I just watched the Ethan Green movie yesterday, which had a vain character, a staple in comedies. He wasn’t delusionally vain, though - he got as much sexual attention as he thought he deserved; but IRL, he wasn’t really that good-looking. The actor playing the title character was actually more attractive.
And that’s the norm with these types of characters. Does anyone really think that Joey from “Friends” was really that hot? Dot wasn’t really that cute relative to the other Warner Bros. (they were all cute, the brothers even cuter, actually, because the roundness of their heads wasn’t interrupted by those little points Dot had on hers). The Fonz? Maybe his personality but face? Eh. Brian and his British counterpart Stewart from QAF? Both good enough for a TV lead but not the exceptional Adonises they played.
The single exception I can think of is Dennis from “It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia”. The fact that he really is the most attractive guy on the show and then some makes his vanity shtick so effing funny. Maybe it’s because the humor comes from him getting his comeuppance because if it. It’s just satifying seeing a really attractive person getting beat up because he’s got a head about it. For example in one episode his sister told him his face looked fat on a TV apperance on the news, just to poke a hole in his ego. The rest of the episode he starved himself while his face wasted away (and bragged about his deteriorating looks) until he passed out at the end of the week). In another episode a series of old women he tried to have sex with told him that they “don’t find him very attractive”.
Anyway, that was a long intro. So have there ever been any other instances where the exceptionally attractive yet hopelessly vain character was played by an exceptionally attractive actor?
I should also mention the reverse; when no one notices that the hot one is hot. Who cares if Mason was a drugged-out fuck-up - IRL, the female reapers would have been all over him. And if Johnny Bravo were realistic, girls would be banging Johnny’s door down, instead of the other way around.
Although I find Willow to be the most attractive character based on her personality and am not attracted to Cordelia due to hers, I think the latter was easily the most gorgeous character on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
This is being said about shows that have both had Eliza Dushku in them? Hell, SMG is prettier. Buffy had Michelle Trachtenberg, for (Pete & ) Pete’s sake. But no, you had to pick Miss Mouth-out-of-Fright-Night.
The last time I paid any particular notice to Playboy was when Cindy Crawford posed in, I think, 1998. I’ve seen the pictures and I thought they were nice enough but they didn’t wow me.
As for the rest, I just think she’s the most conventionally beautiful person on either show even though she would actually be in the lower half of my own personal ranking. Sure, her mouth and chin are some misshapen but it’s no worse than whatever’s up with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s nose, I don’t find Eliza Dushku to be all that hot, and Michelle Trachtenberg’s sex appeal to anyone more than a few years older than her mystifies me.