This week, nostalgia:
Who was your first celebrity crush?
Mine was Shaun Cassidy. *sigh* Between the bubble-gum pop music and The Hardy Boys Mysteries on ABC on Sunday nights, I was a complete preteen goner.
You?
(If you have a suggestion for a Question, feel free to email me.)
Alyssa Milano, aka Samantha.
if you’re out there, my love for you is real. call me.
Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. Beauty and brains and action.
A dead man: Clark Gable.
First living actor: Steve McQueen.
My first crushes were cartoons, so I’m pretty much doomed. (Princess Nausicaa especially)
Old-school cartoon characters make the best crushes. They hardly ever get arrested for drunk driving, or claim that vaccines cause autism. (I was partial to Wonder Woman, back in elementary school.) Of course, post-Seth-MacFarlane, even cartoon characters aren’t safe.
Hey, she was awesome.
Mathilda May. She turned the heads of quite a few French boys and girls in her day.
And then came Lifeforce. :-)
I had a thing for the Amazon/warrior princess type growing up. First it was Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly) from Power Rangers, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick (Dulcea) from the first Power Rangers movie, and Xena herself Lucy Lawless.
Lawless’s blue eyes were really beautiful.
Tom Conti in The Glittering Prizes back in the 1970s. I think he was my dry run for David Tennant – it’s the eyes.
Martin Shaw as Doyle in The Professionals. A great fanfic described him as “looking like the good time waiting to be had by all”. I can’t better that in one sentence. And he had principles. Still crushing on him to this day.
Angela Cartwright as Penny on “Lost In Space” :)
Doris Day in “Calamity Jane.” I’m old.
Jo (Nancy McKeon) from “The Facts of Life”
My first (in the early sixties) was John Lennon followed by an even more powerful crush on Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones.
It had to be Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I was just a little boy when her show was on the air, but watching her was my first twinge of realization that there was something really fascinating about the female of the species, which had nothing to do with beating up bad guys . . .
Lynda Carter is simply amazing as Wonder Woman. Stunning.
Yes, she was.
Yes, I had a crush on Ms. Carter too even though I was not a little boy when her show was first on the air.
My sister and I belonged to the Hardy Boys Fanclub, and had that picture on the right on our wall!! She’s the oldest and claimed Parker Stevenson, so I had to settle for Shaun Cassidy. However, my first celebrity crush was several years earlier, when I saw The Sting at the age of seven when it was released in the theatre, and developed a lifelong thing for Robert Redford. I had a six-foot tall poster of him on the back of my bedroom door that I still remember very clearly.
I can suggest a future Question of the Week: “Who was your first literary/movie crush?” I didn’t have a fictional crush until I was 15, when I first read Lord of the Rings, and completely fell for Eomer. Peter Jackson’s casting of Karl Urban was just about perfect, IMO, since he completely fit my picture of the character in every way, especially in his hotness factor.
does Northstar from Alpha Flight count as a literary crush?
Certainly, but out of curiosity, was this before or after learning he was gay?
before. and it was technically before he actually ‘was’ gay, or even a fairy (ahem). I am from Southern Ontario, so I followed them pretty religiously in the X-men as a child – I was actually very excited about Canadian characters. the decision to retro the character to gay was made by Byrne in 1983, though he wasn’t allowed to actually *say* the character was gay. But I don’t actually think that would have mattered; though female, I knew I was not straight around the same time, though I kept those cards *very* close to the chest after an oblique scolding from a teacher when I was 12 (also 1983). I’m not sure, judging from crushes I had through my teens on people of several genders and different orientations, that that would have made one whit of difference.
In fact, I suspect that considering how voraciously I took to Alpha Flight because of my nationality, I’d have really welcomed a queer character, too. I could’ve used it.
The Fonz. He wasn’t my usual type, as it turned out, but still a decent starter crush.
Jason Bateman as Derek on Silver Spoons He was 13, I was 11. and it’s still pretty much there, 32 years later.
idol in my heart like you, a good
john steed in The Avengers, pretty quickly followed by David MacCallum in Man from UNCLE… john lennon and michael nesmith…. all of them are pretty much a bit of a jumble in the time stream, but Patrick MacNee was the first. years later, i went backstage to meet him after seeing Sleuth. he was so charming and attractive. and i saw a recent photo. he’s held up very well.
