The List: Hot Actors and Actresses Who Trump Fidelity
Written by: Ron Bricker
What Hollywood stars would you let your honey sleep with? CC2K’s Brett Williams offers five actors and five actresses hot enough to complete any couple’s List.
You know the scene: You’re on the couch watching a movie with your main squeeze, and out of nowhere their cheeks flush, they start panting and blood starts flowing to all the right parts of the body. You hadn’t made a move – so what the hell is going on here?
Someone from The List just appeared onscreen.
What is The List? Read on!
Simply put, The List is the list of five actors you are morally obligated to let your girlfriend (or boyfriend) sleep with in the unlikely event that one of said actors happens to show up on your doorstep with a bottle of champagne and a rakish grin.
Now, The List can include any five actors, living or dead, in Hollywood. Maybe you have a girlfriend, and she likes older guys, so she’s got the Sam Elliotts and Bruce Willises on her list. Or maybe she’s really into funny guys, so it’s all Vince Vaughn this and Will Ferrell that. Or maybe she likes oldies, which means her list is replete with Steve McQueens and Laurence Oliviers, but if any of those guys shamble up to your doorstep, be prepared to clobber them with a cricket bat – The List doesn’t require us to honor creepy zombie thespians.
But let’s face it – you’re reading CC2K. That means you’re a geek, so if you see any of the following five men anywhere, steer your girl away!
1. Daniel Craig. Two words: blue swimsuit. Sure, we all saw Layer Cake, and we all thought it was pretty badass. But the guy from Layer Cake as James Bond – that’s a bit of a stretch right? I mean, we’d all become pretty used to the well-fed and doughy Pierce Brosnan. Sure, he was no Connery, but he was arguably the second best Bond ever, and we loved him. So when a relative unknown with blond freaking hair donned the mantle of Britain’s greatest secret agent, we were skeptical. That said, it took one parkour fight scene to convince the guys that the Bond bar had been raised – and it took a pair of blue swim trunks to convince our girlfriends. When Daniel Craig crested the water in that pool wearing naught but those tiny trunks and his own stoic countenance, hearts did somersaults around the country. Add to his great turn as Bond his most recent role as Lord Asriel in the ill-fated adaptation of the excellent Phillip Pullman novel The Golden Compass and you have not only a secret agent hot as the hinges of hell, but also a steampunk intellectual with a powerful manner and a great beard. And beards are hot right now. Just ask your girlfriend.
2. Christian Bale. This is a no-brainer. Smart girls have been lusting for Christian Bale since he first donned a newsboy hat and a tune in Newsies. One of Hollywood’s best actors, Bale has made a name for himself by being utterly devoted, both mentally and physically, to whatever role he’s portraying. Think about it, guys. Girls find that kind of devotion and passion very sexy. When a girl hears that Christian Bale is willing to lose 63 pounds just to play a role, they think, “I wonder what he’d be willing to do for me.” On top of that, Bale is blessed with a preternatural ability to pick good scripts, and by all accounts, he’s a great guy. Dammit. Plus, the guy is the best actor by far, to ever portray the Caped Crusader on screen. And, if it weren’t for him, your girlfriend never would have watched Reign of Fire.
3. Chiwetel Ejiofor. This is maybe the only surprise on the list, but I assure you that Ejiofor is a serious contender. So serious, in fact, that I bumped Hugh Jackman from the list to make room for Ejiofor. First things first: Ejiofor damn near stole Serenity from Nathan Fillion. Only Fillion’s sheer comfort in his Firefly role kept him from being overwhelmed by a guy whose biggest credit at the time was Dirty Pretty Things. The Operative was a brilliant character, one for the books, the Yin to Malcolm’s Yang, and he was made all the more memorable by Ejiofor’s performance. And to top that off, he was a complete badass – ruthless, methodical and exacting. After Serenity, this guy popped up everywhere. He worked with Spike Lee on Inside Man (aka the only good movie Spike Lee has done in years), where he held his own against Oscar winners Jodie Foster and Denzel Washington. Then he flat-out ruled the screen as the conflicted leader of a group of rebels in Alfonso Cuaron’s groundbreaking movie Children of Men. Also, he played a crossdresser to perfection in the wonderful Kinky Boots, and sometimes geek girls like it when a guy dresses like a girl. Don’t believe me? Just go see how many Cure records your girlfriend owns. But what’s The best part of all this? Ejiofor’s recent spate of exposure reminded us that we had been seeing him all over the place for the last 10 years, and that like the Operative, he had been biding his time, waiting to strike.
