At one time or another I had most of the crushes expected of a straight, teen girl growing up in the 1990s. My rather ridiculous Leonardo DiCaprio phase resulted in my owning a VHS copy of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, tearing pictures out of teen glossies, and regularly updating a fan website that has thankfully disappeared into the internet ether.
When not outing my ownership of said site on publicly read blogs of note, I tend to reveal my secret to friends after we’ve had one too many. This confession usually results in belly laughs and more drinks. Sometimes it leads your best friend to jokingly whisper “Are you turned on right now?” into your ear while the two of you watch The Great Gatsby in a crowded Brooklyn theater.
I wasn’t, you guys. Don’t worry.
But the expected crushes do little to reveal much about you.
After what felt like eons of waiting, I entered my teen years in 1996. I spent large blocks of the summer that followed the passage of that milestone reading the Delia’s catalog and attending a fancy, summer program. Gone were the normal kid summers spent going to day camp at the YMCA. From then on all summer activities were to be chosen based on whether or not they would be deemed worthy by college admissions boards. But there was still time for some of the kid things. I broke an arm roller skating and learned how to play pool in a Physics class. I developed a crush on a boy named Billy Brewster and got grounded for wearing a crop top without my mother’s permission. But I’ve strayed from the point. In an effort to distract you I’ve brought you down a sunny lane filled with sweet memories. What else occurred in the summer of 1996?
None of it would have happened if not for the biggest film released that year. Actually none of it would have happened if I had simply seen Jurassic Park before I saw Independence Day. But I had discarded my fascination with dinosaurs in my single digit years, and I was still, quietly, afraid of any film that featured even a hint of fear and gore.
Jeff Goldblum plays a scientifically inclined contrarian in both films, but his character in Jurassic Park was all charm and smarm. Since my asshole phase was off waiting for me in my late adolescence, I tended to scoff and sigh at such things and would have found myself pretty disgusted. In some ways the manicured boys who looked up at me from the pages of YM and Seventeen also made me scoff. I was searching for the awkward and the nerdy, unpolished and prone to moments of exasperation. Intelligent imperfection in a very tall package. An outsider. And not that cookie cutter, leather jacket wearing outsider that so often dominates teen films.
With the Nerd Renaissance still years off, it was a weird little crush for a weird little girl to have. It wasn’t as all-encompassing as many of the crushes that followed, and with time it faded as such things often do. Eventually I stopped scoffing and sighing at my magazines and steamed wholeheartedly into that asshole phase.
A few months before I moved to Los Angeles, I found myself being asked by a co-worker about what I liked in men. It’s a common enough question to be presented with when you’re a single woman in her early 30s. The expectation is that your answer will be ridiculous and, in that way, explain why you find yourself alone in a world where everyone around you is pairing off.
I’m known for being standoffish so silence and a shrug would have sufficed. Instead I considered things closely.
Engineers, I guess. Scientists of some sort maybe. But not necessarily. Just someone who is smart but, like, in a different way than I am smart.
I had circled back. I was once again a nerd searching for her nerd counterpart.
Tags: adolescence, are they really making a sequel to that movie how will that even work, crushes, i also had a bit of a thing for bill pullman in that scene at the end where he quotes thomas, independence day, jeff goldblum, jurassic park, leonardo dicaprio
Tim Roth, Tim Curry
bonus points if Tim Roth is wearing a suit and bleeding out on a warehouse floor, heyooooo.
wait what
PERHAPS WEIRDLY, “bleeding out Tim Roth” is on my straight exceptions list
I fail to see what could possibly be weird about that.
Tim Roth can GET IT as he is both Mr. Orange AND Guildenstern!
To this day I’d let Jeff Goldblum touch it.
COSIGN.
Iggy Pop. Even now when he looks like a giant varicose vein. I cannot help it.
Hahaha most apt description ever!
I suppose it’s just as well for the development of your budding sexuality that you did not first encounter Jeff Goldblum as a scientifically inclined contrarian in The Fly.
