His empty box and one knee may not have been enough to win over Katherine Heigl’s character in Knocked Up, but when it came to his real-life proposal, comedic actor Seth Rogen wound up with a “Yes.” The former Freaks & Geeks star and his longtime girlfriend, writer and actress Lauren Miller, became engaged at the end of September and Rogen revealed the details on the inaugural episode of Conan on TBS. When he nervously took a knee to pop the question, Miller was in the closet getting dressed. "She was literally only in her underpants and [her chest] was out," the 28-year-old actor recalled. “I’d already kind of started, and I was like ‘Oh man, her [chest is] out! That’s not part of the plan… I didn’t picture it like this, and I know she didn’t picture it like this. No little girl is like ‘It’ll happen in a closet with my [chest] out.’” Though it was not the classiest proposal in wedding bell history, Rogen recognizes he is a lucky man. The actor once admitted, “I have a girlfriend who is far prettier than I should have.”
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He may have played a 40-year-old virgin, but Steve Carell knows nothing of such trouble in real life. Ever since his Daily Show days, the nervous, bookish-seeming comedian has had a certain allure—enough to snag the lovely Nancy Walls, his onetime Comedy Central colleague, as his wife. Carell tends to play a bumbling goofball, as in Evan Almighty, Get Smart and on NBC's The Office, but off-screen he's all charm. During an interview with Dateline, not even Stone Phillips could contain his admiration. "You're a good-looking guy," he said. "I think I'm sort of a normal-looking guy," Carell replied. "My goal is to not offend anyone with my looks. If I can do that I'm fine."
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Like many nerds before him, Jamie Dimon has managed to turn his brainpower into a major payday, and in 2007 made it onto Fortune’s 25 highest-paid list. Dimon, who heads up JPMorgan Chase, has been called President Obama’s “favorite banker” and was one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2007 and 2009, thanks to his work on the board at the Federal Reserve. He’s married and has three children with Judith Kent, who he met when they both attended Harvard Business School and reportedly wooed with the line, “I'm going home, and I want you to go with me.”
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Just your average upper-middle class Jewish Jersey boy, 25-year-old Ezra Koenig formed Vampire Weekend during his senior year at Columbia University, as indie rock continued to dominate radio waves and music charts. As the band’s frontman, Koenig, who resembles a stretched out Dan Aykroyd in his younger days, has geek-chic looks and considerable guitar-playing skills, enough to make him quite the chick magnet. The attraction is essentially built into the job, and the other three members of the band as well, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson, and Chris Baio, aren’t too shabby either. But it’s really all about the frontman. As Salon.com pointed out, Koenig’s “a blue-eyed charmer who can get you out of your undies and talk about your feelings.” It’s a deadly combination.
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It’s hard to imagine how the former White House budget director—a self-proclaimed “supernerd”—could end up with a glamorous TV correspondent fiancée, but even former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel attests to the fact that Peter Orszag has “made nerdy sexy.” Working his way up the Washington ranks since age 17, he was President Obama’s youngest Cabinet-level appointee, and although that points to being anything but a super-hunk, Orszag is. He was once considered one of Washington’s most eligible bachelors and even inspired orszagasm.com, a site dedicated to “Putting the OMG back in the OMB.” Although he’s kept his romantic life hidden throughout his career, he jumped into the spotlight when he left girlfriend Claire Milonas, then three months pregnant, for ABC News reporter hottie Bianna Golodryga. Some girls really do prefer brains over brawn. Orszag and Golodryga tied the knot in September.
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Even without the recent help of Jersey Shore’s Pauly D’s blow-dryer and hair spray, 21-year-old Michael Cera had no problem attracting female attention. The Canadian-born comedic actor first found a fan base as the awkward, play-by-the-rules George-Michael Bluth on Arrested Development, who dutifully manned the family frozen-banana stand. In a mere three seasons, the quiet young actor’s flawless portrayal of his breakthrough character led many to believe Cera himself was not a far cry from that guy, due in part to his mysteriously low-key profile. Though he moved to the big screen with Superbad, Juno, and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Cera continued to be the good guy, staying away from the limelight and usually wearing a plaid, collared shirt and primary color hoodie. “Everyone has a nice side,” Cera told The Toronto Star. “I try to be nice but I don’t think that defines who I am.”
