Daniel Craig

The Tough Piece of Leather

Male attractiveness is a curious thing.

One version of it is a prettiness, exemplified by Johnny Depp or Leo diCaprio. But you can go the opposite direction, toward an almost willful ugliness. Toward a wrinkled, leathery kind of ruggedness that is totally awesome.

This is what Daniel Craig does, and it's fitting that he starred in a movie with Harrison Ford this year, because Ford is the last actor to embody this kind of look so effectively. (Okay, maybe Bruce Willis occupies the generation between the two men.)

Craig is lean and muscular, not just in the body but in the face, and it's not a sculpted, toned kind of muscular. It's more a sinewy kind that looks like it does actual work -- farm chores, maybe -- than controlled weight-lifting and steroid use.

This works great in action movies because it's inherently more believable than the Stallone or Schwarzenegger model. Thus, Craig can play regular everyman characters, while still possessing the physical cred necessary to climb the side of spaceships in midflight, throw antagonists into smoldering volcanoes, or do anything else modern action movies require him to do.

Craig went and did something interesting earlier this year: he married Rachel Weisz, who is almost his exact female doppelganger: a respected craftswoman who is sexy, but not implausibly so. She too exerts a practical kind of beauty, like she's been chopping wood all day and just came in for a drink of water.

This union can only cement Craig's mastery of the regular-guy-but-really-much-better-than-that niche.

And it's a nice niche to occupy.

Heather Graham

The Bert Blyleven

At first glance, Heather Graham seems quite unexceptional.

Of course she's conventionally beautiful -- if by conventional we mean blonde, slim, pert-nosed and symmetrically-featured -- but that's almost a backhanded compliment. The world is littered with conventionally beautiful women (and men, though fewer.)

What sets Graham apart is her record.

She has stood around being beautiful -- a more difficult achievement than you ugly people out there might realize -- since 1992's "Diggstown," and she still looked great in this summer's kid flick "Judy Moody." Or at least she did in the advertising.

Okay, so I didn't see a badly-reviewed kids flick with a title that rhymes. Sue me. The point is, she looked great.

And I don't mean she looked great for an older woman. She looked great period.

In this way, she recalls Major League pitcher Bert Blyleven, who pitched for twenty years but was never dominating. Is such a pitcher a true Hall of Famer? Well, he is now. He was inducted in 2011.

Heather Graham also deserves induction into the Hall of Fame. Not because she was ever the best-looking Hollywood actress on the planet -- she never was, not for one second -- but because she was in the top ten for twenty straight years.

And that's remarkable.

Rachel Nichols

THE CLOCK RACER

Okay, yes, that suit -- from 2009's "G.I. Joe" -- would make lots of women look extraordinary.

But I assure you, it's government-issue.

Nichols is an interesting case. She's physically almost perfect. Tall, slender, curvy in just the right places. She's truly an amazing beauty.

She's also thirty-one years old, which isn't old in the grand scheme of things, but it's scary-old in the world of movie starlets.

And of course, that's what she'd like to be. If you're a starlet, you can someday make the transition to Serious Actress. Or, if you were never that attractive, you can be a Serious Actress from day one. But if you're attractive like Nichols is, you're in a bit of a bind. You absolutely have to hit starlet success before you can move on to serious roles.

The trouble with this is: every day pushes Nichols a little further from her physical zenith. She hasn't found mainstream stardom yet, she's just nibbled around the edges, with bit roles in "Charlie Wilson's War" and "Star Trek" -- where she played a highly memorable green-skinned Orion slave girl -- a large role in "G.I. Joe" and a starring role in the surprisingly good but overlooked parking garage thriller "P2."

This is good, but not good enough. Nichols needs a star-making role that showcases her sexiness. And she needs it fast. Sometime last week would be nice.

But now comes news that the cast is being shifted around for the "GI Joe" sequel. Nichols' character is, apparently, out of the movie.

This sucks for Nichols.

"Joe" was a possible hit franchise, and suddenly she's considered dispensable to it in a very public way.

