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Love affairs, screaming fans and tragic deaths: inside the lives of history’s biggest heartthrobs
Male celebrities with fainting fans and obsessive admirers are nothing new. From Regency dandies to matinee idols, Hilary Mitchell reveals why we’ve been swooning over famous men for far longer than we think
- Hilary Mitchell
Published: June 14, 2026 at 3:30 PM
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Celebrity crush culture didn’t begin with modern boy bands; it emerged wherever people could see, gossip about, and project desire onto public figures.
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From handsome but chaotic Athenian generals and scandal-prone poets to 19th-century ‘rock stars’ and silver-screen rebels, the idea of the male heartthrob has deep historical roots.
Hilary Mitchell explores how fame, beauty, and charisma have combined across centuries to create enduring male sex symbols, and why we keep falling for them.
A portrait of George ’Beau‘ Brummell, 1805. The socialite was the archetypal Regency dandy, famous for his looks and likability | Credit: Bridgeman Images
1. Beau Brummell (1778–1840)
When you think of Regency men, you probably imagine someone who looks very much like Beau Brummell. He’s perhaps the prime example of the Regency dandy: men known for their focus on fashion and looks, and their penchant for high-collared, smart tailoring: a move away from the artificial, powdered-wig-wearing pomp of the earlier 1700s.
Brummell was a British socialite who wasn’t famous for his wealth – he ended up gambling away much of his £30,000 inheritance from his grandfather – but rather for his charisma, looks, wit and desirability. He became a close friend of Prince George (the future George IV), which catapulted him into the highest levels of society.
He was legendary for his daily grooming routine, which could take hours. His outfits were discussed, dissected, and copied – he was, in essence, an early fashion influencer.
Unfortunately, after falling out with the prince, his influence collapsed and he died in poverty in France, but his legend lived on.
Charles Stewart Parnell, pictured c1870–80. Dubbed the “Uncrowned King of Ireland”, Parnell was inundated with love letters from admirers – until a scandalous affair rocked his reputation | Credit: Getty Images
2. Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–91)
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish political leader who became an unexpected Victorian celebrity crush. He was the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the central figure in the late 19th century Irish Home Rule movement.
“The Uncrowned King of Ireland”, as he was known, was a symbol of Irish political aspiration and resistance to British rule. Parnell came from Anglo-Irish aristocracy, was educated at Cambridge, and moved easily in elite circles, but instead of devoting his life to idle pleasures, he chose to become a radical nationalist figure.
Radical nationalism might not sound very sexy, but contemporary descriptions consistently note that women openly adored the tall, dark and handsome politician. They reportedly fainted at his speeches, and he regularly received love letters and gifts from admirers. His political career ended in scandal when his long affair with Katharine O’Shea, a married woman, came to light.
Long before the phenomenon of Beatlemania, composer Franz Liszt wowed crowds with his musical talent and good looks, causing widespread hysteria | Credit: Getty Images
3. Franz Liszt (1811–86)
You’ve no doubt heard of Beatlemania, but what about ‘Lisztomania’? Centuries before George, Paul, John and Ringo were the focus of public obsession, Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt sent crowds wild with his revolutionary musical performances.
Liszt was a musical prodigy who began touring Europe as a child and, and by the 1840s, he was packing out concert halls across Europe, not just with music lovers but with fans desperate to see him: Liszt was good-looking, tall, slim, with strong features and long hair. The contemporary German poet Heinrich Heine coined the term ‘Lisztomania’ to describe the hysteria surrounding his performances. Some accounts describe women screaming and fainting in the audience, fighting over his gloves and handkerchiefs, collecting broken piano strings, and even saving cigar butts and coffee dregs he had touched.
He made the most of his popularity, too: his love life was public and widely discussed. His relationships with aristocratic women, especially Countess Marie d’Agoult, fed his reputation as a passionate, glamorous and seductive figure. He was, essentially, a 19th-century rock star, complete with screaming fans and high-profile lovers.
A lobby card promoting Excuse My Dust (1920) starring Wallace Reid. Known as a clean-cut, ‘boy-next-door’ type, Reid became the perfect lead in silent-movie era Hollywood | Credit: Getty Images
4. Wallace Reid (1891–23)
The silent-movie era gave rise to several Hollywood heartthrobs, and Wallace Reid was one of the very first. He became one of Paramount’s biggest stars, sometimes billed as “the screen’s most perfect lover”, thanks to his all-American, boy-next-door appeal. He was blond, athletic, clean-cut – the sort of wholesome, approachable young man that women would be happy to introduce to their parents.
