Sex Stars 1996

Something is definitely happening in Sex Star Land. For one thing, the screens from which today's idols cast their spells are as likely to be attached to computer keyboards or cable jacks as they are to be part of the local Multiplex. Gen Xers are quick to hail their favorites. Among the five most-wanted personalities on Web pages this year, three--Jenny McCarthy, Pamela Anderson Lee and Anna Nicole Smith--are Playmates in their 20s. (The other two, according to the Internet search engine Hot Bot, are actresses Demi Moore, 33, and Alyssa Milano, 23.) The newcomers about whom Hollywood is most excited, A Time to Kill's Matthew McConaughey and Stealing Beauty's Liv Tyler, are 26 and 19, respectively--and Liv is the daughter of November 1974 Playmate Bebe Buell. And 1996 was definitely the year in which men became objects of unabashed lust. This was nowhere more evident than in sports. Olympic athletes were characterized as "studmuffins," and the Chicago Bulls' Dennis (text continued on page 164)Rodman, who displayed on his buffed bottom an awesome array of tattoos, announced that he wants to play his last NBA game in the nude. Because Rodman re-signed with the Bulls, that's a treat his fans will presumably have to wait for. But fear not--he's on view in his weekly MTV show Rodman: The '96 D Tour and is booked for the Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller The Colony. In the world of fashion, as Newsweek observed, men's trousers are now "so tight they're anatomically correct." Remarked Details fashion director Terence McFarland: "The time is right for men to be considered sex objects." Example: Antonio Sabato Jr. in his Calvin Klein shorts.

Here at Playboy we're inclined to put our money on the centerfolds--especially Jenny McCarthy, 1994 Playmate of the Year and hostess of MTV's Singled Out. Jenny is due to leave Singled Out in midseason, but her new variety show is scheduled to bow on MTV in December. (MTV is also helping her develop a Lucille Ball-style sitcom to air elsewhere.) Entertainment Weekly has been running a Jenny-O-Meter tracking her press exposure, which has included items on the CD Jenny McCarthy's Surfin' Safari, her chart-topping Playboy video The Best of Jenny McCarthy and her near-simultaneous cover appearances on Rolling Stone, TV Guide and Playboy. And then there are her movie roles, in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead and The Stupids.Pamela Anderson Lee, her rocker husband Tommy Lee and their newborn son Brandon have also been the objects of considerable media attention. While Barb Wire, Pam's film debut, sank like a stone, she helped keep Baywatch watchable--with a boost from fellow Playmate Donna D'Errico, who is also appearing on Baywatch Nights. Playboy's 1982 PMOY, Shannon Tweed, long established as the queen of erotic thrillers, has added adventure films to her résumé, making use of the kick-boxing skills she developed to shape up after her latest pregnancy. She now has two children by rocker Gene Simmons, a reinvigorated sex star via Kiss' new tour. Shannon is also on view in a brand-new Playboy Celebrity Video Centerfold.

Matthew McConaughey, a relative unknown (he had been in Dazed and Confused and Angels in the Outfield before director Joel Schumacher and writer John Grisham picked him for A Time to Kill), looks disconcertingly like a young Paul Newman. Liv Tyler is the daughter of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler. Liv grew up believing she was the child of another rocker, Todd Rundgren. Her mother--herself a model and musician--lived with Rundgren before her fling with Tyler. Bebe, wanting to protect her unborn child from Aero-smith's then-druggie lifestyle, returned for a time to Rundgren, who agreed to go along with the ruse. The truth came out some eight years ago, when, according to Bebe, Liv confronted her and asked, "Mom, how come I don't look like Todd and I do look like Steven's daughter Mia, and how come Steven cries every time he sees me?" Liv's showbiz genes are confirmed by her performances in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty,Tom Hanks' directorial debut That Thing You Do, Sundance Festival prizewinner Heavy and the forthcoming Inventing the Abbotts. In another demonstration of hereditary talent, Mira Sorvino--daughter of actor Paul Sorvino--managed, as a hooker in Mighty Aphrodite, to steal a Woody Allen movie from Woody Allen and win a best supporting actress Oscar in the bargain.

Television continues to produce sex stars, but of late they're popping up in syndication (Baywatch, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spin-off, Xena: Warrior Princess), on cable (Singled Out) and on the fourth network, Fox (The X-Files). Kevin Sorbo, a former University of Minnesota football player and Budweiser pitchman who lost the Superman role in Lois & Clark to Dean Cain, stars in Hercules, which recently surpassed Baywatch in the syndie rankings. New Zealand's Lucy Lawless, nearly six feet of raven-haired wonder woman, plays Xena in outfits designed for maximum display of cleavage ("It makes you crotchety to be trussed up like a chicken," she complained to one interviewer). Xena began her life as a villain in three episodes of Hercules; her own show is now the 1996 season's highest-rated new syndicated series. On The X-Files, the romantic impulses of FBI agents Scully and Mulder are strictly submerged, but a Rolling Stone cover showed stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny the way viewers would like to see them: in bed. Fans have established the Gillian Anderson Testosterone Brigade and the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigades on the Internet, speculating that Anderson and Duchovny might be less buttoned-down in real life than they are on the tube. She's a former punkster teen who pierced her nose and wore a Mohawk, and confessed to TV Guide: "I'm raunchy." As for Duchovny, the British tabloid News of the World reported, following his breakup with girlfriend Perrey Reeves, that he had joined a 12-step group called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Duchovny denies it.

