A-List Guys Are Back in the Rom-Com Business!

The nearly extinct genre is having a renaissance, and Hollywood's leading men are ready to be our next romantic hero

- KAT PETTIBONE

Clockwise from left: Materialists' Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal; Bridget Jones' Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renée Zellweger; People We Meet on Vacation's Tom Blyth

Matthew McConaughey. Heath Ledger. Tom Hanks. Hugh Grant. You'd be hard-pressed to find an A-list actor in the '80s, '90s or early aughts who didn't dip his toe in the rom-com pool. Films like You've Got Mail, Notting Hill and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days dominated the film landscape, garnering box office success, critical acclaim and guaranteed “It Boy” status for anyone playing the complicated and/or misunderstood knight in shining armor.

But the 2010s brought about a major drought for the genre. Raunchy sex comedies — No Strings Attached, Bad Teacher — replaced earnest romance, love stories that were once celebrated became a premise for parody and just the whisper of the term “rom-com” had the most serious actors running for the hills. There were a few breakaway hits, like Crazy, Stupid, Love (featuring Ryan Gosling’s crazy stupid abs), but mostly, the landscape was dotted with low-budget attempts that were DOA.