Celebrities Whose Good Looks Really Only Suited A Certain Era

Bullshit, OP. Jon's hammaconda never, ever goes out of style.

[Quote] David Cassidy was a hot 70s guy but probably wouldn't get much traction if he was 25 years old today.

Nonsense. Androgynous is always in with teenage girls.

Rudolph Valentino

I have only ever found January Jones beautiful as Betty on Mad Men. She looks basic in current era

R3 I don't think that photo make Rudolph Valentino justice, he would still considered very much good looking even by today standards.

r5 I think in many cases, it's hard for me to separate styling from raw features

It’s an interesting question OP, on the one hand standards of attractiveness and beauty do change from era to era, on the other hand watching SCTV as a teen showed me how malleable our looks can be with just changes of hairstyle, clothes and attitude - which actually gave me the balls to do a nerd to skate-punk self makeover when I went away to college. Madonna is a textbook example of this in a celeb.

I do think that there are celebs in every era who aren’t really objectively that good looking, but they catch on for other reasons - for example Louise Brooks and Clara Bow are both timelessly beautiful and sexy respectively while fellow flapper star Coleen Moore is much more average looking.

The best example of what you are asking for I can come up with is Jean Harlow - but she is so heavily stylized that it’s almost impossible to tell what she’d look like without her very 30s makeup and hairstyle. She does have a great body and an appealing persona, so who knows?

Lauren Hutton has a 1970s aesthetic to me

Christina Hendricks can pull off Mad Men costuming but is plain looking in jeans

R7 Jean Harlow is, in m opinion, carbon copy of Nicole Kidman. Just remove the 30s stile and modernize her and her face is exactly like Nicole Kidman.

I've noticed that many silver/golden era actors/actress have lookalike in today celebtities.

Vivian Vance IS Kaley Cuoco r10!

[quote]Jon's hammaconda never, ever goes out of style.

Does the hammaconda even work what with his purported heavy drinking problem? It's probably just ornamental at this point.

I also only found him attractive as Don Draper in a suit.

Also, r10, Helen Walker looks a lot like Amber Heard to me:

R4 Yes. Jones has tiny features that respond very well to mid century type makeup such as blush and a bright red lipstick. As well as the overly " done" hairstyles of the time. Because her features are so tiny and even the bright colors and bouffants don't overwhelm her. She's still attractive of course but not nearly as striking in modern day garb and makeup.

Margot Robbie is undeniably good looking in every era so maybe this doesn't count but I always thought she looks more like the type of woman you'd see in a magazine circa 1975. She has more of a womanly look of that time vs the little girl look that's more common now for whatever reason ( maybe hormones or something).

Joan Crawford. She was considered attractive by the standards of her day, but today she would never be a leading lady.

John W. Booth, the most handsome man of mid-19th century America.

Clark Gable. I don't get what the fuss was about, but he obviously worked for his era.

Jon Hamm is handsome in any era.

The trick with Clark Gable is to watch his early films. He drank so much that even by a relatively early time in his career--GONE WITH THE WIND in 1939--he already had the lined sagging face of a drunkard. Watch him in something like NIGHT NURSE, from earlier in the decade, and you'll see what all the fuss was about. His ears stuck out (usually not a good thing in the US, although his fans loved it), but he was very tall and deep-chested and handsome and incredibly virile.

I don’t really like Hamm, but he would be considered good looking in any era in that photo.

Jean Harlow had a baby face. She was only 5'1"! She was warm and bubbly. Nicolle Kidman is none of those things! LOL Seriously! Even when she wore white from head-to-toe and her hair almost white too, she was still friendly and cute and girlish. Nicole Kidman?? NOPE!

I think Valentino could've been popular now, just not with makup and slicked back hair.

Farrah Faucet wouldn't fit in today. All hair and suntan. She was a good actress though, so she could've still worked as an actress. Gloria Swanson wasn't pretty or warm so she wouldn't have been popular now. Hard features and she posed too much, like Ariana Grande does. It's creepy. IF the camera is on her she is hyper aware of how she looks her best. SO UNNATURAL. Dietrich and Crawford weren't pretty enough. Dietrich wasn't pretty at all! Another weird poser/actress. Crawford could act, so she could have been popular for that.

Again, the trick to Joan Crawford is to see her in her 20s and early 30s films, before Adrian gave her the shoulder pads in THE WOMEN that she used forever after but which made her look so odd. In films like GRAND HOTEL you'll understand why people found her attractive.

Jon was always attractive. He can be styled to any decade like the 90s.

I think Burt Reynolds was incredibly hot in Deliverance with no mustache and continued to look good in his 70s and early 80s movies, but then that macho man aesthetic that he clung to didn't suit him after he got the Asian woman eye lift and Nightshade toupee and got so thin. He was a product of that era.

r3 is giving me Ezra Miller.

Hamm's lack of upper lip is highly unattractive. Clooney suffers from the same deficiency. They both look like they suffer from F.A.S. in profile.

Mae West, a '30s sex symbol who would now be considered short, old, fat, and frumpy.

What is F.A.S.?

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?

I think Hamm looks sort of goofy in the video at R24 -far from ugly but not the stud he was in his Mad Men era styling

In 30 years, people will look a pics of Kim Kardashian and say, "What the fuck were you people thinking?"

Kirsten Dunst reminds me of a young Ginger Rogers

John Mulaney looks like an organ grinder from 1910.

It’s hard to imagine rugged, masculine types like William Holden being made into stars today. Give me old school Hollywood any day.

Rugged?

Certain great beauties of the past like Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh wouldn't be considered gorgeous by modern celebrity/Hollywood standards. They had a softer, more delicate look, while modern standards favor sharper and bolder looks, in part due to high definition cameras. I think they could still be successful and would be considered attractive, but they had tue perfect looks for their times.

Nonsense. Elizabeth Taylor was plenty hard by the 1960s.

"Soft" Vivien.

Who's responsible for those eyebrows? Jesus.

R28, Mae West was a burlesque actress - a holdover from vaudeville. No one thought she was actually attractive, herself included - that was part of the point. She played up (and goofed on) sexual characteristics of the preceding age. That's why she was paired up with men like W.C. Fields (also a spoof of the upper class Edwardian social scene).

You just know that Marcus in R24 's clip is exactly the type to be rocking that exact same look today and still think they look cool.

When Cesar Romero was young, he had a pulpy and carnal latin lover face. It was there in the gritty shots and the glamour shots. Its very much of the era. Something so arch and carnal isn't really the way we like our latin hunks nowadays. Now they are prettier and closer to Caucasian proportions in the face.

Bad Bunny ain't pretty.

Y'all slept on James Lanphier, Blake Edwards' bf from back in the day.

R16 Bullshit. Joan was gorgeous before the wacky eyebrows. David Bowie's funky teeth were okay in the 70s, but wouldn't fly today.

Kiki Dunst has funky teeth.

Not nearly as "funky" as Bowie's were.

Cavill has funky bottom teeth like that.