You voted, and here are the results of our poll
Lara Croft
Angelina Jolie
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Tomb Raider: Cradle Of Life (2003)
Her first appearance, somersaulting down a rope in signature hotpants,
vest and thigh holsters, is unbeatable. Although they tried to outdo it
with that shower scene, just in case.
A runaway winner, scientists have shown that Lara Croft is the sexiest
imaginary person that has ever or could ever exist. The videogames
proved insanely popular at least in part because gamers could make the
character grunt and groan in a, ahem, not entirely professional way for
an archaeologist. The film version achieved the same effect by casting
Angelina Jolie and putting her in short shorts, wetsuits that never gave
that blubbery neoprene effect everyone else on the planet has to put up
with, and a succession of skintight tops. Then they threw her from
heights, attacked her with giant stone zombie things, and got her all
wet – basically, the same tactics that gamers had been using for years.
Jolie met it all with a snarl and a quip and a cut-glass English accent,
leaving Indiana Jones in her dust as the world's sexiest
quasi-archaeologist
Jessica Rabbit
Kathleen Turner (speaking); Amy Irving (singing); Betsy Brantley (model)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Quite literally cartoonishly sexy, Jessica Rabbit was created to be a
distillation of all that is hot. She's all boobs, lips, hips and boobs,
topped off with Veronica Lake hair in a Rita Hayworth hue, wearing a
quite simply scandalous dress that defies the most elementary laws of
both physics and tailoring. Her voice is an alto rasp that reduces grown
men to blubbering wrecks – and as a final stroke of charm, she values
humour over hunkishness in her gentleman callers. Seriously: she married
a rabbit because he could make her laugh. How hard could it be?
Catwoman
Michelle Pfeiffer
Batman Returns (1992)
We're aware that there has been more than one screen Catwoman, but we'd
put money on the fact that 99.9% of voters were thinking of Michelle
Pfeiffer's impossibly slinky, vinyl-slick incarnation. A very, very bad
girl trapped in a very, very good girl's body, she's got something for
everyone – and of course she also looks like Michelle Pfeiffer, which
can't hurt. The seductive alto growl she adopts as Catwoman (an
inspiration for Bale's Batman?) is part of her attraction, but it's the
catsuit, whip and claws that do the real damage. Voters, you don't think
you're being a bit
obvious here, do you?
Selene
Kate Beckinsale
Underworld series (2003–2012, except for 2009)
We're sure that many people would like to take credit for the success of
the Underworld franchise: the studio, the producers, director Len
Wiseman, maybe the screenwriters or cast. But true credit belongs to
just three people: Kate Beckinsale, Kate Beckinsale's trainer and Kate
Beckinsale's costume designer. As soon as the first stills of Selene
surfaced, the film's fortunes were assured and fanboy love – or perhaps
lust – secured. It surely isn't coincidence that the one film in the
franchise that does
not feature the delectable Ms Beckinsale is
the least loved of the lot (assuming the fourth doesn't completely
disappoint); her cool, collected, catsuited Selene is the real key to
its success.
Nancy Callahan
Jessica Alba
Sin City (2005)
We're not even sure that all the voters for Nancy even
saw Sin
City. The shot in the trailer, wherein she twists, in slow-motion, atop a
bar in a skeezy dive while circling a lasso, was probably enough. You
know, the bit where she's wearing chaps and tiny bikini bottoms and a
studded black leather bra top (we're assuming it's black. It's hard to
tell with black-and-white movies). The truth is that she's onscreen for,
what, five minutes, but it was enough to earn her a high place on this
list. In terms of sex appeal per second, she's probably the most potent
force anywhere here.
Princess Leia
Carrie Fisher
Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return Of The Jedi (1983)
A killer combination of whip-smart royalty and gorgeous young woman,
Leia is not someone who's easily impressed, unless you happen to be a
rough-and-ready smuggler. But she's also loyal, cool and, aside from one
or two strange hairdo choices, levelheaded and a crack shot with a
blaster. What more could a boy want? Well, she's also the daughter of a
powerful Jedi and has an entire fleet to back her up, which means she
can provide the perfect answer to the old pub fight question "you and
whose army?"
Black Widow
Scarlett Johansson
Iron Man 2 (2010) and The Avengers (2012)
Beauty, brains and ballistics wrapped in what for most people would be a
seriously restrictive vinyl suit, Black Widow (AKA Natasha Romanoff)
could kick your ass as soon as look at you, but that doesn't prevent her
from being a lust object. It's not difficult to see why, given that she
crops up as a sexy vision in the original Marvel comics and that
Scarlett Johansson embodies her on screen. Second most attractive
redhead ever.
