Sex Stars 1997

Just what does it take to become a sex star in 1997? For openers, it helps if your name begins with Mc. Just ask Matthew McConaughey, Jenny McCarthy or Ewan McGregor. It's a plus, too, if you have Irish blood (George Clooney, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Flatley) or have appeared in Playboy (Pamela Anderson Lee, Carmen Electra, Farrah Fawcett, Victoria Silvstedt). Jenny McCarthy, come to think of it, scores in all three categories. No wonder she's the most popular star on the Zone, a Web site celebrating celebrityhood; at last count, just typing her name on Yahoo brought up 46 sites dedicated to the empress of funny faces. (The hottest man on the Web, according to Lycos, is golfer Tiger Woods.) Jenny said goodbye to her MTV launching pad, Singled Out, in favor of (text continued on page 174) that cable net's The Jenny McCarthy Show and NBC-TV's new sitcom Jenny--meanwhile appearing on nearly every magazine cover in the country outside of National Geographic's.

Hispanics, too, are faring well in the race to sex stardom. Antonio Banderas has been relatively quiet this year, resting after his gig as Che in Evita and enjoying parenthood with Melanie Griffith. Having made more than 40 (mostly Spanish) films during his 15 years as an actor, he deserves a break. Antonio's female fans await his 1998 releases: The Mask of Zorro, The Sparrow and Eaters of the Dead, a.k.a. The Vikings, based on a Michael Crichton novel. Meanwhile, such Latina lovelies as Salma(Fools Rush In, Breaking Up)Hayek, Jennifer(Selena, Anaconda)Lopez, Cameron(My Best Friend's Wedding, Feeling Minnesota)Diaz and Daisy Fuentes, who's adding hosting duties on America's Funniest Home Videos to her MTV's House of Style gig, are steaming screens large and small. Lopez is said to be the first Hispanic actress to command $1 million per picture--not quite in the $12 million league of Demi Moore and Julia Roberts, but a definite start in that direction. The recently released U-Turn, directed by Oliver Stone, pairs Lopez with Nick Nolte and Sean Penn. Next year Lopez will team with Clooney in Out of Sight. Hayek, who was Esmeralda in TNT's The Hunchback, plans to co-produce and star in a biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo--having fought Madonna for the rights to the project. Diaz plays McGregor's kidnap victim in A Life Less Ordinary. McCarthy's Singled Out successor, former Prince protégée Carmen Electra, herself a popular Playboy model, would seem to belong in this south-of-the-border sisterhood, except that she hails from Cincinnati and her real name, Tara Patrick, is Irish.

Television is the starting block for many current sex stars. In what's rapidly becoming a nation of couch potatoes, perhaps this TV mania isn't surprising, but times have changed since a Clint Eastwood had to go to Spain and film spaghetti Westerns before overcoming his image (as Rawhide's Rowdy Yates) from what was then considered a second-class medium. Today, where would sex stardom be without The X-Files'Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny or ER's Clooney? (Clooney battles nuclear terrorism with Nicole Kidman in Dreamworks' first release, The Peacemaker; next year he'll team with Will Smith in the movie version of TV's Wild Wild West.) There's Xena: Warrior Princess'Lucy Lawless,Buffy the Vampire Slayer'sSarah Michelle Gellar (who made her mark on the soap All My Children) and The Naked Truth'sTéa Leoni.Party of Five'sNeve Campbell just finished making the sequel to her summer hit Scream. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air alumnus Smith (a cinematic show-stealer in Independence Day and Men in Black) is due soon with girlfriend Jada Pinkett in Love for Hire. And don't forget the aforementioned McCarthy and Fawcett. Even Brooke Shields, a veteran of Hollywood soundstages since her early teens, didn't become a full-fledged star until the debut of her NBC series Suddenly Susan.

Playboy exposure continues to be a career booster, not only for Jenny, Pamela and Carmen but also for Playmate of the Year Victoria Silvstedt. Victoria won a Guess Jeans contract, the distinction of starring in Playboy's first DVD and a guest shot in a sitcom on the heels of her PMOY selection. Miss April 1996 Gillian Bonner used her Playmate status to market her interactive CD-ROM game, Riana Rouge. While expecting her second child, Pamela departed Baywatch to work on a proposed syndicated series about celebrity bodyguards. Her planned autobiography, Pamdemonium, has been delayed, but she took time out to host a much-repeated episode of Saturday Night Live. Fawcett, long established as a TV star, revved her résumé with two Playboy magazine appearances--plus a pay-per-view TV special and a chart-topping video.

