Emilie Black’s Top Five Childhood Celebrity Crushes

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In an effort to give the other side of the coin, something for those who may prefer their crushes to be male, I have compiled a list of my top 5 Childhood Celebrity Crushes.  Having grown up outside of the US and in French, my top was originally an odd mix of French-speaking celebrities and English-speaking ones.

To make this easier for the readers here, I have decided to only give 5 of my English-speaking Celebrity Crushes.

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Slash
Not necessarily a movie star, but a movie producer now, so tossing him in here…  The first time I saw hi, I must have been 8 years old, watching music videos with my older cousins.  That was it, my 8 year old heart was in love, or whatever goes on for an 8 year old really.  The hair, the top, the guitar playing, the mystery to my still growing mind, I was smitten.  Through the years, my crush on Slash has changed.  I eventually saw interviews with the man, learning that his bad boy image was well earned, but it didn’t kill the crush.  As a teen, I followed his career as he started Slash’s Snakepit, as an adult, I followed him to Velvet Revolver and his other recordings.  Now, the die-hard horror fan in me is following his horror producing career.  As for now, I’d say he’s still a crush and probably the source of a lifelong interest in guitar players.

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Ralph Macchio
Like a lot of girls in the late 80s/early 90s, Macchio was “it” for me for a while.  Charming, adorable, dorky, and learning to kick ass.  Admittedly I only saw him in the Karate Kid movies at the time, but I loved those movies and had a total nerdy crush on the boy who dressed as a shower for Halloween.  I could relate with the struggles he faced and wanting to learn to be a tougher human.  Perhaps the crush was more on Daniel Larusso than Ralph Macchio.  I must admit to not following his career, but the Karate Kid trilogy may be responsible for my love of martial arts movies and boys of Italian decent.

Matthew-Lawrence

Matthew Lawrence
13 year old me went to see Mrs. Doubtfire in theater, parent-free!  At the time I had a thing for dancers and he has one terrible dance scene, which nonetheless caught my teen eye.  After seeing the movie a couple more times, once with school and once with my dad, I went through my collection of Bop and Big Bopper and read everything I could about the guy.  I proceeded to also watch a bunch more tv in English which I was just becoming fluent in.  During that period I watched a bunch of stuff from Super Human Samurai Squad to eventually Brotherly Love.  My grasp of the English language grew through this, so it was not a bad thing.

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Brandon Lee
A year or so later, my taste in men changed greatly and my love of the dark side was taking over slowly.  That is until I saw The Crow at a friend’s house, then it was on.  The mystery of Brandon Lee was appealing, I was fully aware that he was dead, which may have added to the weird teen attraction here.  He was the ultimate unattainable man: Stunning, talented, dead.  I spent a few years on the dark side, being a good little goth girl then and still love spending time in that world nowadays.  My interest in The Crow led to me reading the comic and eventually getting my first tattoo based off of it.  My goth girl crush on Lee brought me back to action films and martial arts as I watched and rewatched all of his movies, including Laser Mission in which he was adorable while dodging bullets of terrible cinema.

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Dolph Lundgren
I first saw Lundgren in Rocky IV, but I first noticed him years later when I got around to seeing his co-starring turn with Brandon Lee in Showdown in Little Tokyo.  His movies may range from fun action romps like Showdown to downright terrible z-list movies like Shark Lake, but the man has charm and he can kick some serious ass.  This is flat out hot to me.  His Master in chemical engineering adds to his sexy by proving he has a big brain and isn’t afraid to use it.  I still watch anything he is in, even as he pushes 60, so bring on more fun action films and cheesy horror titles.