I’m still a medium scaredy cat, so I have yet to see The Fly. Probably for the best.
The Fly is super creepy. DO NOT SEE if you have delicate sensibilities
I have a bit of a thing for Bill Pullman all of the time, so to me this seems completely normal.
I totally had a thing for Bill Pullman after watching “The Last Seduction”. Which, out of all his movies, is one of the weirdest in which to develop a crush, since he plays a sleazy drug-dealing doctor who precipitates the twisty-turny, double-crossing plot when he hits his wife. But physically, I found him oddly alluring.
As a side note, why is that movie not more appreciated these days? And what happened to Linda Fiorentino?
Obligatory mention of that time Bill Pullman spoke at my graduation and I got my picture taken with him and his wonderfully floppy hair.
whattt how did I not know this I am so jealous
Late 80s/Early 90s Bill Pullman is a thing of beauty for all time. I don’t know what he looks like now and I don’t want to. He exists in my dreams as his platonic self, squinting at me from under his floppy hair and wearing a corduroy jacket over a flannel shirt.
Especially as the intrepid photojournalist bucking The Man and covering the newsie strike in the appropriately named “Newsies.”
Be still, my heart.
I was 6 when Bill Clinton ran for his 2nd term, and I had a crush on him. I try not to think about what this says about me.
That you have at least one thing in common with 49% of the electorate?
Al Gore was my earliest crush, and I don’t know if that’s more or less worrying than yours
Yep, Al Gore circa September 1992.
My friend who did secretarial work in the white house in the 90s would say this puts you in good company with everyone who worked around him, since apparently he was not just charming but actually really considerate, and so everyone there (boys and girls both) apparently had a huge crush on him.
Oliver Platt, specifically the The Three Musketeers and Lake Placid iterations. Also so very with you on the Goldblum crush, but mine stems from fricking Vibes.
the tension between him and Abby Bartlett in West Wing would sell me on this I think, so NO SHAME.
My sister has insisted since Flatliners came out (at which point I was about 11) that I have a crush on Oliver Platt, and I have no idea why.
Adrien Brody. Simultaneous repulsion and attraction. Can’t help it.
Adrien Brody and also guys who kind of look like Adrien Brody forever
He was the first guy who got me into attractive hands as a kid, which is still a lingering obsession.
ohgodyeshishands
my Goldblum crush rages on to this day. i mean…
Dayum. He was a stone fox in Jurassic Park but he is somehow even hotter now, 20 years later.
I think he’d do well here.
I reblog this on tumblr every chance I get. I wish I could give the last panel, in gif form, to strangers who try to talk to me in public.
Jeff Goldblum, though.
I would.
(Art by John Larriva, http://brandonbird.com/jp_larriva.html)
Jonathan Pryce.
Gary Oldman and Willem Dafoe. They were high school, though, so after the norm that was Ewan McGregor and his beautiful heroin wet t-shirt look.
Gary Oldman mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Also Kevin Spacey but like back when American Beauty came out.
Oh yes. Kevin Spacey, young Gene Wilder, Bruce McCulloch from Kids in the Hall. Any number of weird love objects, yes.
Young Gene Wilder. Yes.
Fine, also HoC Spacey.
I was ABOUT TO SAY. My 1999-era Kevin Spacey crush has had a revival.
I feel very uncomfortable about both my American Beauty and HoC Kevin Spacey crushes and what they say about my level of attraction for demented men.
But that HoC moment in S1 where he went after the guy who hurt Claire? So hot.
I love this! We should start a club. I always felt like a weirdo because I didn’t like the same celebs all the other girls did. I always went for the nerdy guy or the second banana. My first was probably Bill Murray in Ghostbusters (scientist), then MacGyver. The first age appropriate guy was the computer nerd from a short lived series called Max Headroom. Then a long line of nerds. Later, it was Paul Bettany because he played the doctor in Master and Commander.
I ended up marrying an engineer, so I guess I have a type.
