Top Ten: Sexy (Ugly) Beasts

While most of the film and tv viewing public would like to put the following selection into the 'character actor' category which is just a nice way of saying, their talented but totally gross, I have strange tastes and imagine some of you will agree with me for picking certain actors who may not be pretty boys or Cary Grant clones (George Clooney, Chris Pine, Matt Damon etc.) and have a strange fondness and sexual attraction to those that are how shall I put this delicately...unconventional. Pretty boys are pretty boring. Too symmetrical, and usually totally aware of their all of their perfections making them annoyingly arrogant. Argue with me all you want, but I think it clearly translates into their films on a subconscious level. They don't usually ask their director if they can do a shirtless scene (unless its Matthew Mcconaughey) but they do walk around the frame like they're 10 feet tall with a 12 inch dick. So here's a salute to those who make us cry, make us laugh, win Oscars without having to have a make-under, and make us question our sexual inclinations. They might not win the cover of People's Sexiest Man Alive, but c'mon, who really wants to? So that they can join the ranks of Mel Gibson, Johnny Depp, and Tom Cruise? Jew-hating wife-beater, king of the douche-bags, and certifiably cuckoo brains? No thanks. 

Stanley Tucci (Age 50)
This has to be my favorite one. In fact, I don't think he's ugly at all, and he was just so devastatingly charming opposite Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia (2009) that I told my mom I wanted a man just like that. He's very versatile, and can play both villains and romantics with subtle perfection. Perhaps it doesn't matter that he never gets or will get a romantic lead. If you're someone that can be Oscar nominated as a child-molesting murderer in The Lovely Bones (2008) and a year later play the loving supportive husband to Julia Child, you are winning sir. 

John Hawkes (Age 51)
If nothing else I hope this generates more google searches for John Hawkes. He was nominated last year for his heartbreaking and unforgiving performance in Winter's Bone (2010). He's also made a few appearances in the flawed last season of Lost, looking so much like John Lennon that his character's name was actually billed as 'Lennon'. He cleans up nice for the Oscars, believe me.

Alfred Molina (Age 57)
Ok, we need someone to play perhaps the ugliest artist of the 20th century besides Warhol, opposite devistatingly hot Salma Hayek in Frida (2002). They chose Alfred Molina who didn't look anything like Diego Rivera, except for putting on a considerable few pounds. I've always had a soft spot for this very talented method actor. Since I saw him in Species (1995) as a hopeless romantic who gets an alien's tongue through the back of his head. Poor guy. 

Paul Giamatti (Age 43)
Talk about a guy who made his career playing the annoyed, cynical, and sarcastic observer who never gets the girl, culminating in his performance as underground comic book icon Harvey Pekar in American Splendor (2003). He totally reinvented himself by shaving that scruff (as well as his head) practicing a British Accent and taking the titular role in the HBO mini-series, John Adams (2008). I saw him on the subway once. He looked exactly like he does in every film he's been in, casually distracted, with a despondent look on his face. It took all of my self control not to go over and talk to him because I find him very attractive. I like cynics. 

Steve Buscemi (Age 53)
He is perhaps the pièce de résistance of this whole list. Everyone I know has at one time or another acknowledged that they carry a hard on for Steve Buscemi whether it's from awkward Seymour the record collector in Ghost World (2001) or as he is now as the womanizing (operative word) powerful, and self absorbed Nucky Thompson in HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Someone thought that he could pass as a person upon whom women were throwing themselves. They thought right. 

Jared Harris (Age 49)
I love Jared Harris. Not only has he reinvented himself in not one but two successful television shows (Mad Men and Fringe) he is the spawn of ridiculously handsome and Kirk Douglas doppleganger, actor Richard Harris. As sexually frustrated and demure Layne Pryce on Mad Men, there is even an instance when the other executives at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce joke about how ugly he is. Maybe for American closed-minded alcoholic upper-crust CEO's in the 60's, but not for me. And he's played Warhol. Awesome. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Age 43)
Here's another favorite. I met him as well (well not met, i gazed tipsily at his magnificent self while he was chain-smoking drunk outside the National Board of Review Awards that I went to in 2005) Sorry, I know I'm kind of showing off here. My bad. He is perhaps the biggest chameleon in the bunch. He's played romantic, but never a lead, always the hopeless romantic. My personal favorite was when he played tortured and disaffected playwright rather comically in David Mamet's State and Main (2000). Lest we forget his incomparable interpretation of Truman Capote for which he won an Oscar. Much deserved. 

Tommy Flanagan (Age 45)
Go ahead, look this one up. This Scotch actor has appeared as well, a Scot in most films until he was cast as Chibs in the highly acclaimed TV drama series Sons of Anarchy. His face adorns the infamous Glasgow Smile scars since he was accosted in Glasgow in his 20's. He used this 'handicap' to his benefit, and I don't think it takes away from his appeal at all, if anything I think it adds to it. 

David Cross (Age 47)
For you who are awesome, you know this hilarious actor and comic from the best show that has ever been on television (Arrested Development) as Dr. Tobias Funke, analrapist, actor, and never-nude. But get this, he's dating 20-something sex kitten Amber Tamblyn. He is very appealing, not only because he's ridiculously funny, but because he is able to somehow 'connect'. I have always loved this somewhat quirky and eccentric actor, especially after his spread in the infamous 'I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur' PETA campaign. 

Willen Dafoe (Age 55)
Wow, I just realize that's i've seen a lot of these guys in New York (again,  i'm sorry) Me and my mom treated ourselves to a ridiculously expensive coffee and desert at a posh West Village patisserie when he walked right by me. Like most actors you ever see on the streets or subway in New York, he's a lot shorter than I expected. The first film I saw him in was Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a highly imaginative and surreal recreation of the making of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror in 1922. Now, the actor Max Shreck who plays the original Nosferatu the Vampire was actually a very serious actor whom you wouldn't have recognized without his vampire make-up. Dafoe plays the character as though he was actually a vampire and appears to always look like a blood-sucking, undead, deamon, with pale white skin, chisel sharp teeth, and gaping empty eyes. Only he could do this. And yet we can still consider him sexually appealing and rather handsome, weird face aside, or perhaps because of.