Let's start with Johnny Depp. a very good place to start. When you read you begin with a-b-c ..."A B C" when you lust you begin with Depp, John-ny ..." DEPP, JOHN-NY" John Waters for whom he starred in his first lead movie role (Cry Baby, 1990) once famously called him "the best looking gas station attendant who ever lived" and Depp does resist cleaning up for traditional Hollywood glamour. [Aside: wouldn't it be great to see him stretch into something closer to a romantic period epic... sweeping some goddess off her high heeled feet?] Yet however messy or "I'm just a chain-smoking eccentric artist living in Paris" the look happens to be, there's no denying the heat off of it. He knows who he is ...and isn't that always appealing?
I'm cheating here to include a supporting actor nominee, But I can't really deny Javier Bardem.
You'll notice that the hottie designation is for Bardem and not for "Anton Chigurh" I'm not including any pictures from No Country For Old Men in this post. A few nights ago, just as I was wondering what I might eat for dinner a thought popped into my head totally unrelated to food consumption or anything else in the days events and the thought was this: "isn't it terrible that Javier Bardem's face is going to forever terrify people when he's so superhumanly sexy?"Yes, I'm sure he's crying himself to sleep at night at the thought. Crying himself to sleep at night in Penélope Cruz's bed...poor guy.
But speaking of Raimunda!... what the hell is going on here in this paparazzi pic?
Daniel Day-Lewis, like Depp post-90s, doesn't really play the romantic or play up the sexual charisma. I found Sasha's comments about his screen sexuality in the Oscar symposium so interesting because it does seem very submerged. I've said this before but it's worth repeating: there are few movie breakthroughs as shocking as Daniel's one-two punch in 1986. He had blink and you'll miss him roles preceding his breakthrough but his "arrival" came with two popular arthouse films released within one month of each other here in the States. I saw them in very short succession at the one theater that showed that sort of thing where I grew up in Michigan. It was the first time I can recall ever being wowed by the "transformative" power of screen acting. I couldn't draw the line between Johnny the blonde gay punk in My Beautiful Laundrette and Cecil Vyse the uptight rich suitor in A Room With a View. I just couldn't do it.Now of course heavy "transforming" is all anybody rewards actors for (hello, biopics!) but in the 80s it was still shocking not to be able to "see" the actor you were expecting. If their name wasn't Meryl Streep that is. Day-Lewis did have a brief flirtation with the romantic idol business most prominently as 1988's cad in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and 1992's popular adventurer in The Last of the Mohicans. But mostly he's just a thespian who happened to be forced into playing the movie star by his immense talent and screen magnetism.
And I hate to cut this short --I really do. So much deserving pretty left unviewed, but that's all I've got time for tonight. If you need Viggo Viggo Viggo Viggo or perhaps Viggo you can always consult earlier posts.
But here's one more to go. The Mister Hollywood square jawed charm of George Clooney.
Mmmm
