Sex Stars 1993

Funny thing about the Sex Stars of 1993: Most of them are female. Sure, the guys—Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood—bring in the big box-office numbers, but they largely limit themselves to action outside the boudoir, leaving it to the femmes to send our hormones raging. A few years back, the actresses we heard about were mostly cool customers—pre-Fatal AttractionGlenn Close, Meryl Streep and the like. This year Madonna, Sharon Stone and Janet Jackson, Sex Stars extraordinaire, monopolized the airwaves and magazine covers and, in brazen defiance of those old rules about women's earning power being lower than men's, raked in the big bucks as well. Janet's Rolling Stone cover certainly emphasized her sexual image. At first glance, she (text concluded on page 182) looked like one of those many-limbed Indian goddesses, but the extra pair of hands—strategically covering her shapely breasts—turned out to belong to her longtime boyfriend, Rene Elizondo, who helped the hype along by telling interviewer David Ritz that Jackson's new album, janet, "is so hot it should have come with a condom."

Madonna, the planet's greatest practitioner of hype, is laughing en route to the bank at critics and moviegoers who shunned her steamy performance in Body of Evidence; it soared up the chart when released on video.

As for Stone, she's now at the top of Hollywood's "most wanted" list. "I earned this," she insisted to Vanity Fair. "I didn't come out here and say I was the greatest actress in the world right out of the chute. When I got here I was 21 and looked 16 and had this voice and this attitude. The best slot people felt that they could put me in was the bimbo slot."

Ah, yes, the bimbo slot—the ultimate obscenity. Male or female, our Sex Stars will tolerate almost anything except that sobriquet. Happily, they're now given time to establish themselves, often not getting their first big break until they're past 30. Stone is 35, Melanie Griffith, 36, Michelle Pfeiffer, 36, Madonna, 35, Geena Davis, 36, Emma Thompson, 34—the list goes on until such sweet young things as 26-year-old Julia Roberts are almost the exception.

Annoyingly, the men go on forever. At the age of 63, Eastwood knocked out another action hit, In the Line of Fire, on the heels of last year's Unforgiven, while Sean Connery, also 63, gets sexier as he grows older, according to the polls. (One group voted him the sexiest man alive, prompting Connery to wonder how many dead people are sexy.)

What, besides age, makes a fellow a Sex Star these days? Maybe bad hair. That's the message most of us got when lovely Julia Roberts eloped with country singer Lyle Lovett—our vote for Most Improbable Sex Star of the Century. No surprise, though, was the news that John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Daryl Hannah, after traipsing through tabloids and tropics, would wed—even though he'd claimed as recently as early August that they were "just friends."

Hair was, as a matter of fact, apparent in the thoughts of our Sex Stars of 1993. Stone informed us, via that Vanity Fair story, that little girls draw pubic hair on their Barbie dolls. And we still don't quite understand supermodel Cindy Crawford's explanation of bikini waxing in Playboy this past April.

Debating the follies of follicles ranked second, however, to the gossip about Hollywood marriages on the rocks. (More bulletins are expected if and when the little black book of alleged madam-to-the-stars Heidi Fleiss is opened to the public.)

Biggest surprise this year was the collapse of the Burt Reynolds-Loni Anderson union, with Burt reportedly drowning his sorrows in the arms of Tampa Bay bar manager Pam Seals. Mr. and Mrs. Ted Danson and Mr. and Mrs. Bill MacDonald also called it quits, the missuses blaming Whoopi Goldberg and Sharon Stone, respectively, for the breakups. But La Toya Jackson has been standing by her man, husband and manager Jack Gordon, even though he allegedly beat her with a chair.

Jack Nicholson and ladylove Rebecca Broussard, mother of his son and daughter, have been off and on, romantically speaking, but Eastwood and his main squeeze, Frances Fisher, are happy parents of a baby girl. Daughters are definitely in: Cruise and Nicole Kidman adopted one (after canceling an earlier attempt when details leaked out), as did single mom Michelle Pfeiffer, who says she wants to be a full-time parent, at least for the time being. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger brags about sharing diapering and other child-care chores for his and Maria Shriver's growing brood.

Not all the newsmakers among this year's Sex Stars are likely to become parents. Included are such genderbenders as former hairdresser's helper Jaye Davidson, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing a would-be woman in The Crying Game; writer-comic Sandra Bernhard, who has come out of the closet onstage so often that the hinges are coming loose; and the latest media darling, drag queen RuPaul. And after jumping out of country to the top of the pop charts, K.d. lang surprised many of her redneck fans by being an outspoken lesbian of the fun kind. She told Vanity Fair's Leslie Bennetts, "Like a lot of women, I have a little bit of penis envy. Yeah, they're ridiculous, but they're cool."

