Hollywood's 'Hottest' Cool Down
The names Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio should already have your hearts racing. But as Hollywood’s sexiest leading men, their hottest gigs of the year gave us no heat.
Pitt and Clooney are in the running for Oscar honors this year and it seems as though the pretty boys are growing up as they portray characters a lot less sexy than their real world personas.
In The Ides of March, Clooney plays a politician who engages in an affair with a young intern but all sexual relations are implied. In his second major feature of 2011, Clooney plays an indifferent father and husband in The Descendants, but his only chances for rekindling romance is on his wife's death bed.
Pitt and Jonah Hill have a bromantic friendship in Moneyball, and the closest attempt to getting to third base would be their love for stats and baseball. DiCaprio is covered in prosthetics in J.Edgar; a far stretch from our beloved Jack Dawson.
So where have all the love scenes gone? Apparently in the arms of the funny guys. The hot wife and not so hot husband has been a T.V. favorite for years, but it seems as though the trend is steadily moving to cinema.
Comedian John C. Reilly (Talladega Nights, Step Brothers) gets a love scene with Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin. And what about Patton Oswalt (Ratatouille, King of Queens) who plays the town loser in Young Adult; he hooks up with the gorgeous Charlize Theron. In an interview at the Palm Springs Film Festival, Oswalt told me, "Alright, I had a sex scene with Charlize Theron. I was going to be very classy with that." When pushed about not being in the running for People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2012 he responded, "I think standing shirtless next to Charlize Theron only amplified the un-sexiness that I have and has forever knocked me off that list." Shooting may not have been much fun for Oswalt, but it definitely plays well to an audience of male Average Joes who want a chance with knockout women.
A foreign exchange is also emerging as the new face of sexy leading men. German native, Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, Inglorious Basterds), portrays a character who battles a sexual addiction throughout most of the film in Steve McQueen's Shame. Fassbender had no shame in taking it all off, and even managed to thrust his way to the A-list with a Golden Globe nomination against Clooney and Pitt.
Don’t get too discouraged. Signs of magic may be in the works. In upcoming movie news, DiCaprio will play Jay Gatsby in the new film version of Scott Fitzgerald’s romantic classic. Pitt is back up for playing a bad boy in the Crime/Thriller Cogan’s Trade and Clooney is set to play alongside Sandra Bullock in the Sci-Fi/Thriller Gravity.