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- Offerings #8: Chris Evans used to mean something
For the first time in six years Christopher Robert Evans is in a film I want to see, Materialists.
The Celine Song directed rom-com is out today, the chiselled Bostonian's birthday. As I am now a working woman, I have yet to see the film, but I’m curious if it will be the impetus for Chris Evans getting his spark back.
The former Captain America is an interesting case study of who a movie star can be in 2025. He was ripped away from rom-coms and indie comedies in 2011 and catapulted into fame by the Marvel machine, and when he got spit out on the other side, he was, well, no longer interesting — his last film was Red One.
But once upon a time in a world untainted by TikTok and Labubu monsters, Chris Evans was the blueprint. Before he donned Cap’s shield, he donned a backwards baseball cap and gave a lot of women reading GQ’s June 2011 issue sweaty palms. Esther Zimmerman’s controversial profile of Chris Evans wonders, what does it take to turn a celebrity into a human — and is that all still an act?
She accomplishes this by treating their meeting at an Irish pub in Santa Monica like a first date and Chris Evans is more than game. They drink too much. They share too much. He makes jerk off gestures when he talks about himself. She does a walk of shame.
The whole thing is tongue-in-cheek, she asks, “Is this the part of a celebrity profile where I go into how blue the star’s eyes are? Because they are very blue,” and writes, “there was always the question of how much of it was truly Chris Evans, and whom I should pretend to be in response.”
Over the course of her nights with Chris Evans, she abandons her questions and journalistic integrity. She’s just so sucked into his cutest-guy-at-your-high-school charm. The character Zimmerman plays is an early interrogation into parasocial tendencies and drinking the kool aid of what your favorite celebrity might be selling you.
My favorite lines of the piece encapsulate just that: “And although no, I don’t smoke, yes, I absolutely would join him outside, and can I actually have a drag? Maybe they make cigarettes differently in L.A., but when you share one with a movie star they’re amazing. Everyone should try it.”
But that aspect is dismissed in favor of what it offers up: the fantasy that Chris Evans would flirt with a girl like you. And he plays that role better than anything I’ve ever seen him in.
The interview inspired a 2022 romance novel, utilizing the famous / non-famous trope, Funny You Should Ask and now every man is required to do what Chris Evans did so well in 2011 on internet shows like Chicken Shop Date and Royal Court with Brittany Broski.
For another perspective on Chris Evans’ legacy, I’ve interviewed the resident Chris Evans expert in my life, my roommate and dear friend Chloe Lelchuk. She quite literally got a Tumblr account after seeing him in Captain America: The First Avenger. Altar Boys is concerned with the macro and micro impacts of famous men.
TELL ME ABOUT SEEING CHRIS ONSCREEN FOR THE FIRST TIME.
I first saw Chris in Captain America: The First Avenger at an AMC in San Diego while at a travel basketball tournament. It was July 2011, and I was 13. I knew next to nothing about Marvel or Chris Evans. Since I was going in blind, imagine my surprise when a poorly-CGI'd, tiny Steve Rogers suddenly transforms into a six-foot, oiled up hunk of a guy with a huge chest and classically handsome face a mere thirty minutes into the movie. The scene sexualizes the male body in a way I hadn’t yet seen at this point in my life, like the director did it specifically for me, and clearly it worked — I don’t think I had ever truly considered anyone to be “hot” until I saw Chris in Captain America.
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT CHRIS IN CAPTAIN AMERICA THAT MADE YOU GET ON TUMBLR?
As soon as I saw the transformation scene, I knew I wanted to see it again and again and again, without having to ask my parents to take me to the theater a second or third time because that’s … embarrassing? My emotions were obviously heightened, but I remember leaving the theater for some reason thinking The First Avenger was the best movie I had ever seen. When I got home from my basketball tournament, I ran to the family laptop and googled "Chris Evans Captain America," clicked the "Images" tab, and discovered that I was not the only girl who loved this scene, AND that I could watch it on an endless loop on a little website called Tumblr.com whenever I wanted. I immediately made an account, and the rest is history.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE CHRIS EVANS MOMENT?