Also quickening pulses with their television personae: ER's Julianna Margulies, described by her Traveller co-star Bill Paxton as "a classic Forties movie starlet--exotic, sultry and voluptuous"; and George Clooney, set as the fourth movie actor to don Batman's trunks. The past season's most intriguing new personality, Daniel Benzali, the moody, bald lead attorney on Murder One, was inexplicably bounced from the series, which had struggled in a succession of ineptly chosen time slots. It remains to be seen whether the loss of Benzali, who had developed a legion of female fans, will cause further damage. His planned marriage to sexy actress Kim Cattrall should help assuage his pain, and Anthony LaPaglia, taking over as Murder One's top counsel, may well appeal to the younger fans ABC hopes to attract.

People magazine anointed Denzel (Courage Under Fire) Washington the Sexiest Man Alive and Brad (12 Monkeys, Sleepers) Pitt took MTV's Most Desirable Male. Pitt's girlfriend, Gwyneth (Emma) Paltrow, actress Blythe Danner's daughter, may be the best judge of that.

Supermodels' grip on the public imagination seems to be fading, with a few exceptions. Cindy Crawford's movie debut in Fair Game didn't do well, but the Revlon spokeswoman was paired by the press with both Val Kilmer and Dennis Rodman (who gave her his jersey after a game against the Seattle Supersonics) and was invited to tea at Kensington Palace with a pair of younger fans, princes William and Harry. Amber Smith's three-way with Paul Hipp and Vincent Gallo in Abel Ferrara's The Funeral steamed up the screen (as noted in last month's Sex in Cinema), and she will appear in Private Parts with shock jock Howard Stern. Elle Macpherson, seen in Jane Eyre and If Lucy Fell, is cast as Anthony Hopkins' wife in Bookworm and as Clooney's fiancée in the new Batman feature. Meanwhile, the supermarket press has been having a field day with Macpherson's private life, linking her at times during the year with Sean Penn (before his marriage to Robin Wright), Kevin Costner, a Swiss banker and, perhaps inevitably, co-star Clooney. Macpherson's rival in the Batman film, Poison Ivy, will be played by Uma Thurman, who gave an impromptu performance on a beach in St. Barts that Playboy chronicled in its September issue.

Latin lovers, male and female, are adding salsa to the screen these days. Salma Hayek, formerly the smoldering star of Mexico's most popular soap opera, Teresa, blazed through Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn. An Italian performer, Rocco Siffredi, who wrote, starred in and directed Never Say Never to Rocco Siffredi, won the best European actor award at the Hot d'Or fest in Cannes. His efforts have brought new heights of eroticism to adult films. Spanish heartthrob Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith's new hubby and father of her baby, won the title role in Zorro, causing its producer, Elizabeth Avellan, to admit that when "watching him up close, my socks fell down." Banderas plays Che Guevara to Madonna's Eva Perón in the spectacular movie musical Evita, which the erstwhile Material Girl finished just as her pregnancy (by handpicked fitness trainer Carlos Leon) started to show.

Elsewhere, Ireland's Liam Neeson followed up his portrayal of Scottish legend Rob Roy with one of IRA founder Michael Collins. Insiders are talking Oscar for this one. Another Irishman, Pierce Brosnan, after successfully assuming the mantle of James Bond, moved into the volcano disaster flick Dante's Peak (and had tabloids speculating as to whether he would wed his pregnant girlfriend, Unsolved Mysteries correspondent Keely Shaye Smith). Virile Scottish screen veteran Sean Connery lent his voice to Dragonheart and his persona to The Rock to prove, in the words of Newsweek's Jack Kroll, that he's still "sexier than all those Hollywooden young studs, at 65, an international treasure, the magnetic male animal."

And what of 38-year-old Sharon Stone, the longtime Playboy favorite glorified by Esquire's Bill Zehme as the Last Great Broad? Oscar-nominated for her star turn in this past year's Casino, she eschewed nudity in 1996's Last Dance and Diabolique, took up the cause of AIDS research and set the fashion world on its ear by showing up at the Academy Awards in a Gap shirt and at other occasions with a Timex watch on her wrist. That's what we love about Sharon: She does it her way, with style.

When it comes to sex-star durability, though, no one compares with the originals. Steve Sullivan, author of the book Va Va Voom! and collaborator with photographer Bunny Yeager in the bimonthly publication Glamour Girls: Then & Now, has been conducting a poll via the Internet to determine the most popular pin-ups of all time. His rankings, as we go to press: (1) Marilyn Monroe, (2) Jayne Mansfield, (3) Bettie Page. All three were Playmates, as were number 14, Cynthia Myers, and number 17, Anna Nicole Smith. Keep an eye out for the final results and a Playboy pictorial tribute.