You only get so many chances to make it in Hollywood if your name isn't John Travolta.

And Rachel Nichols' isn't.

Which is too bad because, unlike John Travolta, she is really good-looking.

Jon Hamm

THE ADULT

Don't know why it took me so long to get around to Jon Hamm.

One of the best-looking people in Hollywood, and hands down the best-looking actor currently working in TV.

Unless it's Duchovny.

But here's where Hamm is different: he's not boyish. Not even a little.

And everyone's boyish. It's a youth culture and a youth industry. Our stars are guys like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, who have an adolescent look deep into their forties.

By contrast, Hamm says he didn't look 18 even when he was 18, and this made it impossible for him to get work early in his career.

Happily, he aged into his looks, and when a TV role came up that required a mature actor who actually looked mature, since the show was set in an era when men were expected to look like men, well... Hamm was set.

Not every gorgeous woman can rock a bikini, and not every handsome guy looks great in a three-piece suit, but when they do, it's a wonderful thing.

And Jon Hamm's the best damn clothes hanger since Sean Connery.

Emmy Rossum

The Diva

Literally.

Rossum started singing with the Metropolitan Opera when she was seven years old. She has an insanely good voice, but has transitioned into acting -- wisely!

Because she also happens to be incredibly attractive.

She's had a steady little career the past ten years, appearing in one hit, "The Day After Tomorrow," and coming off well in "Mystic River" and "The Phantom of the Opera."

She's currently starring in a Showtime series called "Shameless" in which she gets naked for some spicy sex scenes.

The show isn't very good, at least not yet -- but hey, spicy sex scenes.

Rossum's also a diva in the metaphorical sense. A friend of mine who worked on the set of "Poseidon" reported that Rossum was a continual headache for members of the cast and crew, throwing tantrums whenever she was inconvenienced.

According to my friend, things got so bad that co-star Kurt Russell had to berate her at the top of his lungs for her unprofessional behavior. He did it in front of everyone, on set. Evidently it was a dressing down for the ages.

Kurt Russell.

Now THERE'S a good-looking guy...

Olivia Wilde

The Face

Olivia Wilde is the super-sexy blond bartender from the dear, departed teen soap "The O.C."

She's got the female lead in the December reboot of "Tron," the movie about a video game with really bad graphics!

Hence, her picture is currently on billboards all around Los Angeles, which makes my life that much brighter.

As you can see, her trademark blond hair -- Olivia Wilde is the quintessential California girl -- has gone dark.

And she's still good-looking.

It's all about the face with her. You're not going to find a better, higher-cheeked face this side of a runway in Milan.

Olivia Wilde's about to headline a conceptual nightmare of a movie, but it's going to put her in a skin-tight, phosphorescent bodysuit, so I'm going to see it. And I won't be the only one.

Hollywood's not stupid.

They know what they're doing.

Frieda Pinto

Hello India!

To my knowledge, there has never been an Indian star in Hollywood.

One reason for this: India already has a big-time film industry. Indians with aspirations for fame needn't leave their country to attain their goals.

For an interesting contrast, see China, a neighbor with an equally big population but a comparatively small film industry. Chinese actors and directors, given no choice but to go east, turn up in Hollywood in large numbers.

But not India. India keeps its own at home, and as a result, those of us living outside the subcontinent never get a chance to see the Beautiful People of one of the world's major civilizations.

Enter Frieda Pinto!

Because British director Danny Boyle happened to make a movie set in India (called "Slumdog Millionaire"), and because he decided to cast a local Indian fashion model, and because the movie happened to win the 2008 Oscar for Best Picture, the gloriously beautiful Frieda Pinto grabbed a bit of Hollywood fame.

And if she is any indication of the attractiveness hitherto disguised from the rest of the world, we need more Hindus in our lives.

Frieda has a part in this month's Woody Allen pic "You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger," and according to imdb she has three other films underway or in post.

If her career can take off, and she can make a kajillion dollars, surely other good-looking Indians will follow her to Hollywood.

One can only hope!