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William Oefelein has something over the ladies at NASA, and it’s debatable whether that has anything to do with the flattop haircut he’s still sporting a half-century after it first gained popularity. The forever-smiley former astronaut first entered the public’s orbit of attractiveness in February 2007, when fellow NASA space traveler Lisa Nowak drove 900 miles to Florida, reportedly wearing diapers, in an effort to kidnap his new girlfriend and now-fiancée, Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. Though all parties involved lost their jobs, the out-of-this-world story sent Nowak to jail and put Oefelein on the radar of women nationwide. He and Shipman plan to wed in 2010.
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He’s a Mac. There’s no need to be PC about how adorably geeky 31-year-old actor Justin Long is, a fact which on-again-off-again girlfriend Drew Barrymore can confirm. Long first proved his ability to (almost) bag a gorgeous woman when he starred alongside Britney Spears in her 2002 big-screen debut Crossroads, as her lab partner, to whom she promised to lose her virginity on prom night. Though Long didn’t win Spears’ heart or get in her pants, many women would have gladly lined up for the job, especially after he continued to appear in comedic roles in The Break-Up, Accepted, Dodgeball, and finally earning full rom-com status with He’s Just Not That Into You. His character may be bluntly honest about the rules of giving and getting numbers, but many would still like to put him high up in their iPhone address books, Barrymore included.
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Ever since Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe deemed him “a small Mediterranean guy with curiously intelligent good looks” on Friends in 1994, women nationwide have seen the appeal of President Clinton’s former senior adviser and the current co-host of Good Morning America. While the ‘90s sitcom stars anticipated what it may be like to bed the famously miniature journalist—“I think you have to draw him out. And then, when you do, he’s a preppy animal”—one woman, the tall, blond, comedienne Alexandra Wentworth, actually did. The two wed in 2001, ridding Stephanopoulos of his previous status as one of Washington’s most eligible bachelors. As his friend Democratic aide James Carville told Good Morning America, “George was pretty much a nerd,” but added, “He was kind of an idol and young college girls would go nuts.”
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Statistician and “mathlete” Nate Silver may think his celebrity status is limited to “political nerds and tech nerds,” but according to Twitter and women worldwide, “Ladies love Nate Silver.” Creator of PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm)—a statistical projection tool which predicts how baseball teams and players will perform during the upcoming season—and the Web site fivethirtyeight.com—a political polling analysis site—Silver has proved himself a statistical genius; especially when he predicted almost the exact percentage Obama would win by in the presidential election. The 2008 winner of CBS’s Sports Nerd of the Year award may be shy, as he often starts projects under pen names, but women say they “love this hero in geek clothing.”
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The Harry Potter star began as an innocent young wizard who charmed audiences with his spectacles, Gryffindor tie, and piercing blue eyes, but all boys grow up sometime, and grow up he did. In later films, he removed his wizard robe to show off chiseled abs and toned biceps, and in his recent stage play Equus, he revealed a whole lot more (we’re talking full-frontal). His look as Harry Potter may convey nerd, and he maintains that he was never one of the “cool kids” in school, but he also says nerds “are the ones that make the films and do loads of other really cool stuff in their life,” a possible reason he has such luck with the ladies. But Radcliffe is selective about his women, and is notorious for only going after older women, telling Us Weekly, “Girls my own age are not really an option.”
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The bespectacled, frizzy-haired Outliers author is such a success with women that he inspired an entire Daily Beast investigation on the subject. Sean Macaulay theorized on how the University of Toronto geek, who called himself “too nerdy to party,” became an outlier in his own right and turned into an “epic ladies man,” escorting a series of stunning, high-powered women around New York. Friends describe an encounter with Gladwell’s je ne sais quoi as having “‘Malcolm powder’ sprinkled in your eyes,” a phenomenon that was born as Gladwell came into his own while working at The New Yorker. Gladwell himself wasn’t too keen on the theory, refusing to comment and calling the idea “utterly ridiculous.”
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Schwartzman took the tried and true route to winning over women: He joined a band. When he’s not making movies as part of director Wes Anderson’s nerd rat pack or starring on HBO’s Bored to Death, Schwartzman plays with his band Coconut Records, which he started after leaving his position as the drummer for Phantom Planet. He briefly dated fellow indie darling Zooey Deschanel, but last summer, Schwartzman married his longtime girlfriend, fellow vegetarian and eco-friendly designer Brady Cunnigham. "Married life is incredible — it's great, it's like having the most incredible roommate in the world,” he said.
