Skin Deep.

Byline: Cara Litke PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL THOMPSON

Five actresses shed their clothes--revealing far more than skin.

Remember the nude statues in the Department of Justice that had to be covered with drapes in 2002 at a cost of $8,000? And just recently, a museum poster of a naked Venus was banned from London's Underground. Clearly, nudity--even at its most artistic--can cause unreasonable alarm.

The portraits of these actresses are far from pornographic, but we wouldn't be so coy as to suggest that the nudity is ho-hum. They vividly illustrate strong women who are confident--and uninterested in offering cheap thrills. "This experience wasn't about being a sex object," says Angie Harmon. "It's about showing the female body in a positive, beautiful way." Jill Scott pointed out that "nobody ever celebrates women whose bodies are bigger than a size 8," she says. "But here I am, naked in a magazine at size 16. I hope that I can be an inspiration to all women. We're all beautiful, each and every one of us."

Angie Harmon

"I'm very, very modest," says Harmon, the star of the TV show Women's Murder Club. The closest she'd ever come to public nudity was skinny-dipping, but "I was with my husband, and we were on a private beach in Bora Bora. We took one picture of our heads under the water, but we can never develop the film because we don't know what else is showing!" She overcame similar jitters at the shoot: "The hardest part was when the robe came off and I was like, And now I'm...naked," Harmon says. "You wonder if they can see your Cesarean scar." But after a few minutes, "I felt comfortable. I realized, I'm here to make a beautiful picture."

Gabrielle Union