Oh, I have a lot. I often go back to Chris’s interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers from 2017 where he very endearingly describes how he lost his virginity in high school, then ran home to tell his mom “I did it. I don’t know what I was doing but I think I did it.” It had me thinking, wait, this hot guy is kind of weird! And I loved it. It’s an example of Chris’s disarming charisma and overwhelming sweetness that I initially found shocking given I had only seen him as a “serious” Captain America.
WHAT’S SOMETHING QUINTESSENTIALLY CHRIS FOR YOU?
It’s crazy to me that some people don’t know this, but Chris Evans LOVES to laugh. If you don’t know about the Chris Evans “left boob grab,” I encourage you to study up. This guy loves to ijbol, ROFL, LMAO, LOL, and then grab his left boob while he’s doing it. There’s a really special nearly three-minute compilation of him doing this on YouTube that I recommend as a starting point for those itching to get familiar with Chris’s contagious laugh. Sometimes I like to think I learned to throw my head back laughing from him.
WHEN DID CHRIS START TO FADE AWAY AS YOUR NUMBER ONE GUY?
I’ve really gone through my phases with Chris, i.e. every time a new Marvel movie came out or that time in high school when I was inexplicably obsessed with listening to Anna Faris’s podcast, which he appeared on in a two-part episode with Jenny Slate JUST before the two publicly confirmed they were dating — a celebrity couple I will probably never get over during my lifetime for reasons I could take hours to explain. But, my initial obsession was actually super short lived — I saw The First Avenger in July of 2011, but then a little group known as One Direction released a song called “What Makes You Beautiful” two months later, and then suddenly I found myself with practically a legal obligation to keep an eagle eye on the group’s every move, which at this point has never ended.
ARE YOU HOPEFUL MATERIALISTS COULD BE HIS BIG COMEBACK?
Absolutely. I think a lot of people forget or don’t realize that Chris Evans was playing love interests in early 2000s and 2010s romcoms before he became known for Captain America, so I can’t wait for people to be introduced to a genre that he’s historically excelled at, at least for me. He’s essentially the original himbo in Not Another Teen Movie and he plays the hot apartment building neighbor in both What’s Your Number? and The Nanny Diaries. Chris’s charm in these movies takes me back to his real-life charisma that I again think people forget about or don’t see because he’s so stoic, and let’s be honest, flat, in his portrayal of Steve Rogers. I know Celine Song sees what I see, and I can’t wait to see what she does with him in Materialists. I have a feeling it’s going to send me right back down the Chris Evans rabbit hole.
THEY ARE MAKING UP CATEGORIES OF GUYS AGAIN: This piece in i-D gave me war flashbacks to the “rodent boy” fad of last year. It invents the “nostalgia hunk” and claims this category of man is back in vogue because Logan Lerman is in a movie and Josh Hutcherson was in one … two years ago?! The writer argues that these men harken back to a time when “men came and went without being defined properly” … so a better time.
I resist this sort of categorization because imagine if we did this with women and it sterilizes what is so individual and enigmatic about attraction! I don’t think anyone finds Josh O’Connor so captivating because he resembles a rat — which for the record he doesn’t.
And real Logan Lerman heads know he’s never been out of style, in fact the place he really shines is his girlfriend’s Instagram!
INDULGENCES: MY ALTAR BOYS
Former Skins cast members, anyone Irish, British actors whose breakout role was “playing gay,” rappers from Kentucky, and men in Ocean’s Eleven (and their codependent best friends) are all fair game.
HARRIS DICKINSON’s Rhode Beauty campaign is working on me! Kidding I would never buy a useless beauty product. But he’s kind of the cutest boy in the entire world in the video on Rhode’s Instagram. Also I can’t help but notice that he starred in this campaign a mere two weeks after my first byline at my new job was about Rhode… Harris, you already have my attention!
JACK HARLOW updated what is maybe his Letterboxd mere hours after I sent out Altar Boys last week. He’s secured the @missionaryjack username and added a profile picture of his face obscured by his dog — whose name he won’t reveal to respect “her privacy.” Trust that Altar Boys readers will be the first to know if he verifies this account is his.
As always, thank you for reading and if you see an Altar Boy, say something!
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