I’m loving your posts, Samanatha, especially yesterday’s Good Girl post. That was me too.
Thanks!
Oh goodness, cosign on Paul Bettany! Especially in A Knight’s Tale, naked with his little bum. Gracious.
I don’t really understand the appeal of Jeff Goldblum, but what do I know? When I was 10, I developed a crush on Civil War Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain after watching Gettysburg. Puberty obviously had not hit yet, because … Jeff Daniels? WTF? It was more of an intellectual attraction, I guess.
I had a total nerd crush on Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain back when I read The Killer Angels in my senior year of high school.
He was so ~sensitive~
YES.
Intellectual, a war hero … what’s not to love?
This is so cool. When my husband and I were dating we talked about how we both admired Chamberlain and named our son Joshua Lawrence after him. (The kid’s a jerk, but that’s not Chamberlain’s fault.) There’s a good biography called In the Hands of Providence.
I just heard about this site from my sister. It’s great.
omg, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. I am in good company here.
JEFF DANIELS/JLC FOR LIIIIIIIFE, EVER SINCE FRESHMAN YEAR
Does this help explain it at all?
Ok, KIND of.
Oh my god, I had the same Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain/Jeff Daniels crush. And an additional crush on his character’s little brother, Thomas Chamberlain.
I like a smart gentleman, myself. I attribute this to excessive readings of Lord Peter when I was in college. He was a gentleman and a superb cricket player, after all. As the twig is bent…
Paul Bettany is a particular favorite http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0079273/
Oh my god Busman’s Honeymoon. I took two buses to get to a Barnes & Noble in a strange city, my first semester of college, to buy Busman’s Honeymoon immediately after finishing Gaudy Night. Those books should come with a warning label about destroying you for normal, human relationships where people don’t propose in Latin and quote Swinburne in bed.
Lord Peter is the Perfect Man. You are correct, he spoils it for ordinary men.
I watched the film versions and I could not get over how Ian Carmichael was NOT LORD PETER DAMMIT.
they had some good points but
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Here forever and always for every Sayers discussion
Nicolas Cage, Face/Off, at the tender age of 8. I then moved on to a much healthier Mulder crush which lasted me into my early teens, and was obsessed with Neil Gaiman for the entirety of ages 14-19. (I read his blog every day, even when he didn’t update it, and referred to him by his first name in conversation; also, blushed when people made “so you wanna MARRY him” jokes, because duh, I definitely did.)
Mmm, Mulder. Did I want him and Scully to hook up, or did I want to BE Scully and them (us) hook up?
I wanted to be him and with him at the same time. Dreams!
DAVID DUCHOVNY WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME
I had a BIG Jeff Goldblum thing when he was everywhere in the early ’80s (I’m older than Samantha). Watching him in “The Fly” to this day (before he gets buzzy, but even then, the pain in his eyes …) makes me weak. I totally get the Goldblum thing. He’s like the Jimmy Stewart of his time – tall, nerdy, funny, unexpectedly sexy drink of water. And Jewish! For a Jewish girl, Jeff Goldblum was like Prince Charming.
Seeing Jeff Goldblum in “Earth Girls Are Easy” on Comedy Central around age 14 made me have *feelings.*
Oh my God, yes. What a ridiculous movie, but also what a dreamboat.
I saw Jurassic Park at an outdoor park screening last summer, everyone was pretty buzzed, and when he first appeared on screen everyone screamed like it was The Beatles. Including me.
I want to go to there
AGGRESSIVELY SECONDED
i’ve always said that there are two types of women in this world: those attracted to jeff goldblum and those not.
Exactly.
beautiful piece!
let’s see, in the #men who launched diana into puberty tag on my Tumblr, there’s Dave Grohl, Captain Jack O’Neill, Ewan McGregor, Terry McGinnis, Goliath from Gargoyles, The Mars Volta, and yes, Jeff Goldblum.
