This year marks the 65th anniversary of the 2-piece bathing suit, commonly known as the bikini. Inventor Louis Reard called his creation a bikini in honor of America’s first nuclear test in the Pacific, which took place near the Bikini Islands. The French engineer assumed that his scandalous new suit “would cause a similar explosion” once it hit the mainstream. It did.

Now the 2-piece is everywhere; including, of course, Hollywood. Rare is the film that doesn’t feature at least one bikini-clad starlet romping in the surf. Perhaps the most famous scene in which the bikini plays a starring role came in the 1982 comedy classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Actress Phoebe Cates wears a red 2-piece while lounging at her friend’s pool after school. Though the film is nearly thirty years old, online interest in the iconic scene remains red-hot.

Over the past week, for example, Web lookups for “phoebe cates” jumped 17% and related queries for “phoebe cates today” also surged. Information on Cates’s current whereabouts is surprisingly scant. One of Hollywood’s brightest stars in the ’80s, she hasn’t appeared in a movie since 2001, when she had a role in “The Anniversary Party” opposite her “Fast Times” co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Cates’s absence from the big screen was a conscious decision; she wasn’t forced out of Tinseltown or anything. She is married to Oscar-winning actor Kevin Kline (who also appeared in “The Anniversary Party”), and the couple has several children. The 2 met while Cates was auditioning for a role in the 1983 hit film “The Big Chill.” She didn’t get the role (Meg Tilly did), but she did go on to appear in the mega-hit “Gremlins.”

Today, Cates focuses her energy on her business. In 2006, the actress opened a boutique in New York called Blue Tree. According to an article from ABC News, the shop specializes in “often unexpected” gifts. A Yelp reviewer calls the high end shop a “museum of cool.”

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