Most Beautiful People, Circa 2006
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.
Kate Beckinsale, who was also cited, "has great hair," Cagle said. "She's sort of self-deprecating about her beauty. She's also done the underworld movies, and she's kind of a great kick-butt action star."
Other men on the list include Terence Howard, who Cagle said is "very dashing in an almost sort of old Hollywood way and yet, at the same time, it's rare for Hollywood to really perk up and notice and try to propel an African-American star, which is what has happened to him. Also, he gets up every morning and does 1,000 sit-ups, he does 500 push-ups, all before taking the kids to school. Tell me a woman who doesn't find that sexy, or beautiful!"
Among others cracking the top 100:
Patrick Dempsey: "40 years old. He has been around a long time. He's having a great second act in his life," Cagle observed. "I think people really root for him. He's a good-looking guy. And he does have the greatest head of hair in all of television."
Ryan Seacrest: "He tries so hard to look good. He really has this, he sort of stands for this new trend that it's OK for men to buff themselves and polish themselves and polish themselves. He is the ultimate metrosexual. He's very nice to the contestants after they've dealt with Simon on that show ("American Idol"). And that is sexy. That is beautiful."
Eva Longoria: "Very self-deprecating about her beauty. Obviously, she's gorgeous. Big hit show. And she goes to work in pajamas, because she doesn't want to change clothes twice.
Still others:
Wrestler-turned-dance star Stacy Keibler: "Stacy's appeal is she is unique. She was a wrestler, for heaven's sake, and now people know her from dancing with the stars. She says that it was while she was wrestling that she noticed she was beautiful. She wasn't a great wrestler, but she had the most fans. ... Probably has the best legs of anyone on the list."
Model Gabriel Aubry: "A beauty in his own right, but he's also linked to beauty Halle Berry. Gabriel Aubry has modeled for Calvin Klein, Versace, and Hugo Boss, and is very tanned."
Berry made the list, as usual. So did fellow top 100 repeat repeater George Clooney.
As for Berry: "She is a perennial beauty, and you never hear a bad thing about. You hear she is a complicated woman, beautiful on the inside as well as outside. The editors voted her eyebrows the best and, by the way, she plucks them herself. In Hollywood, eyebrow plucking is a business. It's so unusual that she does this."
Quarterback Matt Leinart, a star at the University of Southern California who's sure to be a very high pick in Saturday's National Football League draft: "I mean, just look at him. He's really talented … and he's about to become very, very rich."