(specifically Earth Girls Are Easy!Goldblum but all Goldblumage is welcome in my household)
Wasn’t Jack O’Neill a colonel? (I miss Stargate.)
yes, he was. I suspect the “captain” came out of either Captain Jack Sparrow or Captain Jack Harkness. :B
Both are acceptable.
I have such a ladyboner for Christoph Waltz
Cosigned.
OHMYGODNO.
my adolescent list of Old Man Crushes is haunting in its sheer potential for drunken blackmail and also maybe Just Slightly Tipsy Blackmail At Potlucks.
exhibit A: http://www.startrek.com/legacy_media/images/20030…
(because COME ON WITH THAT JAW LINE. and maybe borderline offensive tattoo? siiigh.)
exhibit B: http://angrytrainerfitness.com/wp-content/uploads…
(I STAND BY THIS CRUSH TO THIS DAY HAVE YOU SEEN HIS … DIMPLES.)
exhibit C: http://www.ohiou.org/files/RichardDeanAnderson.jp…
(i will fight anyone who says Mullet MacGyver was a better specimen of poorly-thought-out-teenage-crushes than the silver fox that quipped a lot.)
… i think the moral of this story was that i was not a cool kid.
Oh my God, I had almost completely forgotten the crush I had on the guy who played Bashir on Deep Space Nine until you mentioned Chakotay.
Alexander Siddiggggggg 😀
BUT YOU’RE COOL NOW! Turnabout in nerd culture: I dig it.
I briefly carried an intense torch for the nerd in Weird Science who was not Anthony Michael Hall — I want to say Ilan Mitchell-Smith was his name? I am too ashamed to search it. I was maaaaybe 15.
Stephen Rea, who looks like Droopy Dog but gets my blood a-pumpin’.
Chico Marx. Did a presentation on him in seventh grade. Womanizing jerkface, such a babe, led to one of my earliest budding feminist internal conflicts.
Kenickie. I definitely kissed a body pillow when I was in kindergarten after watching Grease.
Boy is this ever a fun/weird coincidence. Two Stephen Rea fans, right next to each other!
I feel very close to you right now.
Ohhh, Stephen Rea. I watched this one movie he was in (Guinevere? I think?) and it was just bad. Even the costuming was bad, which is quite an accomplishment for a film set in present day American suburbia. But damn if I didn’t like it almost solely because the main character went ‘sure, he’s older than my dad, but I’ll tap that’. I could relate. A lot.
Exactly my feelings about that movie. I even watched it more than once.
I had a weird thing for Stephen Rea for a while in my early 20’s. I guess there’s something I find very appealing in shaggy-haired Irish dudes with sad puppy eyes?
Hot damn, if that isn’t the very picture I was staring at not six minutes ago!
It’s sums up his appeal pretty neatly. Shaggy hair, sensitive eyes, emotional eyebrows…
ME TOO (still do)!!!!! I think it’s because I found his character to be so tragically romantic in the Crying Game.
Do you two also crush on Ciaran Hinds? He and Stephen Rea are in the same category for me.
Ciaran Hinds in December Bride is the best Ciaran Hinds. He looks rather like a hawk… a quietly suffering hawk. The movie isn’t the best, but he’s awfully pretty in it.
And also Gabriel Byrne. I may or may not have tracked down his out of print autobiography because of this crush.
I absolutely have a crush on Jeff Goldblum. And it’s just getting better as he get’s older. Did you see his hair and beard combo in The Grand Budapest Hotel?
His haircut in ID4 was so great though! So cute, and he cared about the environment! I saw Jurassic Park first, but the crush still happened, and then BECAUSE OF the crush, I watched The Fly. So. You can imagine.
Definitely Goldblum, and Christian Bale before he was cool (Velvet Goldmine, anybody?). Robert Sean Leonard, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer circa Willow. And a young Joseph Gordon Levitt BECAUSE I AM AHEAD OF THE TIMES. Sigh.
There weren’t enough boyish girls back then to explain my eventual ladytype.
