Who

Formerly the pneumatic host of MTV's Total Request Live, Minnillo is the current squeeze of Nick Lachey.

Backstory

With her U.S. airman dad and her Filipina mom, Minnillo moved from the Philippines to LA and then to Turkey before heading back to the United States. The high school cheerleader says that she showed up to the 1997 Miss South Carolina pageant in shorts and sneakers and still managed to beat out all the gowns for the title. She went on to win the 1998 Miss Teen USA pageant before landing minor roles on soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful and bit TV parts like "Hot Girl" on the Saturday morning show City Guys and "Sexy Student" on the sitcom Maybe It's Me. After failing to become host of E!'s Wild On (she was runner-up), Minnillo managed to find a home at MTV as a VJ on TRL in 2003; later, she put her journalistic skills to use as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, where she tackled such pressing issues as "What brand of thong does Nicole Richie wear?"

The fame-hungry Minnillo chose not to renew her contract with MTV when it expired in April 2007, skipping out to look for higher-profile gigs. She's been making a valiant effort to stay in the headlines despite not having any discernible skills, and her romance with Nick Lachey (see below) has been helping. In 2007, she played herself in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and released a makeup line with Flirt! Cosmetics for Kohl's. Minnillo also recently shilled for the mall-tastic BONGO Jeans.

Drama

Her big-time aspirations probably won't be hindered by two sets of leaked photos which surfaced on the internet in 2007, despite the "scandal" they caused. The first, a series of homemade, pseudo-snuff-porn snapshots, showed a sweaty, apparently blotto Lindsay Lohan holding a giant knife to Minnillo's throat, as well as pics of Minnillo tugging down Lohan's shirt. The next sequence of lurid snaps showed Minnillo and Lachey brazenly doing it in a hottub.

Personal

Minnillo started dating Lachey in 2006 following a three-year, part-time romance with Derek Jeter. (Funnily enough, in a 2004 interview, she said her favorite TV show was Newlyweds, Lachey's reality show with then-wife Jessica Simpson.) The two moved into a two-bedroom condo in the Atelier building on West 42nd Street in 2007—the pad was gifted to the couple by the building's owner, Joseph Moinian, in exchange for some free publicity.

No joke

Her relationship must be taking a toll on her hotness—she jumped from No. 62 on Maxim's "Hot 100" list in 2005 to No. 15 in 2006, but went back down to No. 34 in 2007.