Hermione Granger
Emma Watson
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone (2001) – Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2012)
Hermione has been a controversial obsession for many for years. She was
forbidden fruit before the time of The Goblet Of Fire, but has since
blossomed into a beautiful young lady it's (just about) OK to fancy.
She's the epitome of the smart, driven schoolgirl (complete with the
uniform) and the fact that she spent ages considering herself dowdy just
adds to her appeal. But for all her magic abilities and heroic deeds,
the fact that she was just a regular girl next door meant she somehow
seems attainable and, for that reason, that much sexier.
Vesper Lynd
Eva Green
Casino Royale (2006)
It's said that every generation gets the Bond girl it deserves. While
the 1967 take on Fleming's book had Ursula Andress as a more comedic
Lynd, Green's Vesper is the ideal icon for today's 007 fan. Sharp and
sarcastic when she needs to be, she's also enchanting and not a little
bit mysterious given her background and silken accent. Frankly, any
woman that can make legendary lothario Jimmy B consider giving up his
womanising ways is impressive for that alone.
Ramona Flowers
Mary Elizabeth Wanstead
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010)
This might just be the girl of your dreams. Literally: she can appear in
visions. Provided you can keep up with her, since she has the handy
ability to access subspace routes for fast travel, Ramona Victoria
Flowers is a hair-dyeing vixen with attitude. Intriguing and spunky, she
knows what she wants and she goes after it. And if you do need her to
fight by your side, she can pull a giant hammer out of her handy
satchel.
Tina
Cameron Diaz
The gangster's moll with the heart of gold, Tina may be smokin' hot but
she's a big softie at heart. While the former makes her a target for the
Mask, the latter makes her the perfect woman for Jim Carrey's
super-nice Stanley Ipkiss – basically, she covers all the bases, and
looks really good doing it. This film launched Cameron Diaz to stardom
and the post of Hollywood's highest-earning woman (for a while there)
and it's easy to see why. It's like someone told her to go play
irresistible, and she delivered in spades.
Leeloo
Milla Jovovich
Created from a fragment of DNA in a severed hand found on a crashed
spacecraft, it was a surprise to even the scientists involved when the
result was a carrot-topped hottie. "Perfect" is the way everyone
describes Leeloominaï Lekatariba Lamina-Tchaï Ekbat De Sebat: a
particular understanding of the word given that her first actions are to
punch through impregnable glass, crash through a solid wall and
swan-dive from a high building into hectic airborne traffic. Lithe,
resourceful, and rather sweet, Leeloo spends her first hours only
slightly clad in "thermal bandages", before an outfit upgrade to plastic
pants, a white crop-top and orange braces, courtesy of John Paul
Gaultier's famously crazy costume department. She looks good in all of
it. Rather more dangerous than is sometimes apparent, she momentarily
considers allowing the world to end, but relents thanks to the power of
luurve. Which we think is a good thing.
Sugar Kane
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe, possibly the most devastatingly sexy actress ever to
grace the silver screen, was on top form here. Whether drunkenly
slumping around or slinking about in full-on sex-kitten seduction mode,
she is never less than astoundingly attractive, mixing little girl
innocence and world-weary ennui into a cocktail of irresistibility. The
prototype for Christina Hendricks' Joan Holloway, Jessica Rabbit and
many more, Sugar gets her heart broken on a regular basis, but just
can't help herself from falling in love again. Bless: she needs someone
to take care of her, and there will be men queuing up for the privilege.
Catherine Tramell
Sharon Stone
Lady-fanciers, you are
so easy. All a beautiful Hollywood
character needs to do is a)wear a catsuit; b) wear a bikini or c) flash
you, and you fancy her. Job done. Would Catherine Tramell be here if she
hadn't flashed her bits around during her police interrogation? Hell,
you didn't even really get a look at said bit and yet she's here
just because you thought you saw them.
OK, so it's possible that some of you thought she was hot anyway: the
perfect features, the icy reserve combined with sexual adventurousness;
the white dress. Girl got it going on.
