After we watched Bonnie and Clyde a week or so ago I’ve gone back to that movie channel just to see what’s on. I love those old movies. Today I saw a “tough guys” marathon coming up. It mentioned a whole bunch of “tough guy” movies.
They were showing all these old movies with all the old tough guys and it made me wonder who the tough guys are now. I can’t really think of any like John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, James Caan, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson…………
Who did I leave out? Who do you think is a “tough guy” of today?
Us Girls..Our Views 
“The Rock” is about the only one that comes to mind. I haven’t seen any good action movies in awhile to think of anyone else!
I really don’t watch movies much, so I don’t know how to answer this. But I thought I’d mention something I heard on the radio today. They said studies show that after years of using birth control pills, women prefer more effeminate men over the macho / “tough guy” types. What do you think of that? Personally I think they might have the cause/effect mixed up.
I don’t know about the cause/effect deal of that but I know what they mean by “effeminate men.” Don’t you find a lot of today’s “tough guys” are such “pretty boys?” A really tough guy movie I saw that I loved was The Departed and it had Leonard DeCapprio, Mark Walberg, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and Jack Nicholson and it was an excellent movie about dirty cops and the FBI. But to me, these young pretty boys aren’t tough guys. Are they to you?
Matt Damon as Jason Bourne… he’s pretty tough. He can certainly kick some butt. And very quickly, I might add.
But I get what SKL means about the “tough guys” also being “pretty boys”. I read that study, too. Although apparently, my inability to tolerate bc pills for much of my life has had an advantage – my all-time favorite “tough guy”, hands down, is Indiana Jones. Very rugged guy.
I also have a soft spot for the most recent incarnation of Guy of Gisborne (from the BBC “Robin Hood” series), played by Richard Armitage. A tough guy as well, but also a very, very bad guy.
You did not make my day by leaving out Clint Eastwood. 🙂
Oh man, how could I forget him? Thanks mssc for mentioning him.
I have to think about this one!!!!
It’s true, I think that there aren’t the same sort of men in movies now as there once were. But this makes sense to me – styles and the things that popular society finds attractive change all the time. I mean, look at 16th century England for instance – they were all about a man’s calves. They had to be big and strong and muscly, and then that man would be attractive because it proved he was a sportsman.
There was a time in film where the tough guys were the ones deemed most attractive. Nowadays, with a shift in style towards general androgyny [not always, but I feel there’s a lot of this in my generation] the more effeminate or pretty boy types are the attractive ones.
What about Keifer Sutherland?
Jason will give me some answers…I’ve got nothing! lol
Charles Bronson
Anthony Hopkins. He freaked me out in Silence of the Lambs! I came up with that all on my own!~ 🙂
He was really creepy in that. I just love him. He’s in the new Werewolf movie I think.
I heard that he’s the “comic relief” in the Werewolf movie – he plays the girl’s dad, who doesn’t believe in Werewolves.
I can definitely think of several “tough guy” actors, but they are also good looking men 🙂 Off the top of my head I can think of Matt Damon, Daniel Craig (James Bond), Chris Pine, and Robert Downey Jr.,