Ohhhhh, Val Kilmer circa Willow! And also circa The Ghost and the Darkness! Hearts in my eyes.
Val Kilmer circa The Saint! And circa Top Secret! Crush . . .
Also, didn’t everybody crush on Christian Bale after Newsies and Swing Kids!
It’s best not to talk about what a panty-dropper Newsies was/is.
Now that I am a Grown Lady, watching that movie and all the attendant teenaged feelings is a very confusing experience.
Except for the singing. That I am unequivocally down with.
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never seen them! It was Velvet Goldmine that did it for me (in so many ways – that was the peak of the Ewan McGregor Drops Trou In Every Film era).
Tip of the hat to Ewan & Harvey Kietel, doing more than their part to erase the gap between female & male nudity onscreen.
Actually, I also totally had a hardon for Harvey after *The Piano*…
Robert Sean Leonard! We watched like the first half of Swing Kids in eighth grade for some reason. Between that and Much Ado About Nothing, there was some fangirling. (Weirdly, the friend of mine who also thought he was cute was also one of the ONLY TWO other girls in my grade who didn’t have a thing for Leo when Titanic came out. Great minds?)
Also, baby JGL in 10 Things I Hate About You.
EVERYTHING about 10 Things I Hate About You, including but absolutely not limited to baby JGL.
Oh holy christ, Velvet Goldmine is everything this queer girl with a thing for androgynous boys ever wanted.
YES. I whimper every goddamn time I see it, and I’ve been watching it for ten years.
Also, I think this is a good place for us to remember this tweet+comic combo from Kate Beaton:
https://twitter.com/beatonna/status/7344896443902…
http://beatonna.tumblr.com/post/33872642210/dont-…
But she’s talking about Christian Slater and not Kevin Costner, right? Riiiiight?! Oh, Will Scarlett, you’re sucha bad boy. Rawr.
Obviously Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a terrible, terrible movie but I’ll always prefer it to RH:POT because Cary Elwes >>>> Kevin Costner ALWAYS.
I just hooted with laughter in my office of all 25-year-old men and they just… don’t understand.
In related news, I have spent entire lunch conversations during which they tried to convince me that Gladiator is a “classic movie of our generation” and that boys think about it every day. ::blink blink::
You know, I never had any feelings one way or another about Jeff Goldblum until suddenly everyone started going ‘damn, Jeff Goldblum, SWOON’ with photographic evidence. And now I have all kinds of feelings about him despite never having seen him in anything besides part of some Law & Order episodes because I’m really behind on my 90s action flicks. Thanks, guys.
Child me did have a massive crush on Patrick Swayze, though, because my mother rightfully decided that the only part of Dirty Dancing I’d care about was the dancing and let me watch it when I was but a wee kindergartener.
Oh, The Swayze. *pours one out*
I don’t think I really “got” Swayze until I saw Roadhouse. But then… <3
HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN JURASSIC PARK??
…no…
In my defense, I was only 8 (and not a dinosaur fan) when it came out and I was still a massive wuss about watching anything that might be kinda scary for many years after that. Now I think I’m mostly just holding out so that people can continue to make shocked faces at me when I say I haven’t seen it.
JEFF GOLDBLUM. my friends and i went to a midnight screening of jurassic park when it was rereleased a few years ago and i led the cheering section during the MY LEG IS BROKEN MY CHEST NEEDS AIR scene.
Somewhere in the Silicon Valley, there is a drive-in playing Jurassic Park this summer. There HAS to be. And if there is, I promise to uphold your legacy.
YES. No explanation or justification for crushing on Jeff Goldblum is needed after THAT happened. I too remember the “Oh… hello,” of that scene. He’s POSED LIKE A PIN-UP FOR NO REASON BUT YOUR DELECTATION. He’s brilliant and kooky and objectifies himself for the female gaze at random, unpredictable intervals! There is nothing weird about responding to this.
The math is horrifying. I was very into a certain musician that I am way too embarrassed to mention by name here. But he would have been about the age that I am now. And I did the math as a kid and thought, oh, that’s not so bad.
