We spend all year honing this list of hotties for you, and it’s finally time to unleash them. The race for Most Handsome Young Man of 2019 has arrived!
Your 2018 winner Liam Payne has presided over a very handsome year (Believe it or not, he won the title and then starred in an underwear campaign. Go figure.), but it’s time to hand over that crown to another contender. And no members of One Direction are nominated this year, so we actually have a competition on our hands!
Keep reading to learn more about your choices for the 2019 title (which, for newcomers, we will reiterate is about way more than looks) and then cast your vote below. Whoever comes out on top, we all win. –Sage
Adam Driver
Look, it’s just a matter of time before Adam Driver has a shelf full of Academy Awards. Directors love him. Other actors love him. The camera obviously loves him. I unmatched a guy on Hinge because he said “the community” was “divided” on Adam. Reader, he was just jealous, and I’m not allowing people like that into my life.
WHO NEEDS HIM? Adam Driver is big enough to be boyfriend to all of us.
He’s not just big physically, though I do maintain that one of the top three most attractive things about him is that he could pick me up like a baby and haul me out of a burning building. Adam also has a massive presence, but not in a way that purposely pulls focus from others. It’s not something that can be helped. When he’s on screen or on stage, it’s hard to look at anyone else. No less than Marty Scorsese himself called Adam “the finest” actor of his generation.
His name obviously came up for this honor last year (when he got his first out of what I’ve already predicted will be many Oscar noms), but we decided to save him for 2019 and the conclusion of this current Star Wars trilogy. Naively, we didn’t predict that this year would also give us:
- Adam in a tiny, purple kimono, live and in front of our faces in the Broadway revival of Burn This. (I cannot stress this enough: he is huge.)
- Adam setting the curve on how we pronounce the words “ghouls” in The Dead Don’t Die
- Adam performing a full and devastating version of Sondheim’s “Being Alive” (WITH all the dialogue) in Marriage Story.
- Adam giving us courageous public servant realness in The Report.
AND WE STILL HAVE THE STAR WAR. Kylo Ren body slams a guy using just one hand in the first trailer! He does his best 2005-Mr.-Darcy-emoting-in-the-rain in the second! We’re not gonna make it!
Now, if you haven’t had your Adam Driver moment yet, I want to assure you that you will. (Mine was the first time I saw the throne room scene in The Last Jedi, after which my iPhone’s facial recognition software helpfully created a whole album of all the pictures I’d saved during my fugue state.) Kim had her epiphany mid-“Being Alive.” Everyone’s welcome here. We have a group chat!
To sum it up, Adam Driver is the present and the future of this industry: a incredibly sensitive and intuitive actor who’s also self-deprecating, generous with his talent and time, extremely funny, and very, very (oh god it hurts just thinking about it) big. Is he also your Most Handsome Young Man? That’s up to you. –Sage
Jake Gyllenhaal
Look, it’s an indisputable fact that Jake Gyllenhaal has always been good looking. But like a fine wine or a well-aged scotch, there’s something about a thirty-eight-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal that is next-level handsome. Maybe it’s the hair? The beard? The eye crinkles? The dimple? The newly buff bod? The fact that he chose to wear a tight cable-knit sweater for his Buzzfeed puppies interview thus ensuring that their little claws would get snagged in it? WHAT IS IT ABOUT HIM?
Like others nominated this year, I think what really pushes 2019 Jake over the edge is his sense of confidence, of being truly comfortable in his own skin. He doesn’t appear to be chasing fame or chasing awards anymore. (Even though he very much deserves them!) Instead, he appears to be picking projects based more on what he wants to do instead of what he should be doing. He looks like he’s having fun for the first time in what feels like a very long time, and that, my friends, is very sexy.
Because, seriously, who was having more fun on the Spider-Man: Far From Home press tour than Jake Gyllenhaal? No one, I tell you. Absolutely no one. Not even Tom Holland. Which is SAYING SOMETHING. In fact, we were all Tom Holland on that press tour, looking at Jake with heart eyes, be it on the red carpet in complimentary snazzy suits or discussing the merits of Sean Paul on the Breakfast Show with Greg James. (Which, really, don’t you want Greg and Jake to kiss? Just me?)
