Today’s actors have nothing on icons like Brigitte Bardot when it comes to sex appeal.

Hands up all those who look at today’s so-called heartthrobs and despair? In my day (and yes, I’m aware that starting a sentence with that phrase ages me faster than bi-focals), our screen idols were worthy of the name. They had talent and they had charm.

Not now, I’m afraid. Judging by the crop of teen stars we’re lumped with on screen, it’s all about the floppy hair and the wide-eyed look. In short, goodbye Johnny Depp and hello Zac Efron.

Shudder.

Film-goers in the 1950s had it good. As did those in the following decades, right up till the 1990s, in fact. From Marilyn Monroe on to Brigitte Bardot, moving on to Corey Haim and Cindy Lauper and, eventually, the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.

It is difficult to imagine these celebrities could include the new Richard Burton or Johnny Depp

This generation? It can boast that it turned Zac Efron and Selena Gomez into stars. The kind of heartthrobs that make it on the hot list of the decade say a lot about the collective personality of each generation. I leave it up to the readers to deduce what it says about the current one.

At the risk of introducing another ageism, pre-new millennium teenagers knew their place – and their place most certainly was not on a centrepage poster.

What the audience wanted were oodles of charm and good looks and the ability to carry off a good plot. Innocence and political correctness were not a factor and hence had no place in stardom.

The fact that the term ‘audience’ usually excluded anyone between the 10-year and 17-year age bracket certainly helped ensure that the audience got real men and women to think nasty thoughts about. As opposed to a crop of baby stars who would land you in jail if you so much as looked in their general direction.

Sex appeal had real meaning. Think Bardot’s iconic, pouty lips, and the hair that somehow managed to give the just-out-of-bed look to an upstyle.

Think Lauren Bacall’s perfectly oval face and that killer look... Names that remain revered icons to this very day.

Even those actors whose stardom kicked off at a super-young age, like the Brat Pack gang of the 1980s, grew out of their coming-of-age, cute look and developed into real, bona fide actors.

Think River Phoenix, who started out innocently enough in Stand By Me but then moved on to cult classics like My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues... before settling into a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle that combined bouts of partying with bouts of environmental rights activism. His untimely demise due to drug overdose did nothing to lessen his status as a bona fide icon.

Sadly, widely available cable television seems to have come as a package deal with the mass lowering of standards. With a never-ending parade of teen idols who all enjoy (shortlived) A-list status, there really isn’t much to distinguish this latest decade from the previous one.

It is difficult to imagine these celebrities could include the new Richard Burton or Depp. Forget it. The only thing this particular pool contains is a copious amount of hair gel. And that’s just for the boys.

rdepares@timesofmalta.com