Yes it is that bad, 13-year-old me. If a 36-year-old man falls in love with a 13-year-old fan at one of his shows, that is NOT romantic.
More embarrassing then my confession that at the age of 12 I was in love with middle-aged Michael Palin, who wore pleat-front khakis on his travel shows?
Has seriously no one posted Cary Elwes? Princess Bride, anyone?!
Also: Richard Gere in “First Knight.” Also also: Sean Connery in “First Knight.”
Bill Pullman, always.
I’m pretending that no one’s mentioned Cary Elwes because, well, OF COURSE everyone had a crush on him. how could you not? :O
Cary Elwes is default.
Yeah, I thought we were talking about weird crushes, which definitely excludes Wesley. He was (poor and) perfect. With eyes like the sea after a storm…
My unexpected Kevin Spacey crush genuinely started as a joke about how he was totally my type cause I’m only attracted to inappropriately older men with eye-bags who play evil dudes. But then one day I realized that I’ve watched his whole filmography and browsed his twitter and got into a passionate argument with someone about how he is the greatest actor of his generation and had to admit that at that point it’s really really not a joke anymore. It’s just a sad spiral of doom.
Is this where I talk about how when we watched Newsies at sleepovers and you had to call out the dude who was your favorite, and everyone was fighting over Christian Bale and the guy who played Spot Conlon, I was all about David Moscow? Teenage labor leaders trying to be practical about strikes and good older brothers!
This is definitely where you talk about that. Mush is mine forever.
KEVIN KLINE IN DAVE! How could I have forgotten that one?
Kevin Kline in ALL THE THINGS. The man excretes charm.
I basically only liked older, off-beat actors as a young teen (Tim Curry, Willem Dafoe, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Goldblum, Viggo Mortensen, etc.) so it’s genuinely surprising to me that my first celeb crush was on Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray. FROSTED TIPS.
(My first lady celebrity crush was on Queen Latifah in Chicago, which I stand by 100%. I mean DAMN:
I mean damn.
Alan Rickman 5evah.
DAT POUT.
The first movie I ever saw Jeff Goldblum in was The TV adaptation of The Double Helix in which he plays James Watson. It kind of ruined Jurassic Park for me because I still hated him so much from what an asshole he was to Rosalind Franklin.
Alan Davies. I will die on this hill if necessary.
You are not alone.
Related: I watch a lot of QI on Youtube.
Yeppppp.
Oh my god, how could I forget my FIRST unexpected crush? Before Stephen Rea, before Jeff Goldblum – Michael Palin. I loved (and still do love) young, Monty Python-era Palin, older, travel-show-host Palin, even older travel-show-host Palin…I first became aware of him at 11 or 12 and boy did he make an impression.
Alan Alda.
I think I’ve seen every episode of MASH minimum three times? (I may have only seen the finale twice but I’m tearing up a bit just thinking about it so…)
I loved MASH so hard as a child. Also Irreverence + Intelligence = Gold.
My heart twin! Let’s get drunk and watch that overwrought episode where he goes blind for a day, or the one where he makes a bet with Trapper and has to walk through the mess naked. Or all of them.
Father Mulcahy. Really.
I was just talking with a friend about how watching Judd Nelson light a match with his teeth in The Breakfast Club 100% awoke me sexually.
Oh man, Ian Malcolm was the very first character ever to give me Pants Feelings. The smart and the sassy, and the dark hair and eyes, and the way of being skinny yet also with muscles, AND being in distress and in need of rescue and medical care . . . Wow. My sexuality hasn’t really changed a bit in the last two decades has it?
Lara Flynn Boyle, obviously. She looked mean and always (ALWAYS) smoked and she was in every trashy 90’s neo-noir as the femme fatale. It would’ve been Sherilyn Fenn, clearly, but she just wasn’t in much after Twin Peaks.
There was a lot of barely repressed weird sex in Twin Peaks. In all Lynch, really.
