Actor Crushes

(A little silliness for Valentine's Day)

The other day, my boss happened to glance at my desktop wallpaper and saw a picture (it's more of a college) of some guy.

"Who's that?" he asks.

"It's my actor crush du jour," I replied.

"What does hubby think about that?"

"Oh, he has the hots for 7 of 9, so it's cool."

"Who's 7 of 9?" (My boss, as wonderful as he is really needs to brush up on his Star Trek lore).

He found that idea quite intreguing. I guess it's more of a female phenomenon, than a male one (if you exclude teenage males). The conversation continued on for a few minutes more. (By the way, it's really embarrassing to have your boss start a conversation about stuff like this.)

Actor crushes are a kind of a "safe" thing, I suppose. The likelihood of you ever meeting that person are close to zero, and a lot of other people are in love with whomever your actor du jour is, which I suppose, validates your "safe" feeling.

When I get a new actor crush, I usually go on the internet and do a fairly exhaustive search to find out as much as I can about the actor: general statistics, filmography, biography, what they ate yesterday, etc. I invariably find other fan sites. Some are pretty well put together for those who are not website designers; most of them though, I'd rather scratch my eyes out than look at them, they are that bad (Don't get me started on horrid animated gifs and a blatant lack of usability, that's a rant for another day).

Anyways, back to the topic on hand. I scour the internet for any sort of information. There is a ton of information about people out there, even on fairly obscure people. But when I take a look at these actors, I always wonder about them. What is life really like for them. Do they enjoy acting or are they in it for the money and fame (or a bit of both)? Do they wish they could be doing something else? How do they put on a toilet paper roll: over or under? Enquiring minds want to know. I've also played with the idea of actually writing to one of the lesser known actors, in hopes that he may write back to me, but never had the guts to do so.

So I got to thinking, who were my past actor crushes. Here's a partial list (in no particular order):

• Clive Owen - First saw him in BMW films
• Hugh Dancy - Daniel Deronda
• Gerard Butler - Phantom of the Opera & Laura Croft
  
• Jamie Bell - Nicholas Nickleby
• Orlando Bloom (I am embarrassed to admit this)
• Matthew Macfadyen - MI5/Spooks

One thing that you will notice in the above list is that they are all British actors. It's really weird that I have this thing for British actors, I don't know why. Perhaps it's the accent. Or the soft romantic light reflecting off of their pasty white skin. Hmmm...

As obsessive as do get with my actor crushes, I tend to be a fair-weathered fangirl, as I told my boss (as per conversation above). After a while, looking at the information and pictures on the internet gets boring and repetitive. I start losing interest, and the crush eventually settles down to a fizzle.

The next day, my boss asks me, "So what's this guy's name" (motioning to the same picture on my desktop).

"Richard Armitage".

"Ohhhh, very British sounding."

See what I mean about the British thing?