By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
November 8, 2004
At face value, there is no reason why women would choose Hugh Grant’s character over Colin Firth’s in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Both are good looking, have great jobs and cute English accents.
But throw in the fact that Mark Darcy (played by Firth) is a soft-spoken gentleman while Grant’s Daniel Cleaver is a womanizing cad and Grant is the bad boy winner. Never mind that whatever woman he’s dating is destined to be the loser. The fact is, just as high school girls love the pot-smoking, long-haired dropout, women love bad boys, too.
“It’s definitely not a healthy thing, but all women seem to go through their bad-boy phase at least once in their lives,” says psychiatrist Sandy Jones, who deals with relationship issues. “We all know bad boys aren’t good for us, but we can’t help ourselves. Women think they will be the ones who can tame the bad boy into a good boy. Sometimes it happens. But more often than not, they’re in for heartache.”
It’s not just gullible women who fall into this trap, either. As Heather Graham’s character — a psychiatrist — noted on an episode of NBC’s “Scrubs”: “Show me a well-adjusted, successful man who wants to settle down and have kids and I’m not interested. But find me an alcoholic in his mid-30s that still thinks his band might make it, and just tell me where I can show up and buy him dinner.”
Mary Danosi was just 22 when she fell in love with her bad boy. She had just graduated from college and moved to Chicago. He was a 27-year-old actor-musician who made most of his income as a bartender.
“I attributed his moodiness to his being an artist,” says Danosi, now 30. “He would cancel dates at the last minute, he cheated on me and then he would apologize with flowers and love notes. It was really exciting at first, but then I realized that what I thought were happy butterflies in my stomach actually were nerves. I was always nervous that he would cancel on me or be in one of his moods.”
Now, happily married to a man who treats her like a queen, Danosi says she understands why she found her bad boy exciting: He was good looking and wasn’t like anyone she had dated previously. But she is embarrassed that she dated him for as long as she did.
“If I could get those two years back, I would in a heartbeat,” Danosi says. “When my friends and I went to see ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary,’ they were all swooning after Daniel. I knew right away that Darcy was the way to go. He wasn’t as exciting, but he was real. You can never have a real relationship with bad boys. They’re too self-involved to be there for anyone but themselves.”
Whether Bridget will be able to resist Daniel’s bad-boy charms in “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” remains to be seen. But here’s hoping there’s at least one smooth talker who doesn’t get the girl in the end.
Hugh Grant is a cad. That’s the least offensive way to describe any man who cheats on Elizabeth Hurley with a hooker. But the man’s got some kind of charm.
Who else could go on “The Tonight Show” and flutter his way through an almost-believable apology that left the audience feeling maybe he hadn’t done something that bad. After all, Hurley forgave him. Even after they broke up, the two remained best of friends. Would you make your cheating ex the godfather of your only child? Would you even offer him constructive dating advice? Hurley has.
Why is Grant so hot even though he’s so naughty? Or is he so hot because he’s just naughty enough.
The fact is, Grant is just naughty enough to be intriguing. But not so much that he’s in the gossip pages every day for sleeping with so-and-so’s wife. Though there are rumors that he had something to do with the dissolution of his socialite girlfriend Jemima Goldsmith Khan’s marriage to cricket legend Imran Khan, no one is actively pointing any finger at him.
“I wouldn’t want to date him in real life, but he’s fun to watch on the big screen,” says Lori Simanko, 34, of Evanston. “He’s good looking and has a little edge to him. That whole bumbling thing he does makes him come off as cute, even though he may be a bit of a cad in real life. He’s appealing.”
Mick Jagger: His pretend wedding to Jerry Hall probably broke her heart, but Jagger is one rock star who always gets what he wants — usually leggy young models
Frank Sinatra: From Ava Gardner to Angie Dickinson, Sinatra, um, dated them all. If he sang sweet nothings into their ears, who can blame the actresses for being willingly seduced, except maybe wife Nancy — the mother of his children — who left him when his affair with Gardner became public.
Bill Clinton: Southern accent and prodigious nose aside, Clinton was rumored to be quite smooth when it came to the ladies. Just ask Monica, Paula and Gennifer. We get the impression it wasn’t chivalry that motivated him to try to hide his indiscretions with an impressionable intern.
John F. Kennedy: Jackie O endured his numerous affairs, including an overt relationship with the likes of Marilyn Monroe. Still, the world didn’t turn against him, and JFK remains one of the most beloved American presidents of all time.
Rhett Butler: The movie character embodied by Clark Gable refused to cave in to Scarlett O’Hara’s demands. No one cared that he swore at Scarlett and manhandled her. He was a man, and we all knew it. A cad among all cads.
