Joan Allen in ‘The Contender’

Joan Allen (standing, second from left) stands behind Jeff Bridges (as President Jackson Evans) in the 2000 film The Contender. The film was a rollicking romcom in which Allen and Bridges, both commitment-phobic, meet cute in the White House commissary and try to hide their growing romance during a diplomatic crisis involving nuclear missiles, sunken treasure, and the Panama Canal. Just kidding, of course! The Contender is a grim drama in which Allen plays a vice-presidential nominee who is harassed by bad men for alleged sexual hijinks in her distant past.