4. Viggo Mortensen. Aragorn. Whether you loved or hated Peter Jackson’s interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, you have to admire Viggo Mortensen’s performance. Mortensen replaced Stuart Townsend at the last minute – a sublime bit of recasting up there with Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now and Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark – and even with only a few days to prepare, Mortensen took Tolkien’s cryptic, sometimes underwritten character and transformed him into one of the great epic heroes in movie history. His portrayal of Aragorn as a stalwart protector, a rough-and-ready outdoorsman, a loyal friend, a gracious lover, and an inspiring leader had geek girls (and guys) around the world cheering. But that’s not all: Since Lord of the Rings wrapped, Viggo Mortensen has turned in two excellent performances in pictures by filmmaker David Cronenberg, one of which, A History of Violence, was based on an acclaimed graphic novel. First it’s Tolkien, then it’s comics? A man after any geek girl’s heart. And his next project, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, could prove to be the best post-apocalyptic movie since The Road Warrior. Oh, and I almost forgot: He’s also a poet, a musician, a photographer, a painter, a publisher, and a horseman? This isn’t even fair.
5. Clive Owen. Do I really need to explain this one? I mean, Owen himself said it best in the Extras season finale when he said, “Fuck off, I’m Clive Owen.” That about sums it up, right? I mean, there’s no one sexier, no one more dangerous, no one more engaging, no one more masculine in all of Hollywood than Clive Owen. He is the quintessential male star, the one actor in our entire system who hearkens back most to the tough guys of old. He’s Brando, he’s McQueen, he’s Caine, he’s Bogart. I don’t know one woman, not one woman, who doesn’t think Clive Owen is the sexiest man alive. It’s the persistent five o’clock shadow, the commanding manner, the piercing eyes, the accent, the smirk … Jesus and Mary, that man is good looking.
So that’s our competition, guys. At least we’re funny, right?
All right, for all the guys (and gals) who dutifully sat through that list, here’s a quick list of the five women that your girlfriend is morally obligated to let you sleep with.
1. Salma Hayek. Everything I said about Clive Owen above applies to Salma Hayek as well. She simply is the sexiest woman alive. I’m not inviting debate – this is a statement of brute fact. Moving on.
2. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote the indie sex bible. An entire generation of shoe gazers and closet fetishists saw Secretary and instantly fell in love with the girl, and she’s only been making it worse since. A tattooed, revolutionary baker in Stranger Than Fiction? Sign me up. And now that we know she’ll be involved with List member Christian Bale in the newest Batman movie, well, there’s just no stopping this crush. Maggie, we just can’t quit you.
3. Kari Byron. One lazy Sunday afternoon you’re idly channel-surfing, trying to choose between a documentary on penguins, that thing about Hitler on the History channel, or the latest rerun of Top Chef, when all of a sudden you stumble upon something different. You ask yourself, “Mythbusters? What is Mythbusters?” Ten minutes later, you’re hooked, and with good reason. I mean, who could resist Mister Wizard meets The Fall Guy? And you don’t even notice her at first, because she just seems so damn cool, so damn approachable, but hey, wait a minute, there’s a really hot girl there. And that really hot girl, she’s talking all about science and engines and shit blowing up. Yes.
4. Eliza Dushku. Yes, there it is, in writing; when given the choice between Buffy or Faith, I choose Faith 10 times out of 10. Yes, she’s a murderer, yes, she’s got miles of baggage, yes she could – and most likely would – break me in two with her bare hands. But that’s what we like about her, right? All right, to be fair, Eliza Dushku isn’t Faith, but she’s gorgeous, she’s intelligent and she loves her fans. She’s also from Boston (like Faith), and she got her butt out of bed to walk the picket line with Joss Whedon. What was that George Michael song again? That fucker was singing the gospel.
5. Ruby Rocket. I had never heard of Ruby Rocket before today. I was doing some last minute research for this piece and I came across a list of “hot” geek girls. This girl Ruby Rocket topped the chart, so I looked into it a little further. It turns out she has made a name for herself doing campy, burlesque pin-up photo shoots wearing very accurate costumes from the pages of some of our favorite comics – but that’s not what makes her awesome. Miss Rocket doesn’t just pose in these outfits, she makes her own, all of which are spot-on recreations of Batgirl, Power Woman, the Black Cat, Phoenix and Marvel Girl and others. She also supports local comics retailers, plays a lot of video games, and is, it will come as no surprise, freaking beautiful!
So that’s it, guys and gals. Here are your marching orders: Line up some movies that star List members. Snuggle up on the couch with your honey. Pop in one of these movies. Enjoy the first five minutes, because that’s all you’ll be able to concentrate on.
Happy Valentine’s Day!