Still, dream gods and goddesses continue to burst from the screens of darkened moviehouses. Matthew McConaughey, the past year's surprise newcomer, scored this year as a theologian in Contact, as a principled attorney in Amistad and as a leader of an outlaw gang in The Newton Boys. His successor this year, Scotland's McGregor, boasts a résumé leading all the way from Trainspotting's Edinburgh to Hollywood, with four 1997 films--The Pillow Book, Nightwatch, Brassed Off and A Life Less Ordinary--to his credit. He's now filming the Star Wars prequel, in the role of the young Obi-Wan Kenobi. McGregor will be joined in that cast by Jedi knight Liam Neeson, who played the title roles in Schindler's List, Rob Roy and Michael Collins and stars as Jean Valjean in the just-released version of Les Misérables.

Sex star couples, married and otherwise, have split up in droves this year. Fawcett and live-in love Ryan O'Neal called it quits after nearly 18 years; Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow broke off their engagement, announced while he was filming Seven Years in Tibet in the Andes, after a mere six months. At least Pietra Thornton got to show off her cleavage at the Academy Awards before socking Billy Bob, her Oscar-winning spouse of four years, with divorce papers a few weeks later. Actress Geena Davis and director Renny Harlin parted after three and a half years; two years were as long as the Neve Campbell--Jeff Colt and Gillian Anderson--Clyde Klotz marriages endured. (Tabloids here and abroad alleged that Gillian dumped new boyfriend Adrian Hughes even faster when it was reported that he'd been accused of sexual assault by several women in Canada.) Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly didn't manage to celebrate their first anniversary, while the Ashley Hamilton-Angie Everhart union was reportedly kaput after 89 days. Only their lawyers know whether the off-again, on-again relationship of Dudley Moore and wife number four, Nicole Rothschild, is off or on this week, but Mick Jagger and wife Jerry Hall have made up and are expecting their fourth child, despite gossip about his alleged dalliances with the likes of Uma Thurman and model Jana Rajlich.

One can only wish a happier outcome for the partners in 1997's newsworthy nuptials, which joined Kelsey Grammer and Playboy Newsstand Specials model Camille Donatacci, Brooke Shields and tennis pro Andre Agassi, Sylvester Stallone and model Jennifer Flavin, and Linda Hamilton and her Terminator director James Cameron, who managed to fit in a wedding ceremony despite his troubles at the helm of the disaster flick Titanic. David Duchovny and Téa Leoni used their offseason TV hiatus to get married and make movies (he's an addicted physician in Playing God; she's in the upcoming Deep Impact, about a comet heading to earth). Joey Lauren Adams and her steady, director Kevin(Clerks)Smith, haven't yet tied the knot, but their screen partnership appears solid. After casting Adams in his second feature, Mallrats, Smith wrote this year's Chasing Amy (in which Joey was the lesbian object of Ben Affleck's affections) especially for her. The duo will team again for Smith's next film, Dogma, a satire of the Catholic Church.

Juliette Binoche, the delightful nurse Hana in The English Patient, showed Gallic generosity when she announced at this year's Oscar ceremonies that her Best Supporting Actress statuette should have gone to Lauren Bacall. Another irresistible Frenchwoman, Sophie Marceau--best known to American audiences as the princess who dallied with Mel Gibson in Braveheart--played the title role in this year's Anna Karenina remake and should widen her Stateside appeal with the recently released Firelight.

From the world of music, Michael Flatley--the step-dancing star of River-dance who left that show to stage his own spectacular Lord of the Dance--and singer Toni Braxton are standouts, along with the femme groups the Spice Girls and En Vogue. Braxton transformed herself from the shy daughter of a fundamentalist preacher to a bold clotheshorse in see-through outfits at such events as the American Music and Grammy awards shows. "I wear provocative clothes because they make me feel sexy," Toni told Vibe. "I gotta wear them now before my booty gets flat."

The British, of course, have their own way of introducing potential sex stars: page three of the thriving tabloid press. Now on the throne once occupied by Samantha Fox is Melinda Messenger. Her lingerie-clad appearance in an early 1997 ad campaign for double-glazed windows (the slogan was "Class Behind Glass") started it all. Today the Royal Mail will deliver an envelope bearing just her picture and the name of her hometown, Swindon, to her door. "Mel," as all true Brits know her today, was booted from page three of The Sun for having breast implants, but The Mirror gladly picked her up. Messenger was hired to promote the National Lottery and is reportedly slated to play blonde bombshell Diana Dors in an upcoming made-for-TV movie.

The last few years have seen the resurgence of a new genre of sex star: The classic, immortal pin-up. Just as Elvis Presley still reigns as the King, fans have crowned Marilyn Monroe, the Sweetheart of the Month in Playboy's premiere issue, history's top glamour girl of all time. Marilyn has been gone for 35 years, but previously unpublished MM photos continue to surface. Fans polled for Steve Sullivan's recently published Glamour Girls of the Century voted her number one by a wide margin over runner-up Raquel Welch. Playmates Jayne Mansfield and Bettie Page occupied the third and fifth positions, respectively, and Miss December 1968, Cynthia Myers, came in at number 12. Devotees of these classic pin-ups continue to flock to conventions, log on to Web sites and keep sales of glamour-girl picture books humming nicely.