Girl Next Door Turned Action Hero

Don't underestimate the power of strong female leads at the box office.  Here is a list of some of the most butt-kickingest female characters in film.

ScarJo becomes a superhuman merciless warrior after drugs are implanted in her body by the mob.  We’re guessing they were something stronger than a few Xanax.

No one knows Trinity’s real back story, but we suspect she was just a regular, run-of-the-mill computer hacker before  Carrie-Anne Moss made her a “leather-clad butt-kicking girl.”

Emily Blunt is known for almost killing Tom Cruise while filming this action/sci-fi thriller, by accidentally driving them both into a tree.

When Professor Utonium sought to create the perfect little girls, he added a mix of sugar, spice and everything nice.  Sounds perfectly ordinary…until Chemical X accidentally was added to the mix, changing these three little ordinary girls into kickass heroines with superpowers.

Okay, so they don’t have bows and arrows, guns or sexy leather catsuits.  But these two princesses have succeeded in annihilating the competition at the box office – accumulating over $1.2 billion worldwide (so far).  That’s some serious butt-kicking indeed.

Okay, so this Girl Next Door also happens to be a princess – that’s how it works in fairy tales. But she’s a normal girl who knows how to shoot an arrow like a kick-ass warrior!

One minute she’s a mom throwing dinner together for her kids, vacuuming the house and organizing the carpool. The next minute, she’s throwing on a supertight catsuit (despite those extra post-baby pounds) and fighting the forces of evil.

Geena Davis plays a schoolteacher and mom in a small town… who realizes she has amnesia and is really a professional assassin.

In 'The Terminator,' Linda Hamilton played a waitress with mall hair.  But by the sequel, she’s a buff, badass mom who’s not about to let anyone mess with her or her kid.

Kristy Swanson originated this iconic role of teen Girl Next Door who discovers it’s her fate to hunt vampires.

She’s your normal 11-year-old girl.  Who bonds with her father by letting him train her to be a superhero and assassin.  Couldn’t just do the father-daughter school dance thing, huh?

At 11 years old, Natalie Portman played an orphaned girl rescued by a professional assassin who trains her in the skills of his trade.

When we first meet Sigourney Weaver’s iconic character, she is a warrant officer aboard a spaceship.  A far cry from the bald-headed alien-fighting machine she will become.

Okay, so maybe this girl next door was a hunter, but not of people.  Not until the Hunger Games.

Orphaned as a child, Azumi is a trained to become an assassin of corrupt warlords.  Is there any other kind?

Jessica Alba plays Sue Storm, who goes from professional astronaut to superheroine after cosmic radiation exposure.

Megan Fox plays the Girl Next Door – if the girl next door looked like a supermodel – who knows how to use a chainsaw as a weapon.

Actress/model Milla Jovovich is just your average amnesiac next door who winds up fighting zombies.

Scarlett Johansson is Tony Stark’s assistant.  A regular girl.  Or so we think…. (Maybe that tight catsuit gave away the whole undercover-spy-superhero thing.)

Kate Beckinsale plays Selene, a Girl Next Door born to a blacksmith father.  But then she becomes a vampire and a Death Dealer.  You know, the typical Everygirl story.