Tina Turner expressed disdain for certain parts of the male anatomy, at least for the one that hangs from ex-husband Ike. "I really didn't like Ike's body. I don't give a damn how big his member was. I think that must have been very attractive to a lot of white women. He really was blessed, I must say, in that area."

However well-endowed the male Sex Stars may be, we're not seeing much of their endowment in the movies. Mimi Rogers, talking to Playboy in March, had some naked truths to reveal on this subject: "Let's face it. Unless the actor's showing his dick, nobody really cares.

Male nudity? What, we see his buns? And in a sexual context, it's really silly to see a dick on-screen because the dick is never doing the right thing. It's limp."

There are those (notably Esquire's new publisher, Alan Stiles) who believe today's Sex Stars are to be found on fashion-show runways and in glossy magazine ads. "Models," Stiles proclaimed in the magazine's July issue, "have obtained both the celebrity aura and the tables in restaurants once reserved for famous actresses."

Sounds as if Stiles has been snubbed by a headwaiter, but he's right about the models. They're hot. For a while, with the ascendance of slender Kate Moss and Kristen McMenamy (of the mercurial eyebrows), the fashion world seemed headed back to the scrawny era of Twiggy. Thank the good Lord for Anna Nicole Smith, Playboy's very own and very voluptuous Playmate of the Year, who fits spectacularly into the Guess jeans she represents. So spectacularly, in fact, that she was mobbed by an estimated 1500 Chinese admirers chanting "Anna, Anna, Anna" at an August autograph-signing session in Hong Kong. She was rescued by Hong Kong cops and a contingent of U.S. Marines. This being the Nineties, though, the leathernecks weren't dispatched to distant climes by a worried president. They just happened to be in the shopping mall at the time.

"It was crazy," Anna said afterward. But she does understand her appeal to the opposite sex: "Who wants to hug a skeleton?" Smith asked USA Today's Tom Green shortly after winning the Playboy title and completing shooting as Tim Robbins' girlfriend in The Hudsucker Proxy. Lucky Tim: All this and Susan Sarandon, too.

Among male models, the acknowledged monarch is Fabio, described by People as "an Italian superhunk." The guy who graces the covers of millions of romance novels, Fabio is becoming a one-uomo conglomerate with a fast-selling calendar, a record, a fan club, a line of health products and a 900 number as well as a role in the syndicated TV series Acapulco H.E.A.T.

Fabio tells his admirers they can build their own self-esteem by following his tripartite program of mind power, body power and humility. Well, whatever works—half of Hollywood seems to be involved in one or another kind of 12-step program. Small wonder they're the rage among Sex Stars, who even more than the rest of us are aware of the limits of shelf life: Hot stuff today is old news tomorrow. Stay tuned for the Sex Stars of 1994.

On the Money: Now cashing in are Anna Nicole Smith, Playmate of the Year, actress and Guess model; Janet Jackson, singer, Rolling Stone cover girl and star of Poetic Justice; and Madonna, with a megadollar deal.

White Heat: In Sex Star land, blondes still have more fun. Take the Barbi twins, with their calendars and Playboy appearances. Playmate Pamela Anderson has quit Home Improvement to devote more time to Baywatch; Dian Parkinson has left her Price Is Right gig and made a Playboy Celebrity Centerfold video. Daryl Hannah will say "I do" to America's crown prince, John F Kennedy, Jr.; sizzling Sharon Stone is up to seven-figure salaries per film; Rhonda Shear hosts cable's Up All Night show; and Fabio is the hunk on an estimated 55 million romance-novel covers.

Hollywood Calling: We knew she had the makings of a star: Miss July 1989, Erika Eleniak, moved on from television's Baywatch to a major role in the movie Under Siege. Now she's featured on the big screen again, as Elly May in The Beverly Hillbillies.

Model Mania: Drew Barrymore, from America's first acting dynasty, makes movies and Guess ads; Cindy Crawford tends to hubby Richard Gere and her career; Kate Moss stars in Calvin Klein ads, while Naomi Campbell plans to wed U2's Adam Clayton. Incredibly, despite her Sports Illustrated fame, Elle Macpherson says she "always had a problem with bathing suits."

Troublemakers: Hollywood trembled this summer as alleged madam-to-the-stars Heidi Fleiss hinted she might tell all. Her pal Billy Idol stressed that he, for one, never paid for sex. If half the rumors are true, Italian model Carla Bruni has been busy: She has reportedly come between Donald Trump and Maria Maples, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall and Monaco's Prince Albert and model Claudia Schiffer. Trouble, if not money, sticks to Shannen (Beverly Hills 90210) Doherty, whose name keeps showing up in reports of bar brawls and overdrafts. And onetime church secretary Jessica Hahn, whose revelations toppled televangelist Jim Bakker, stars in a top-selling (number two on Billboard's charts) Playboy video.