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.

We seem to be the same person today.

Cool! Does this mean I can hurt someone with my pinkie if I tried today?

I find most young & pretty actors lack charisma/character/je-ne-sais-quoi to tip them over to my 'attractive' threshold, but there are always exceptions. Jude Law fits the bill. Invariably though, when I'm looking at young actors, I tend to find the ones who are not classically pretty more interesting/attractive, although that may be the function of the roles. (The actor who plays Duncan vs. the one who plays Logan--who is a bit rabbitty-looking, objectively-speaking--on Veronica Mars, for example.)

I see that you all are just a-splittin' the callowly pretty away from teh hott

Oh, I'm not. Depp has always been painfully pretty to me, nothing callow about him, and devastatingly hot. My pretty has no value judgment -- Tom Welling is also pretty.

Like Vonnie (go! Kill!) I don't think pretty has to mean attractive. They're intersecting sets, no causal relationship required.

I think there's definitely a class of guy who gets more attractive as he ages. It's like being refined. George Clooney, Timothy Hutton, Andrew McCarthy, RDA, Peter Wingfield, Dennis Quaid, Colin Firth.

Two words: Robert. Redford.

In fact, it's the move *away* from "pretty" to "older/attractive" (whatever word might define that) that trips my GUH-ometer.

Ha. This whole thing make me think there should be Venn diagrams and notations for probability logic in which A = pretty, and B = attractive, and A U B = general term like 'good-looking', and A ∩ ~B (or whatever is the negation sign) = Tom Welling. But I fear I'm not mathy enough.