I gravitated to Sam Neill in Jurassic Park, maybe informing my penchant for Old Man Crushes. I am so glad Tumblr wasn’t a thing when I was growing up.
I have had way too many Old Man Crushes, but the latest example was with Game of Thrones. Before I started watching it, everybody would not shut up about Jon Snow or Robb Stark or whatever, but who really caught my eye was that husky-voiced rando Scot, Jorah.
I IMMEDIATELY thought “Jeff Goldblum” when I saw the title.
I went through a weird period of crushes on stone-faced bulked out dudes who had a tendency to mumble. So it started with Arnold Schwarzenegger, then briefly Sylvester Stallone, and then Dolph Lundgren.
WHAT ABOUT RIKER? Didn’t anyone else watch TNG as an impressionable child? I tried to transfer my crush to Geordi because he seemed more age-appropriate, but I just could not resist Riker’s manly beard and philandering ways.
RIKER FOREVER, SPACE LUMBERJACK OF MY HEART
What about PICARD
Yesssss! I’m watching TNG for the first time since the original run with my BF and I stand by my crush on all that beardy and chair-mounting goodness.
http://youtu.be/lVIGhYMwRgs
YES. I whimper every goddamn time I see it, and I've been watching it for ten years.
Tip of the hat to Ewan & Harvey Kietel, doing more than their part to erase the gap between female & male nudity onscreen.
Actually, I also totally had a hardon for Harvey after *The Piano*…
I know I'm super late to this discussion, but I can't help but want to jump in — 100% agreed that Ian Carmichael is not Lord Peter, BUT, have you seen the PBS miniseries? Edward Petherbridge IS.
http://youtu.be/ov5AFgqtOtE?t=1m40s
Yeah, I thought we were talking about weird crushes, which definitely excludes Wesley. He was (poor and) perfect. With eyes like the sea after a storm…
James Spader. Boston Legal James Spader. Because I love snarky good-hearted but weirdly moraled assholes in sharp suits. (This is basically the description of my partner of 10 years, except he’s a political operative rather than a lawyer, for extra snark reserves.)
I hate how much I like Kevin Spacey in HoC, but outside of his gift for playing bombastic assholes, he seems like a fairly nice dude, and he’s definitely still hot if not hotter than he was when he was younger.
Sean Connery, but ONLY old bearded Red October-etc Connery – Bond!Connery just needs a punch in the mouth.
On the subject of Bond, my first Bond movie was License To Kill so Timothy Dalton is kind of imprinted on my James Bond Identifying Circuits and also I was just old enough to process Hot Guy Who Kills Stuff. (And dude it had a shark tank. always a win there)
For all that I’ve chosen a partner who is Peter Venkmann through and through, I always preferred Egon. I totally understood where Janine was coming from, and was often puzzled when people reacted as if her being attracted to him was the joke. Intense nerdboys are always worth at least a second look to me.
[That reminded me that I was thinking about the whole “nonthreatening teen hearthrob” thing the other day, and I realized that I like boys who look like they want to hold your hand – until you get to the eyes, which are saying, “I’d like to hold your hand and take you on a picnic if that’s what you want, but if you’re up for it, what I’d really love to do is fuck you til we can’t see straight and then have the picnic”. Pretty boys without madonna/whore complexes, is that too much to ask of the world.]
The Crypt Keeper.
Yes, the animatronic horror-movie introducing punmaster puppet. I was convinced I’d marry him when I was about 7. I’LL LET MYSELF OUT
(other than that; anyone remember SeaQuest DSV? Jonathan Brandis broke my heart.)
Jonathan Brandis. I still love him intensely (I was a NeverEnding Story 2 girl, personally – didn’t have access to SeaQuest until much later) and am sad every time I think about him, because I was 16 when he hanged himself and I was devastated.
If anyone has a bootleg copy of SideKicks and would be willing to share, I have not been able to find it anywhere on DVD/digital format for some reason.