Meet Blake Lively, the Next Big Thing

Blake Lively is poised to become a bonafide star, and Ryan D'Agostino thinks he may have scored the last-ever interview with the real her, as she bakes him a pie while discussing her blossoming career. Another person wants his early associations with the Gossip Girl made known, too: Ben Affleck, who cast her in September’s The Town. “I didn't quite discover her, but at least I want to say I bought the stock when it wasn't $500 a share,” he says.

Lively is going from star of a cult fave TV show to serious movies like The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and her continued upward trajectory seems inevitable. “I know everybody compares it to a roller coaster,” Lively says in the Esquire interview, “but this is like the part of the roller coaster where maybe you've already taken a big dip, but then there's going to be another unexpected one. A big loop. It feels like something else is going on.”
(More Blake Lively stories.)