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6) Alyson Hannigan

That Hannigan—a physically androgynous young women perhaps best described as wallflower-pretty—has forged a career armed only with ace comic timing, huge silent film-star eyes, and bottomless geek empathy is remarkable enough. And that she was able, in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, to make us totally invest ourselves in Willow Rosenberg’s somewhat unusual seven-year arc—from education-crazed Jewish outsider to wiccan witch to nontormented lesbian to black-veined villain to happily partnered assistant world-saver—is an amazing feat of extended acting chops. But it was those chops fused with her disarming sweetness that rendered her first-ever TV lesbian kiss, with Buffy co-star Amber Benson, so inarguably dear that even the Fox network couldn’t rationalize nixing it. And that’s earned Hannigan a deserved place in queer/humanist televisual history. (IG)

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20) Summer Glau

The look: Doll-like Victorian manga. Specialty: subverting multiple assumptions by playing mentally discombobulated girlie girls-turned-supersmart ass-kickers. See her seemingly fragile, ultimately heroic, space zombie-whacking telepath in Serenity and emotion-challenged "good" Terminator in this season’s funnest guilty pleasure, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Result: Fanboys grow faint, AfterEllen.com gushes, troubled souls of all stripes gain a new poster girl. (IG)