV series -- and the movie -- starred fellow celebrity crush Amy Adams, who also appeared in Catch Me If You Can.)
Humble Beginnings: Sarah's roles in her teen years also included appearances on Night Man, Pacific Blue, Unhappily Ever After and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She also spent eight years training in jazz and funk dancing.

(Sometimes mistaken for
Jessica Biel or Tiffani Thiessen.)

Obligatory Edgy Stuff: She may or may not have gone topless in the 1999 film Lovers Lane, in which she played a jealous girlfriend-turned-serial killer. (It could have been a body double.)
Missed Opportunities: If Everwood had been renewed for a fifth season, Sarah was poised to reprise her role as Madison, and the fourth-season finale (which turned out to be the series finale) was shot with an alternate ending that featured her reappearing in town.

It's too bad that didn't happen, not only because the series was excellent -- not only because the series gave us fellow celebrity crush Emily VanCamp -- but because the storyline with her character had more depths to explore, I thought.

Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: Sarah is tall, gorgeous and plays the straight woman to dim-witted or immature males very well. On Everwood, she played a college student dating a high-school student; on Chuck, she's the sister of a slacker-turned-spy whose doofus best friend crushes on her in the most awkward way possible.
Film and TV-movie credits: Smother (2008) (Amazon | iTunes) * Speechless (2008 documentary) (Amazon | iTunes) * Living With the Enemy (2005 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Catch Me If You Can (Amazon | iTunes) * Cruel Intentions 2 (scenes deleted) (Amazon | iTunes) * Devil in the Flesh 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Rocket's Red Glare (Amazon | iTunes) * Michael Landon: The Father I Knew (Amazon | iTunes) * Sorority (1999 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Lovers Lane (1999) (Amazon | iTunes)

As production manager only: Downturn (2010 short) (Amazon | iTunes)
TV and Web series credits: Chuck, season 4 (Amazon | iTunes) * Chuck, season 3 (Amazon | iTunes) * Hawthorne, season 1: "No Guts, No Glory" (Amazon | iTunes) * Chuck, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Chuck, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * What About Brian, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * What About Brian, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Dr. Vegas (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 5: "My Urologist" (Amazon | iTunes) * Four Kings: "One Night Stand Off" (Amazon | iTunes) * Everwood, season 3 (Amazon | iTunes) * Everwood, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * CSI, season 3: "Precious Metal" (Amazon | iTunes) * Six Feet Under, season 3: "Perfect Circles" (Amazon | iTunes) * 7th Heaven, season 7: "Stand Up" (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * That '70s Show, season 5: "Over the Hills and Far Away" (Amazon | iTunes) * Half and Half, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Off Centre, season 2: "Love Is a Pain in the A**" (Amazon | iTunes) * Boston Public, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Dharma and Greg, season 5: "Wish We Weren't Here" (Amazon | iTunes) * Dawson's Creek, season 3: "Stolen Kisses" (Amazon | iTunes) * Zoe, season 2: The Customer Is Always Vic" (Amazon | iTunes) * Undressed, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Rescue 77: "A Bumpy Ride" (Amazon | iTunes) * Conrad Bloom: "The Spazz Singer" (Amazon | iTunes) * Pacific Blue, season 3: "Best Laid Plans" (Amazon | iTunes)