At his peak, he was among the highest-paid actors in the world and appeared in dozens of hugely popular films. He often played race-car drivers, athletes, and daring heroes, and fan magazines of the 1910s and early 1920s published his photographs constantly, framing him as kind, modest, and devoted. Women flocked to his films specifically to see him: a defining mark of a matinee idol.
After being injured in a train crash on the way to set, Reid was prescribed morphine, became dependent, and died at just 31, but he’d made a significant impact during his short life by helping to establish the “ideal leading man” formula Hollywood would follow for decades.
Francis X Bushman training for his role in Ben-Hur, 1925. Another star of silent movies, Bushman was one of the first global sex symbols – advertised as "the handsomest man in the world" | Credit: Getty Images
5. Francis X Bushman (1883–1966)
Like Wallace Reid, Francis X Bushman was one of the very first global screen heartthrobs, a silent film star whose fame in the 1910s was so intense that he was widely promoted as “the handsomest man in the world”.
Audiences might best remember him best as Messala in Ben-Hur (1925), but his heartthrob status was firmly established a decade earlier. He was marketed explicitly as beautiful, with the media repeatedly describing him as “perfectly formed”. He played romantic and heroic leads almost exclusively, which only added to his romantic appeal. His characters were noble, passionate, morally upright and emotionally intense.
Like Wallace Reid, he was the subject of near-constant magazine coverage and received truckloads of swooning letters from admirers. He paved the way for later hunky Hollywood sex symbols by proving that male beauty could be a primary selling point, rather than an added bonus.
Actor Rudolph Valentino performs in The Sheik (1921). Hailing from Italy, Valentino’s “dangerous foreignness” added to his allure for American audiences | Credit: Getty Images
6. Rudolph Valentino (1895–1926)
We’ve had Lisztomania, now it’s time for ‘Valentino hysteria’. Rudolph Valentino might have had a tragically short life, but his name is still a byword for movie heartthrobs.
Born Rodolfo Guglielmi in southern Italy, he emigrated to the US as a teenager, and rocketed to fame thanks to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), where his sensual tango caused genuine moral panic, with newspapers condemning the scene as indecent. But it was The Sheik (also 1921) that sealed his status thanks to his billowing robes, smouldering looks, and a dangerously romantic persona that audiences, particularly women, went feral for.
His appeal wasn’t just about his good looks; he represented something different from the stiff, square-jawed, Wallace Reid-style masculinity Hollywood usually sold. As an Italian playing Arab and Latin characters, he embodied a kind of “dangerous foreignness” that felt thrilling to American audiences.
When he died aged just 31 of peritonitis following a ruptured stomach ulcer, the reaction was extraordinary. Thousands of fans fainted, rioted and queued for hours to view his body. Newspapers coined the phrase ‘Valentino hysteria’ to describe the mass grief: arguably the first global celebrity meltdown.
James Dean outside his trailer on the set of Giant (1955), which would be his final film. Despite his premature death at just 24, Dean had gained a serious reputation as a Hollywood heartthrob in his short career | Credit: Getty Images
7. James Dean (1931–55)
No list of historical heartthrobs would be complete without James Dean, the ultimate mid-century celebrity crush. He was a brooding symbol of youthful rebellion whose entire legend was sealed in just a few years. He trained as an actor at the University of California in Los Angeles and was deeply influenced by Method acting; his work was packed with raw emotion, interior turmoil and intensity.
Given his impact and legacy, it is hard to believe that he starred in only three major films, all released between 1955 and 1956: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant – that’s all, but his talent and sheer presence still live on. He felt things on screen in a way that felt uncomfortably real. He cried, raged and let it all out, in an era where men were supposed to be solid, reliable, unemotional breadwinners.
His early death, aged just 24, cemented his heartthrob status. He never aged, never disappointed his fans, and never made a bad late-career film.
Lord Byron, depicted here in 1815, became an overnight sensation after Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He went on to be incredibly famous, with an outrageous reputation that preceded him | Credit: Getty Images
8. Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Lord Byron was, perhaps, the original celebrity ‘bad boy’: a poet so famous, scandalous and desirable that his antics wouldn’t look out of place in a modern gossip column. It all began when he published the first instalments of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812 and became instantly, absurdly well-known.
