Who: Mark Ruffalo
Age: 38
Know him as: Actor
Ladies, gentlemen, readers of Star tabloid, some questions: Why should any of us long for Brad when we have Mark? What do we care for Law when we have Ruff? Forget Daniel Craig when we could have Ruffalo, Mark Ruffalo. Why isn't this paragon of fuzzy sensuality opening blockbuster films, decorating tabloid covers, adopting African babies?
OK, probably because he doesn't want to do any of those things. The classically trained theater actor is famously stable, smart, dedicated to his craft, married with babies, and unlikely to run off with any 23-year-old costars. In his 20s, he scraped by as a bartender for a decade before catching the eye of Kenneth Lonergan, who cast him onstage in "This Is Our Youth" and then on-screen in "You Can Count on Me." Just as he became successful, he was stricken by a brain tumor, from which he has since recovered.
But while his reputation as a human being may qualify him for the Stella Adler school of sainthood, part of Ruffalo's feral pull comes from performances in which he has managed to precisely outline maddeningly flawed men. He fucked up his marriage in the suicidally depressing flick "We Don't Live Here Anymore," fucked up the memory erasure procedure in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," was the fuck-up brother in "You Can Count on Me," and just plain fucked Meg Ryan -- administering cunnilingus from behind -- in Jane Campion's "In the Cut."
But even if Ruffalo weren't a pro at embodying yin-yang bad-boy-puppy tension, he would be unbelievably foxy. How is his scrappy sensuality -- nearly adolescent in its purity -- lost on the masses? How can they not yearn to kiss his droopy, heavy-lidded peepers and feel the warmth of his sandpaper whisper in their ear? How can they not notice that his lips are so big and plump and pink that -- to hell with Brad -- they rival Angelina's? Down with pretty boys. Up with Mark.
Ruff! Ruff!
-- Rebecca Traister
Who: Noah Baumbach
Age: 37
Know him as: Filmmaker, most recently of "The Squid and the Whale."
There's nothing quite like a shaggy-haired Brooklyn boy who knows his way around a camera, pen and pathos to get your tummy doing flip-flops. Writer-director Noah Baumbach is the kind of guy you could have grown up with -- if that sweet, nerdy kid became someone with actual insight and a boatload of talent. Men in possession of only one of these qualities, familiar or brilliant, have taken in many a lady. In combination, they're your inner-Jewish mama's dream (she gets to find men sexy, too).
Baumbach started winning hearts with 1996's "Kicking and Screaming," an outstanding entry in the slice of post-collegiate life genre, that also set the mold for his work to come: funny, smart and shot through with sadness. In the years following, he teamed up with Wes Anderson to script the confection of "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" and proved he has great taste in women, marrying the ultra-hot, older Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Baumbach became a full-on heartbreaker with last year's eviscerating and autobiographical "The Squid and the Whale." Anyone who can turn the patently traumatic experience of his parents' divorce into such a painful, excruciating, funny and realistic film has obviously been through some mighty good therapy. Maybe he could use some more? And maybe you could be the one to give it to him?
-- Willa Paskin
Who: Alan Rickman
Age: 60
Know him as: Actor
Maybe it's the voice, that low British hum so intimate you find yourself leaning forward when you hear it -- which might be the point. Maybe it's the profile -- unmistakably distinctive and defiantly not hewn from the pretty-boy block. Maybe it's the way he can play good guys and bad guys, and guys whose allegiances you can't quite determine, with equal gusto. Or maybe there's just something about the man that's smart and complicated and tender and a little dangerous that makes your mind start wandering into filthy corners while you're sitting there, innocently trying to watch a "Harry Potter" movie with your kids or something. Whatever it is, Alan Rickman's got it. And at age 60, he seems to have no intention of letting it go anytime soon.
While the classically trained London stage actor gained his first big breakthroughs playing heavies in "Die Hard" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," it's his performance in 1991's "Truly, Madly, Deeply" that guaranteed Rickman's seemingly bottomless supply of slavish admirers. As Jamie, his ghostly cello player is so appealing, so utterly romantic and so inconveniently dead, you can understand why his girlfriend is reluctant to let him fully shuffle off the mortal coil. Frankly, a spectral Alan Rickman still beats out a vast percentage of mere mortals most days of the week.
In ensuing years, he's buttoned up in Jane Austen and been a reluctant space hero in a Tim Allen comedy. But whether he's playing a businessman in the throes of marital temptation in "Love, Actually" or a fiery Éamon de Valera in "Michael Collins," Rickman may be the only actor to make a certain world-weary sadness ridiculously hot. It's a soulfulness that hints of deep fires below, a reserve that smolders like crazy, and damn if it doesn't keep getting sexier with every passing year.
-- Mary Elizabeth Williams
Who: Jon Stewart
Age: 43
Know him as: Host of "The Daily Show" (Comedy Central)
Don't tell my husband, but Jon Stewart is the sort of man I always imagined myself marrying. Smart, funny, Jewish, wavy-haired attractive, successful. A hot mensch. In fact, he's probably many a Jewish (and non-Jewish) woman's fantasy match, though not, possibly, what our grandmothers might consider the perfect catch. "A comedian?" my own grandmother would surely have said dismissively. "What do you need it for?"
Oh, but Grandma. We do need Jon Stewart. We need him bad.
It's not just because he's reliably there for us every night (or at least four nights a week -- oh, how I miss him on Friday and long for him by Sunday). It's not just because he always -- and I mean always -- makes us laugh, nourishing our brains and tickling our fancy at the same time. It's not even because he's so damn cute and well read and light on his feet when guests drop by, the way he's able to listen and to joke, to disarm as he challenges, to get even the most stone-faced book-peddling tool to snicker like a schoolkid. No, what really makes Jon Stewart so particularly dreamy is his humility, and his confidence: His confident humility -- dissing his own ability to do impressions; playing straight man to all those sagely nodding, seriously silly "correspondents"; poking fun at an over-the-top pun as it pops up on screen; having an intimate heart-to-heart with an errant world leader -- well, it's just so yum.
Look, I don't care if he's a little short. I don't care if he's a little soft. And I don't care if my husband reads this: Jon Stewart can put me on his seat of heat anytime.
-- Amy Reiter
This story has been corrected since it was originally published.
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