Entertainment

The many faces of Irene Adler

Morgan Fairchild, “Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady” (Daily Mail / Rex USA)

Rachel McAdams, “Sherlock Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” (©Warner Bros/courtesy Everett Co)

Lara Pulver, “Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia” (© Hartwood Films 2012)

Irene Adler made her first appearance in the 1891 Arthur Conan Doyle story, “A Scandal in Bohemia.” This was also Doyle’s first Sherlock story, and from that filmmakers have extrapolated a romance between the two characters, although in Doyle’s work, Sherlock was too analytical to become passion’s plaything. He nevertheless admires Adler’s mind, as she outwits him.

In “Elementary,” Natalie Dormer gamely goes where several actresses have gone before:

* Charlotte Rampling, “Sherlock Holmes in New York”

In the 1976 British TV-movie, Adler helps Holmes and Watson solve a bank robbery engineered by Professor Moriarty, after he takes her son hostage to prevent Holmes from pursuing the case. Rampling (above) co-starred with Roger Moore, as Holmes, and “Avengers” lead Patrick Macnee, as Dr. Watson.

* Morgan Fairchild, “Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady”

Fairchild (right) was a strange choice to star opposite horror-movie staple Christopher Lee in a 1992 TV-movie. Macnee once again plays Watson in this 1992 British TV-movie that takes place in Vienna, where Holmes goes to silence an electro-magnetic bomb detonator.

* Rachel McAdams, “Sherlock Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”

The conventional Hollywood beauty (left) stayed out of Robert Downey Jr’s (way as Adler, who in the 2009 and 2011 films is a thief and a divorcée.

* Lara Pulver, “Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia”

In the acclaimed 2012 BBC series, Adler (right) is a dominatrix who seeks to recover scandalous photos of a liaison between her and a female member of the royal family. This Irene Adler is British, not American. — R.R.