In short, Jake Gyllenhaal was cute before but he’s HANDSOME now. But is he YOUR Most Handsome Young Man? Only time will tell. — Kim
Bill Hader
The thing about Bill Hader is that if he actually knew he was nominated for Most Handsome Young Man, he would probably die of embarrassment. And not because Most Handsome Young Man is embarrassing, because it most definitely is NOT, but Bill Hader would be like “Me? Really? You’re joking.”
Which is exactly why he SHOULD be nominated for this award, dear readers. Much like our Boo Burn Gorman, we make it our JOB to tell men that don’t think they’re hot that they are indeed very very very hot. It’s our civic duty. And yours.
Listen. We’ve been on the Bill Hader is a BABE train for years. In 2012, Sage and I attended The Night of Too Many Stars telethon and we ignored stars like Paul Rudd, Tom Hanks, and Seth Meyers in order to get a picture with Bill in full Stefon get up. (Sage: “I keep forgetting we have a pic with Bill, because I’m just like, we have a pic with Stefon.”) He made our Performances of the Year in 2015 for his work in Trainwreck, which heralded his debut as the romantic leading man we all deserved. Yes, friends, we’re card carrying members of this Handsome Man club. It’s high time everyone else caught on.
And Bill is not just a pretty face or that goofy guy from Saturday Night Live who could never keep a straight face during Weekend Update. He’s now a two-time Emmy winner for HBO’s “Barry” (which I PROMISE is next on my binge list) and he 100% walked away with this fall’s It: Chapter Two, completely stealing the movie away from bonafide movie stars like James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. His Richie Tozier is a revelation, wickedly funny, neurotic, and absolutely devastating all at once. Expect to see him on our Best Performances of the Year list once again, quite frankly.
In conclusion, yes, Bill Hader, you are a Handsome Young Man. And I’ll vote until my fingers bleed if that’s what it takes to convince you of that fact. — Kim
Joe Jonas
The Jonas Brothers are back and bigger than ever (I guess because some men somewhere decided that it was okay for us to like them now? Love 2B an early adopter.), and while they are all handsome boys, Joe is getting the HOF spotlight this year.
Truly, Joe doesn’t get enough credit for what a dynamic and exciting frontman he is. Thanks to his DNCE years (which, while we’re here, the “Body Moves” video may make your voting finger start to itch), we weren’t denied that for long. But it warms a bitch’s heart to see him back with his brothers, slipping back into that world-tour-rock-star life without a hitch. The man knows how to shake a tambourine, is my point.
But the JB reunion wasn’t the only massive thing to happen to Joe this year. He also got married to our Queen in the North, Sophie Turner. And while the phrase “couple goals” makes me dry heave, that may be the best descriptor for this couple. They have fun together (see their quickie Vegas wedding, which predated the official, fancy French one) and seem to be each other’s biggest fans. Also, Joe doesn’t have a problem with Sophie towering over him in her heels at every fancy event. We stan a confident, short king.
All the content we’ve been inundated with this year reminded me why I’m a Joe Girl through and through. He’s still as playful as ever, while still wearing his heart on his sleeve. (Listen, when he cries about the band’s breakup in their Amazon documentary, I cry.) His eyebrows are still magnificent. He’s inexplicably become a huge fan of my college football team. It’s all very endearing and may even be enough to win him this year’s crown. — Sage
Shameik Moore
Our next nominee comes via our Patron Kortnea (Thank you for your support! We are so grateful!) and we can definitely see why she thinks he is a worthy contender for the crown. “He has the kindest eyes!” she declared when we were discussing who she would nominate this year. WE AGREE.
Here at Head Over Feels, we like to think we are tastemakers when it comes to Handsome Men. Shameik is a man on the brink, one who has only given us a small taste of what he is capable of, one that, in a few years, we can sit back and smugly say “Oh, we knew he was something way back when.” You can’t take your eyes (or ears) off of him. In 2015, he caught the eye of a little known guy named Baz Luhrmann, who cast him as one of the leads in The Get Down (tragically canceled by Netflix after eleven episodes). His voice was the anchor of Spider-Man: Into the Spider–Verse, infusing Miles Morales with warmth and humanity mixed with the perfect amount of teen angst and self-doubt.
