Most Beautiful People, Circa 2006

People Magazine's Jess Cagle Previews Anxiously Awaited Annual List

(CBS)  So who are the most beautiful people in fields filled with beautiful people?

Since 1990, People magazine has been putting out an annual list every year of the 100 people its editors deem worthy. The issue with this year's eagerly anticipated list hits newsstands Friday.

And The Early Show happens to have an "in": Its entertainment contributor, Jess Cagle, is People's editor at large.

He stopped by the show Wednesday, naming names and giving viewers a sneak peek at who made the cut this time — starting with the woman on the cover: Angelina Jolie.

Cagle told co-anchor Julie Chen that People deems Jolie this year's "most beautiful person in the world — and beautiful when she's pregnant."

Jolie and actor Brad Pitt are dubbed the world's most beautiful family, and Pitt is among the top 100 individuals as well.

People features seemingly candid shots of them taken in Namibia last week by a photographer Cagle says they had to have been comfortable with.

Pitt has now made the list a half-dozen times; Jolie has made it four times.

Before going any further, Chen asked what criteria People's editors use.

"Basically, you come up with the people who are the standards of beauty at the time," Cagle said. "Right now, everyone in the world considers Angelina Jolie beautiful, for example, and so she's sort of a natural choice for the cover. There are debates you get into. Not as many debates as when we do like "sexiest man alive," because what's sexy to people is much more subjective than what's beautiful. People who are held up as standards of beauty, it's pretty cut and dried. You know who they are at the moment."

Also on the list: actress Scarlett Johansson. Cagle described her as "amazing. Twenty-one years old. She's got a great future ahead of her. A great actress. We did declare that she does have the best cleavage. … What's so sexy about Scarlett Johansson is, at such a young age, she has such talent. And she's also, as she told us, so comfortable in her own skin. The way she carries herself is really unique. She has a very unique presence, and obviously physically ravishing.