She had always hated movie heroines who screamed.

Like a 1930's movie heroine, it is by turns tough and cloying.

Something a movie heroine would say to a movie hero, one sentence that will make everything all right and understandable.

She wasn't dying like some movie heroine.

And yet when Disney adapted the book for the screen in 1995, my mother, Selma, was shown dying exactly like a movie heroine.

She wasn't a movie heroine; she hadn't come through the ordeal totally unscathed.

Her face had a secretly wise expression, like a movie heroine.

In difficult situations, she likes to pretend she is a movie heroine.

She felt more and more like a movie heroine about to start on a highly romantic adventure.

Jean is winsome; she neither looks nor acts like the regular movie heroine.