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The economics guru—who managed to predict the onset of the Great Recession—is a well-known ladies' man in spite of his ominous nickname “Dr. Doom.” When he’s not consulting with world leaders on how to prevent a global financial collapse, Roubini is notorious for his wild loft parties, turning him into a favorite subject on Gawker. An interviewer once asked Roubini about the secret to his success, and he was ready with an answer: “They love my beautiful mind,” said Roubini. “I am ugly, but they’re attracted to the brains. I’m a rock star among geeks, wonks, and nerds.”
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Glasses and greasy hair may have seemed like a woman-repellant, but Rainn Wilson wears the look well as Dwight Schrute on The Office. “Some of the most powerful men in the world are geeks,” he told People upon being named one of their Sexiest Men Alive in 2007. One could almost hear the women of the world gasp when the married father of one first appeared on Hollywood red carpets, without his signature specs and looking far more dapper than Dwight ever did. But even without his token eyewear, Wilson says he did not always have the appeal we’ve come to see in him. “It is the age of the geek,” he told AllMovie.com. “It’s a very different world than when I was going to high school in the early ‘80s, and the geeks were shoved into lockers, and it was the idiot, long-haired jocks that ruled the universe.”
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As the host of NPR’s This American Life, Glass is radio’s hottest nerd, and made thick-framed geek glasses his trademark long before they turned up on the noses of hipsters everywhere. Glass has been married to editor Anaheed Alani since 2005, but prior to that had an epic and eventually public breakup with cartoonist Lynda Barry, who later based a character on Glass in her story “Headlice and My Worst Boyfriend.” Most of us have warmer feelings to this smokin’ Baltimore native, an atheist and vegetarian. Back in 2007, Showtime created a TV version of This American Life, and Glass reportedly dropped 30 lbs. for the show, making him slimmer and sexier than ever.
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Congress’ only Jewish Republican, Eric Cantor may have his eyes on a presidential run in 2012, but many women are eyeing him. With Facebook groups proclaiming, “Eric Cantor for 2012!!! It's time to bring sexy back to the White House...” it’s clear the “photogenic” House Minority Whip and representative from Virginia has a following. Though he’s married with three children, many ladies still believe Cantor can crack that whip. “He’s a threat,” Texas Rep. Kay Granger told Politico. “He’s smart. He’s aggressive. He’s a great strategist. All of the above.” And then some, especially with those wire-frame glasses and a full head of hair most 45-year-old men would be envious of.
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Jonathan Safran Foer is an old-fashioned nerd: He loves literature, has a knack for academics, cares too much about the treatment of animals to eat meat, and wears those signature nerd glasses. But as nerdy as the author of Eating Animals and Everything Is Illuminated may be, he was still able to land his dream girl, fellow acclaimed author Nicole Krauss, as his bride. The two met in 2001 and married three years later, proving that even bookworms can score leading ladies.
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Friend to the environment and no stranger to UFOs, politician Dennis Kucinich definitely falls in the nerd department—and it certainly doesn’t help that he’s all of 5’7’’. But anyone who doubts the Ohio congressman’s studliness need only check out his wife: the tall, gorgeous, flame-haired Elizabeth, the British-born PR director for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The former presidential candidate may look and act the part of a nerd—he even professed that he likes “singing polka and patriotic songs" in his bio—but his supermodel-esque wife doesn’t seem to mind.
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The oldest of the three rock star Emanuel brothers, Ezekiel aka “Zeke” (aka “Dr. Death” in the right-wing blogosphere) is breathing new life into dreary Washington with his clean-cut, yeshiva-ready, nerdy good looks. From his early days doing ballet with his brothers in Chicago to his role as the senior adviser for health policy to fellow nerd-stud Peter Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Emanuel has made the ladies swoon. Maybe it’s his sharp mind (he holds degrees from Amherst, Oxford and Harvard). Maybe it’s his muscular arguments in favor of universal health care. Or maybe Zeke’s true appeal is just that he is part of one seriously brainy, seriously sexy, new American dynasty.
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