Seven days ago Blake Lively was a fetching actress I was half-aware of in the periphery of my vision but whom I was never, to be honest, hugely interested in. I’d never seen a single episode of Gossip Girl, and I didn’t see The Private Lives of Pippa Lee because I didn’t care to.

Yes, she stood out in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and yes, she was reasonably persuasive as a barroom floozie in Ben Affleck‘s The Town. And her sassy, sad-eyed features have always had a kind of folksy, arresting quality that said “actress.” But inwardly she never quite projected that special something-or-other that, say, Elle Fanning has in spades. Not in my mind, at least.

But now she’s broken through. Now she’s big-screen. She has my attention and then some. My head will henceforth turn whenever I hear her name. I don’t care if the photos everyone has been passing around are fake or not (although I suspect they’re probably genuine). The point is that she’s now a movie star. She’s a marquee name. She’ll put arses in seats. Tell me I’m wrong.