50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 17, Malin Akerman is the city’s girl next door
If you don’t know her name, that’s because she’s not desperately shoving it down your throat. She doesn’t spend her evenings chugging vodka Red Bulls at Bar Marmont, she didn’t date Wilmer Valderrama and, last time we checked, she had only one paparazzi’d crotch shot on the Internet—and it was blurry. Chances are you know her work, though. Since stealing the spotlight as Katherine Heigl’s hottie sister in the 2008 rom-com 27 Dresses, Malin Akerman has scored big as the hilarious, impossibly gorgeous girl next door, building up a resumé most young actresses would hit the casting couch for, Lindsay Lohan included. Akerman got her biggest break yet when she was tapped to replace the uninsurable star in Inferno, a biopic about porn queen turned porn critic Linda Lovelace. At 32, the Toronto-bred Akerman is a little older and a lot wiser than Lohan and her ilk. She’s been married for four years (her husband is the Italian musician Roberto Zincone), and when you Google her, one of the first things that pops up is “Malin Akerman greens her home and neighbourhood school.” Not exactly the egomaniacal antics of a Hollywood hellion, and we’d like to think a wholesome Toronto upbringing had something to do with that.
Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