Satanica Pandemonium
Salma Hayek / Ara Celi
Lowly dog, bow your head! Santanico Pandemonium, the
feather-head-dressed, velvet bikini'd, arm torc'd, snake-draped
table-dancing amazon, stops From Dusk Till Dawn dead in its tracks about
halfway through and leaves an indelible impression. Her act also
involves hair-whipping and some filthily suggestive beer antics –
'That's what I call a fuckin show!' applauds no less an authority than
George Clooney – but she's admittedly less attractive when she
transforms into a snake-headed bloodsucker. The mistress of the macabre,
the epitome of evil, and the most sinister woman who ever danced on the
face of this Earth, is, we learn in the straight-to-video prequel The
Hangman's Daughter, a half human / half vampire princess, and daughter
of an Incan vamp high priestess and the titular executioner. She's also
got a mean right hook. Kneel and worship!
Lisbeth Salander
What Lisbeth Salander lacks in the way of curves and winsome femininity
she makes up in industrial-metal chic and ferocious independence. She
may be aggressively sexual, but she's very much not to be fucked with
(as her social worker can attest). A 24-year-old with a fetish for body
art and motorbikes, Salander has a history of mental trauma in and out
of institutions, can hack her way around cyberspace with the élan of a
William Gibson deck-jockey, and can handle herself in a fight against a
subway mugger or a seven-foot henchman. Her creator Stieg Larsson viewed
her as a grown-up Pippi Longstocking, not because he saw the beloved
children's heroine as a promiscuous sociopath, but because, "She doesn't
view society the way other people do." As played in the Swedish films
by Noomi Rapace, Lisbeth is part damaged loner and part action heroine.
Rooney Mara's Fincher version perhaps comes off as slightly more
vulnerable, but we've yet to see her in the superheroics of the second
and third stories.
Mystique
Who wouldn't want to date a woman who can become anyone she chooses?
This beautiful metamorph has the ability to shift forms at will – and
we're not just talking growing a few feet taller or making her chest
bigger. After someone who could look like Christina Hendricks one day,
then Halle Berry the next? Sorted. While there are those who would point
to Jennifer Lawrence's X-Men: First Class incarnation, Rebecca Romijn's
take on the character will stick in the mind longer as she's had more
time to make an impact. Also, she spent more time in the nip.
Elizabeth Swan
All modern cinematic heroines
claim to be feisty, but few
actually do more than wave a gun around and then get kidnapped.
Elizabeth Swan, to her credit, manages to rise about her damsel in
distress roots and become every bit as manipulative, untrustworthy and
ruthless as the pirates who surround here – and you clearly love her for
it. That, or it's her tendency to wear corsets and end up sopping wet
at regular intervals. What's more, she's no shy maiden of ye olden days:
she sets her sights like lasers on Orlando Bloom's Will Turner and
builds up a steam flirting with Jack Sparrow for good measure.
Xenia Onatopp
Frankly, we're a bit alarmed that so many of you voted for Xenia. Maybe
you're the masochist faction of our readership. "She doesn't have the
limitations that normal people have," said Famke Yanssen of the role
that put her on the cinematic map. This is something of an
understatement. Xenia Onatopp, perhaps inevitably given that name, has
voracious appetites both for sex and for killing. So while it's easy to
be taken by the orgasmic gasps emanating from that statuesque black-clad
frame, it's hard not to be distracted by the fat guy she's strangling
with her thighs, or by the fact that she's mowing down a legion of goons
with a machine gun. That said, in the ranks of female Bond villains,
she's hotter than Irma Bunt, not as silly as Bambi and Thumper, and less
terrifying than May Day. But wouldn't you feel safer with Plenty
O'Toole?
Barbarella
How many cosplay fetishists, we wonder, were forged on the anvil of
Barbarella? Nominally a film about a space agent saving the Earth from a
secret weapon, it's famously mostly about Jane Fonda wearing clothes –
or often not wearing them, as circumstances dictate. Outfits include a
revealingly distressed bodystocking, mini white vinyl tunic and
thighboots, clear plastic boob tube, and a peculiar furry skunk affair,
all pulled off (if you'll pardon the expression) with pneumatic
enthusiasm by Fonda, who turned down Rosemary's Baby and Bonnie &
Clyde for the privilege. A time capsule back to the swinging 60s,
there's a lot of free love in Barbarella: she learns along her journey
that she likes it the old-fashioned way (without psycho-cardiogram
readings or exultation transference pellets), and that Durand Durnad's
"Excessive Machine" (sometimes erroneously referred to as The
Orgasmatron, for obvious reasons) is simply no match for her. In a word,
Cor!