As he put it, he “woke up one morning and found [himself] famous.” He lived wildly and messily as an aristocrat, poet, traveller, political radical and scandal magnet. He was strikingly handsome, with “melancholy” good looks, and wrote openly about despair, longing, guilt and passion in a way that made emotional extremity sexy.
His reputation was outrageous even by modern standards, thanks to his affairs with married women and rumours of incest and bisexuality (though the latter was known only in elite circles), but that didn’t stop the hordes of swooning admirers.
Women collected locks of his hair, followed him in public, and wrote him letters. He died of a fever at 36 in the midst of fighting for Greek independence, a suitably dramatic ending to a life lived in the fast lane.
Giacomo Casanova was famous for his sexual conquests, allegedly falling in love with hundreds of women. His name lives on today, as shorthand for the most charming of men | Credit: Getty Images
9. Giacomo Casanova (1725–98)
Casanova was such a famous lover that we still use his name as shorthand to describe irresistibly charming men today. Born in Venice, Casanova lived about a dozen lives in one: scholar, violinist, soldier, spy, gambler, occult enthusiast, diplomat and, slightly less excitingly, a librarian.
He moved through Europe’s elite circles with astonishing ease, befriending royalty, philosophers and cardinals, and then usually sleeping with someone nearby. His memoir, History of My Life, describes his love affairs in astonishing detail, but what really stands out is how attentive he was: he describes how he wooed his conquests with conversation, wit and curiosity, tailoring himself to each person he desired and, unlike many men of his era, Casanova seemed to care about women’s pleasure and consent.
He portrays himself as charming rather than predatory, and, if his memoir is to be believed, he often fell genuinely in love and wrote about women as individuals, not trophies. He shaped the modern idea of the lover as a confidante as much as a pursuer. He’s a heartthrob not because he was some kind of unattainable, dashing leading man, but because he made women feel seen, desired and heard.
- Read more | 14 weird contraception methods from history: from weasel testicles to fish bladder condoms
An 18th-century painting of Socrates (right) teaching Alcibiades. The latter was known for his hedonism and beauty – but definitely not his political savviness | Credit: Getty Images
10. Alcibiades (c450–404 BC)
If you’ve never heard the phrase ‘disaster bisexual’ before, buckle up, as you’re about to learn what it means. Alcibiades was ancient Athens’ most dazzling and chaotic hot mess. He was a politician, general and socialite whose beauty and charisma were so notorious that even his enemies couldn’t stop talking about it.
He was a student and associate of Socrates, and Plato repeatedly wrote about Alcibiades’ beauty and moral volatility. Despite generally behaving like a bit of a booze-addled, hedonistic wild child, Alcibiades attracted men and women alike. Plato’s Symposium immortalises Alcibiades as the gorgeous, drunken arrival who publicly declares his desire for Socrates, one of history’s most iconic messy entrances.
However, he shouldn’t really have been allowed anywhere near politics, as Alcibiades was, to put it mildly, a catastrophe. During the Peloponnesian War he switched allegiances multiple times. First loyal to Athens, then allied with Sparta, then Persia, then back to Athens. He was eventually assassinated in exile.
Mary, Queen of Scots plays a duet with her husband Lord Darnley, c1565. Handsome and charming, Darnley bowled Mary over – before showing his true, much more sinister character | Credit: Getty Images
11. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545–67)
Though handsome, Lord Darnley has made it onto this list more as a cautionary tale, rather than an attempt to celebrate him as a heartthrob in a traditional sense. The king consort of Mary, Queen of Scots was undeniably handsome, but he was also a terrible person.
Contemporaries, such as English ambassador Thomas Randolph, were extremely clear: Darnley was beautiful. Tall (very tall for the time), well-built, fair-haired, with princely good looks. He was only 19 when he married Mary, who found him handsome, talented and charming… at first.
However, after they tied the knot, Darnley’s true character was revealed. He was arrogant, petulant and politically incompetent. His involvement in the brutal murder of Mary’s secretary, David Rizzio, destroyed his reputation.
His looks and lineage propelled him to power, but his lack of character helped trigger one of the most famous royal scandals in British history, and arguably Mary’s downfall. Yes, he looked like a Renaissance prince, and briefly embodied every romantic, dreamy ideal of kingship, but reality soon intervened.
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So, remember – it’s not always a good idea to be taken in by a pretty face: true heartthrobs should have the personality to match.
Authors
Hilary Mitchell
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