And then there’s Netflix’s new teen rom-com Let It Snow where he embodies one of our absolute favorite fanfic tropes: the pop star escaping his hectic life for one day, falling with the very special non-famous girl of his dreams. IN BULKY WINTER SWEATERS. Five minutes into the movie, I chatted Sage saying “Oh, Shameik can get it.”
He’s also well on his way to being a style icon, using Spider-Verse‘s awards run as a means to flaunt his fashion sense, shying away from the boring, basic black tuxedos of many of his peers and instead embracing prints and sparkles and different fabrics and COLOR. We love a man who can rock a pink suit, after all. In conclusion, Shameik may be one to watch but he’s also having a handsome moment RIGHT NOW and you’re gonna want to get in on it. — Kim
Keanu Reeves
Welcome to the Keanussance, everyone. It’s Keanu’s world and we’re all just lucky to be living in it. How blessed are we that everyone else has finally caught on to the fact that he’s just kept on doing his own thing, whether he’s in the spotlight or out of it.
The thing with Keanu Reeves is that he never really went away, he just gave less shits about projects that kept him in the limelight, instead pursuing passion projects, often bankrolling them by taking a salary cut. He’s the same 90s heartthrob he always was. At fifty-five, he’s just a little more grizzled with his endearingly patchy beard and flowing raven hair and he’s a whole lot more obviously comfortable in his skin, unbothered by the sad Keanu memes and completely unafraid of lovingly skewering his image in the delightful Always Be My Maybe. We love a self-aware king.
And it’s not just his looks. It’s how he admitted that he had a big ole crush on Sandy Bullock when they filmed Speed. It’s the fact that he answers a question from Stephen Colbert that was an obvious joke set-up with something serious and profound. It’s how he urges puppies to communicate and get along while discussing the theory that Shakespeare never wrote his plays. It’s how he respects women’s bodily autonomy by hovering his hand behind their backs instead of touching them. It’s how he is living a friends to lovers AU in his relationship with longtime collaborator Alexandra Grant, filling our hearts with joy that he is lonely no more. It’s how I think about the time he came to my office over a decade ago and I still think about the way he shook my hand and looked me in the eye when he introduced himself. It’s all so very, very, very handsome.
Most of all, it’s the joy with which Keanu appears to live his life with. He’s seen it all over the course of his career. He’s been the highest he could get and he’s been the butt of jokes and he’s come out the other side with people being in love with him again…and through it all, he’s never changed. He always just seems bemused by it all, grateful for the attention, but never basing his self-worth on it. And that may be the most handsome thing of all. — Kim
Andrew Scott
Come on, you knew we weren’t going to leave the HOT PRIEST off of this list. That’s grounds for excommunication.
Source: dynamics-of-an-asteroid
We’ve been about that life since Andrew Scott’s Moriarty threatened to “burn the heart” out of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes, but Season 2 of Fleabag was undeniably his moment. In the second and final season of the heart-wrenching comedy, Andrew gave us a fucked-up romantic hero for the ages: a conflicted (and probably alcoholic) priest who worries he may just be in it “for the outfits,” but is kind and aware enough to make our heroine finally feel seen. Plus, Most Handsome Young Man Emeritus Lin-Manuel Miranda called him “a snack,” and who are we to argue??
There really was no preparing yourself for the Hot Priest, least of all the “kneel” scene. Even though Fleabag is the main character, Andrew’s performance invites you on his journey, where you can see the breaking point on the horizon and feel that build in your bones, yet still be in the moment with him when he finally gives in. Related: Andrew Scott may be the only man in the world who knows how to properly look at a woman. (He also has a jawline to cut glass and a naturally Irish accent, just to make things worse.)
From interviews, I’ve learned that Andrew Scott had no idea the horniness he was about to unleash with this character. But he seems to be enjoying the ride, so shall we keep it going? A Most Handsome Young Man virtual trophy may be just the feather his cap needs. –Sage
And those are your nominees! Who will emerge as your most Handsome! Voting will close Friday at 5 PM EST. You can vote once an hour! Campaign for your faves! Yell at us! Enjoy!
You made this so hard this year.
EVIL LAUGH
Devastating as usual and I’m especially torn between Bill Hader and Andrew Scott. Leaning towards Andrew despite autocorrect changing Hader to Harder.