Persephone
Bringing new meaning to the word 'software', Persephone is introduced,
spilling out of a tight white dress, in The Matrix Reloaded. An obsolete
computer programme, she's married to The Merovingian, who runs a
safe-haven for similarly beleaguered Matrix outlaws (in Greek mythology,
Persephone was the Queen of the Underworld, kidnapped by Hades to be
his queen; The Merovingian runs Club Hel…). Since The Merovingian
thrives on the sinful and the carnal, it's not difficult to see his
attraction to his squeeze. She however, has become jaded and bored, and
there's a darkly seductive, vampiric quality to her. Her idiosyncratic
kink is soliciting kisses, through which she vicariously feels the
passions of the person she's kissing. If you play the Enter The Matrix
videogame as Niobe, you discover that she doesn't discriminate by
gender.
Princess Amidala
Beautiful, regal and a Queen by the time most of us are still playing
with action figures… you can see why young, up-and-coming Jedi Knight
Anakin Skywalker disobeyed his strict love-is-forbidden vows. Passionate
in her convictions and as beautiful as those angelic stunners that the
deep-space pilots keep rattling on about, Amidala (or Padme, to her
friends) is gorgeous inside and out. Okay, so her secret husband turned
out to be murdering badass and the man directly responsible for the fall
of the Republic, but that's hardly her fault. Dying of a broken heart
was a bit wimpy of her, but up to that point she was pretty ace.
The Bride
A long tall drink of water with ace taste in sportswear, Uma Thurman's
The Bride is not for the faint of heart. Still, somewhere under that
blood-stained, katana-wielding exterior is a warm heart who's just
looking for the right man to make her happy – or was until he was gunned
down by her colleagues. But hey, she'll need a replacement! And bear
this in mind: The Bride looks a lot like the goddess of love, Aphrodite
herself, who Thurman played in her film debut. It's a sign that you and
she were meant to be together!
Neytiri
She's nine foot tall, blue and alien. Her idea of sex involves plaiting
your hair with hers (the head on your head, fellas). She looks a bit
like a cat and probably doesn't have actual boobs, just slight lumps on
her chest. Basically, you're all perverts for suggesting it, and if she
didn't look and sound like Zoe Saldana, and wander around practically
nekkid, we wouldn't even understand where you were coming from. As it
is, we're going to allow it, and simply point out that you might want to
be careful how you treat her since she has her own pet dragon.
Gilda
A bit of a twisted sister, this one. She gets a lot more passionate
about the man she professes to hate than with the husband she claims to
adore, and seems to take promises and marriage vows with a pinch of salt
– although of course that strategy doesn't work out so well for her as
her choice in men works rather against her. Still, with her upward
tilted glances, swishing hair and femme fatale ways, worrying about mere
death or dismemberment as a result of flirting with her seems worth the
risk.
The Sexiest Characters In Cinema - The Men
You voted, and here are the results of our poll
Aragorn
OK, so he never washes his hair, sleeps rough and hangs out with a
motley collection of hobbits and dwarves. But Aragorn is still wildly,
deeply attractive. Very much the strong silent type (in direct contrast
to the number two on this list) he's strong, utterly dependable and
handy with a sword (steady!), as well as having a nice line in
leadership and, er, singing. Undoubtedly the most attractive pipe smoker
in film history, he gets away with any number of transgressions that
normal men should never attempt: generally speaking, cleanliness is next
to phwoar-iness and this much chainmail is an impediment. But in this
case, we're willing to overlook it.
Cap'n Jack Sparrow
James Bond
Batman
Tyler Durden
It's questionable whether this is a real person, or – if it is – who the
hell we're talking about here. But whichever way you look at it,
there's a lot to be said for Durden's junk-shop chic, his defiant
non-conformism, and his general lack of restraint. Sure, you might not
want to get
married to a guy who blows up buildings and/or leads
an army of shaven-headed weirdos, but on the other hand you'd probably
have – ahem – fun in the short term. And either or both versions of
Tyler Durden are handsome despite the scars on their hands, so whichever
persona happens to be on top that day, you're on to a winner.
Wolverine
Indiana Jones
Han Solo
Driver
Gollum
Thor
Edward Cullen
Danny Ocean
Sherlock Holmes
Tony Stark
Jason Bourne
Loki
Rhett Butler
Maximus Decimus Meridius
Rick Blaine
Jack Dawson
Roger Thornhill
Don Lockwood
Eames
Mal Reynolds
