Monday, March 5, 2012

100 Hot Men and a Dame: #86 Jeremy Renner


86. Jeremy Renner
Occupation: Actor
Nationality: American
Age: 41
Best Known For: An actor on the verge of making it big, Renner finally broke through after back-to-back Oscar nominations for The Hurt Locker and The Town.

Wow, has it really been two and a half months since my last entry? Apologies all around! You know how life gets in the way sometimes. But rest assured: I am back and (hopefully) better than ever.

In my absence, however, I realized that at the rate I was going, I was never going to get this series done. Part of the problem was that it was taking ages to round up friends to help me out with every single post. I have a lot of talented friends but nowhere near enough for a project as large as this. I have decided that in order to get these posts out, I'm going to tackle some of them on my own. Don't fret: I will have collaborators on a number of future posts, so that element is not going away. But, basically, I'm sick of begging people for help and I'm sure they are sick as hell of me nagging. Let's just get back to what the series was founded on: hot men. And without further ado...


My fascination with Jeremy Renner probably didn't begin at the same time as everyone else's, which was, obviously, the release of The Hurt Locker. When it came out, I liked Renner and certainly appreciated his gratuitous shirtless scene. But I remained ambivalent about his hotness (even when a close friend became obsessed).

It wasn't until, of all things, Oprah's Oscar Interview special, where various celebrities, either past winners or current nominees, interviewed each other, that I first fell for him. Despite The Hurt Locker being the talk of Oscar town for months, I didn't know much about him, much less seen an interview with him. The only thing I had heard, of course, were the gay rumors. Not that I believed them for a second, mind you. Despite my complete and utter lack of a gaydar, Jeremy never gave off that vibe to me. Taylor Lautner? Yes, definitely. But Jeremy Renner? I mean, look at him! He looks like a tough, scrappy dude who slams back beers with his bros and will smash a dude's face in for looking at him wrong, not someone who will check out guys' asses with me at the local gay bar. Those gay rumors get out of hand sometimes, and this had to be one of those times.

But, then I saw the interview, and my whole world flipped upside down. I remember watching the special in my room at my parents' house and thinking, "Maybe those rumors weren't as far off as I thought..." Re-watching the interview, I'm not exactly sure what got my Spidey Sense tingling--maybe it's the way Jeremy casually mentions that "men and women" look at him differently after his Hurt Locker triumph and Ben Affleck's subsequent, half-knowing eyebrow raise afterwards--but it was definitely a-tinglin'. And I don't mean to be shallow enough to say that this was the only reason I fell for him. He carried himself well in the interview, coming across as charismatic and charming in ways I never imagined he could be, judging him solely on his Hurt Locker work. It was a triumph all around. And to think I would have missed it if my mother hadn't recorded it for me on a whim!

If that Oprah special initiated my attraction to Jeremy, The Town solidified it. In that movie, Jeremy plays Ben Affleck's hard as nails, almost psychopathic childhood friend who drags him into one last bank robbery. Generally, I'm not attracted to "bad boys" or guys who will potentially beat the shit out of me at some point in our relationship (sorry, Chris Brown). But, hot damn, Jeremy was sexy as hell in that movie. Something about his swagger and the way he could violently go off at any moment really had me in a tizzy the whole time I was in the theatre. As soon as I came home from my screening, I tweeted this great joke, which I unfortunately forgot how it went, about how I wish that Jeremy Renner's character would shoot a load on my back and then shoot me in the back with a gun. Or something like that. Either way, the point still stands: as long as Jeremy Renner has sex with me, he can do whatever he wants with me afterwards.


As always, what do you think of Jeremy Renner? Do you give him a 21 Gun Salute every time you see him? And since I didn't interview anyone, I didn't get to ask a silly question. So here's mine for you: You must remember that story about a year or so ago about Xtina getting completely hammered and making a fool of herself at a party Jeremy threw before passing out in his bed. Which popstar do you think would have made a more interesting bedfellow for Jeremy? Joe Jonas would have gotten drunk on purpose, hoping Jeremy took advantage of him. I'm going with either Archie ("Gosh, Jeremy, that's an awfully big gun you have!") or Cheryl Cole (The Queen deserves a decent man, don't you think?).

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