Many of your list started out real pretty. It's just that there were bigger things ahead of them.

Man, I felt perfectly fine lusting after Clooney on Roseanne. Little did I suspect that Ocean's Eleven Clooney was yet to come. Just as well. Who'd have believed it?

Many of your list started out real pretty. It's just that there were bigger things ahead of them.

Eh. Pretty, maybe, but sort of shallowly pretty, without any real character.

Yeah, 'pretty' to me is a descriptive term with some objective standards. Regular, even features, well-proportioned bodies, etc. Attractiveness is a lot more elusive an animal. You can totally be ugly and attractive/hot, and it's a lot more subjective a quality. For example;

Tom Welling - very, very pretty. Not at all attractive to me.

Michael Shanks - pretty. Fairly attractive, too, although it depends on occasions.

RDA - pretty when young. Now, NSM, but enormously, exponentially more attractive when compared to when he was young.

Sean Bean - kind of craggy and rather reptilian-looking at times, but HOT.

Ben Browder - modicum of the pretty, made much more attractive in motion. He's one of those guys about whom you think, "hmm, he's pretty cute, I guess," then he starts talking about something with passion and you go, "Wow".

Benicio Del Toro - Friggin' ugly, but attractive as hell.

Pretty, maybe, but sort of shallowly pretty, without any real character.

I don't generally associate much character with pretty (it's certainly not requisite in my book), but young Clooney, Firth, Wingfield, Quaid and Hutton certainly made my hottie lists.

Now that I think about it, I think young Clooney had massive charm, and Firth wasn't doing too badly for himself either. Never found young RDA attractive, and I don't think I like McCarthy much either.

Which is the long way round to realising I disagree.

Okay, but I'm still right.

Okay, but I'm still right.

You really think young Clooney had no character? And Firth?

Vonnie -- Welling is a huge pretty-but-not-attractive to me too. We seem to be the same person today.

You really think young Clooney had no character? And Firth?

I'm not talking about morality, of course. Maybe character is the wrong word. Young Colin Firth is certainly pretty, but older Colin Firth is more visually interesting to me.

(P.S. Hands)

Ah. I'm not questioning visual interest -- I did say I thought they were all better looking now, after all. But I think Clooney especially (RDA and Firth to a lesser degree) had a great deal of charm with their looks, and weren't blank-canvas-Welling types at all.

(P.S. ganked)

I see that you all are just a-splittin' the callowly pretty away from teh hott, while I am a-lumpin' em all together. I agree there is a category of "nice face, pity about there being nothing behind it", and one of "nice face, will look even nicer when it has miles on it" and one of "weird face, in a nummy way" -- but these categories don't map automatically to a simple adjective.

I guess I tend to qualify "pretty" with how that pretty functions -- callow or craggy or vacant or intimidating or fierce or goofy or whatever.

Pretty is a really big tent.

Welling's gorgeous, but most of the time, there's no there there. Which is why Rosenbaum tends to blow him off the screen. And not in the good way.