The thing is, she spent most of her career being the beautiful, sexy one men throw themselves at (cf The Cazalets, Gideon's Daughter, Making Waves, Mine All Mine, David Copperfield, To The Ends of the Earth, From Hell, Love Actually, Bye Bye Harry, Ready When You Are Mr McGill, The Lost World et al). It's only when Gavin & Stacey arrived that she became "the girl next door", so it's like she's trying to re-establish herself.

Besides, I suspect you haven't but I've been married to someone who's roughly a 50%/50% mix of Joanna Page and Ali Larter (with a bit of Sarah Chalke for luck) so I've been aware of the appeal for ages... ;-)