Ah, in my case it was Diana Rigg. They were a wonderful pair on The Avengers.
Brother!
Edd “Kookie” Byrnes …. okay, I’m a baby boomer.
I thought I posted yesterday? Oh, well…
Haley Mills, double delicious in THE PARENT TRAP.
I’ve pondered over this question for a day, and I can’t really think of any. I far preferred/prefer “crushing” on real people in my life over celebrities. That’s not to say that I didn’t find particular actresses/celebs attractive. I’ve just never thought much beyond that, which is what would constitute a “crush”.
Still to this day, there are women I see walking around in Target that I find more appealing than any celebrity.
Maybe I’m just weird.
I am with you. I find real women much sexier than Hollywood women. I tend to like characters more than actresses too.
No, you’re not. The crushes I most remember — and that made me do the most foolish things — were on actual people, not fictional characters. Granted, some of the women I had crushes on reminded me of various movie stars. (For example, I once had a crush on a female bookstore clerk who reminded of the Kim Greist character in Brazil.) But more often than not, the crush came first, and then the comparison.
Then again, my current girlfriend wasn’t exactly insulted when I told her that she reminded me of a young Gwyneth Paltrow…
Winona Ryder. I was 12, I think it was Mermaids that I first saw her in. I’m now 32 and in June I saw The Iceman because she was in it, next up: Homefront
When I lived in San Francisco, I used to dream up little meet-cutes between me and Winona. It was pretty bad – I actually bought a ticket to watch How to Make an American Quilt in high school.
Mainly, I think I had a crush on Lydia Deetz. She was goth way back before it got all commercial and mainstream =) As a kid I was like, “This girl is smart and wry and awesome, why haven’t I met any real girls like this?” And then I did.
Ryder seems to still be self-medicating though – just look into her eyes, there’s nothing much happening behind them as far as I can tell.
I remember being extremely intrigued by Spock and also Richard Chamberlain. But I was too young to even have a concept of what a “crush” was, so I’m not sure they count. But then came David Cassidy – I had posters all over the house (my poor, amazingly tolerant mother!) and ALL the Partridge Family albums. I sent him a birthday card with a personal note inside and he NEVER ANSWERED. How could he betray me like that?! I moved on to Donny Osmond, but it was just one of those insincere, half-hearted rebound things and didn’t last…
Very first crush? Tom Baker. Then Leonard Nimoy, then Jeremy Brett.
I have a type.
I have a man-crush on that trio as well – coolly imposing their rational outlook on an absurd, senseless world (and deep within their icy shells a hunger for justice burns relentlessly… or maybe it’s just a fever brought on by morphine withdrawal) . Makes me want to write a goofy League of Logical Gentlemen fanfic.
Rowan Atkinson in ‘Blackadder II’ because…SASS!
I was in love with Heather Locklear since the late 80’s when my granma watched Dynasty (and I was like 5) till the late 90’s when I stopped watching Melrose Place at 15 and turned my attention to movies.
Like Jonathan Roth, my first (and subsequent) crushes were mostly cartoon characters. Penny (Inspector Gadget), Velma, Gadget (Rescue Rangers), Sylia Stingray (Original), and Jane Lane being the standouts.
I’m easy to hook though, all it takes is three or more of the following: Intelligence, Independence, Creative Problem Solving, Wit, Glasses (superficial I know), Confident/Oblivious Geekiness, Librophilia.
If the powers that pay ever produce a remake of Sherlock with a female Holmes who wears glasses and is an engineering consultant on the side, I’ll have to have a bucket installed next to my computer desk… wait wait no, not for that sicko, it’s there to catch me when I melt into a puddle… alright, alright and maybe for other things too sometimes.
Not just bibliophilia but librophilia. Now that’s my kind of Spanglish! :-)
Yet as much as I tend to like fictional bibliophiles, bookworms, libroholics and other types of potential kindred spirits, I always remember having more of a crush on Daphne than Velma…
Judy Robinson (aka Marta Kristen in Lost in Space). I wish I could add Emma Peel to the list but I did not really have a chance to watch or appreciate The Avengers until I was a teenager.
I also remember liking — and having a crush on — Lindsay Wagner in The Bionic Woman. And er, ahem, Daphne.