The 90s were quite the time for hunky eye candy on TV. Pretty much any show you tuned
into featured at least one unforgettable stud. Whether you like your guys buff, funny, or nerdy,
you had plenty to choose from. Let's find out what the following 90s TV hunks are up to now.
It's hard to remember a time when George Clooney wasn't one of the most
famous actors in the world, but every star needs to start somewhere.
For Clooney, it was on the hospital drama ER. At the time, the actor was clearly ready for his
big break. As casting director John Levey recalled The Hollywood Reporter in 2019,
"He was a 35-year-old, handsome leading man with a sense of humor and a sense of vulnerability.
But he had also been in seven or eight failed pilots by then. We somehow got him a script."
Clooney played pediatrician Doug Ross, who was known for his wildcard ways. He was a full-time
cast member for the first five seasons and then he left the show in 1999. His movie
career then took off, which led to him pretty much dominating Hollywood. He starred in the likes of
Batman & Robin, Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, and many other major releases. He's also worked
tirelessly behind the camera, directing such films as Good Night, and Good Luck and The Ides
of March. And he even co-founded the tequila company Casamigos. What can't this hunk do?!
Baywatch had one of the one most epic opening credits sequences in TV history,
as it featured attractive lifeguards running
in slow motion across the beach. David Hasselhoff played one of the lifeguards,
Mitch Buchannon in more than 200 episodes over 10 seasons. During his long-running role,
the actor picked up a Guinness World Record as "the most-watched man on television of all time."
Hasselhoff never quite achieved that same level of popularity again after Baywatch ended, but
he remained a public figure, and he even had a species of crab named after him.
When Men's Health asked him about the "Hoff crab," he recalled,
"When I finally saw a picture of it, I laughed pretty hard.
It's white and it's got a hairy chest."
Outside of the sea, Hasselhoff has been a bit of a national treasure in Germany. His
1989 album Looking for Freedom even went triple platinum in Europe. On New Year's Eve of 1989,
Hasselhoff sang the title track while being hoisted by a crane above the Berlin Wall.
He returned 30 years later to celebrate the occasion, during which he screamed,
"Thirty years of freedom!"
In 1982, John Stamos landed his first big role as Blackie Parrish on the daytime soap
opera General Hospital. In 2020, he looked back on that time in his life by tweeting,
"Without @GeneralHospital I'd still be flipping burgers at my dad's burger joint."
But Stamos' signature role would arrive a little bit later when he played Uncle Jesse
on Full House, which aired nearly 200 episodes over eight seasons.
For a while, it was hard for him to escape the shadow of that iconic series. In 2019, he told GQ,
"It's always been a fight. To get into talk shows or television shows.
I think the Full House thing has been a blessing and a curse."
Things turned around for Stamos in the 2010s when he started to play doctors on a variety of shows,
like Glee, Scream Queens, and You. In 2016, Netflix rebooted Full House with the sequel series
Fuller House. Stamos returned to play Uncle Jesse once again, and the show lasted five seasons.
Upon the occasion of the show's final taping in 2019, he posted on Instagram,
"The end of an era...again."
Saved by the Bell only lasted four seasons during its original run on NBC, but it nevertheless
continues to evoke nostalgia for so many 90s kids. It followed a group of teenagers at the fictional
Bayside High School in Los Angeles, including jock A.C. Slater, as played by Mario Lopez.
Once the show ended, Lopez discovered his true life's calling by just playing himself,
as he transitioned to the career of an entertainment journalist and super-host.
He hosted Extra starting from 2008 to 2019, and then he made the switch to Access Hollywood.
In 2020, it was reported that NBC Universal's new streaming service
Peacock was reviving Saved by the Bell. Lopez signed on to once again play Slater,
who's now the phys ed teacher at Bayside High.
"When I was in high school, I constantly used to fight with my best friend over a hot girl.
Oh, it was actually your dad! Over your mom!"
From 1990 to 1995 Joey Lawrence played Joey Russo, older brother to the title character on
the NBC sitcom Blossom. The siblings were a study in contrasts, as Blossom was brilliant and nerdy
while Joey was a little dumb but handsome. Once the show ended, Lawrence transitioned directly
into another sitcom, Brotherly Love, which was fitting, as he grew up near Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, he was also pursuing a music career, and he released three albums in the 90s.
Lawrence's next big role arrived in 2010 in the form of the ABC Family sitcom Melissa & Joey,
in which he starred for four seasons alongside fellow 90s TV icon Melissa Joan Hart.
Despite all his professional successes, Lawrence has had some personal struggles, He filed for
bankruptcy in 2017, and in 2020, he and his wife Chandie divorced. So now he's gone from being a
teen hunk to being a hunky single dad. "Whoa!"
"Did I do that?" is one of the most iconic catchphrases in TV history, and we have Jaleel
White and his performance as Steve Urkel on Family Matters to thank for that. The actor reminisced
about that aspect of his legacy in 2017 during a cast reunion hosted by Entertainment Weekly.
"Back then, you didn't really know what was going to be a catchphrase that was
gonna stick. Nowadays, things are so contrived it's like 'Oh, we've got our catchphrase.'"
White played Urkel in more than 200 episodes over the course of Family Matters' nine-season
run. With his thick-framed glasses, suspenders, and squeaky voice, the character was one of the
geekiest in TV history. But he also had an altar ego: suave ladies man Stefan Urquelle. When White
appeared on Dancing with the Stars in 2012, he looked back on his sitcom days and said,
"Playing Stefan Urquelle was life-changing for me. I was apprehensive about playing Stefan,
but the executive producers saw in me the man I hadn't become yet. It introduced a new side
to me. After I played that character, people started treating me differently.
When I played Stefan Urquelle, I showed people there was more to me to offer."
More recently, White was a regular on the short-lived CBS sitcom Me, Myself & I,
and he's appeared in a few episodes of the Disney Channel series Raven's Home.
Long before the fight between Team Edward or Team Jacob, there was the duel between Team
Angel and Team Spike among the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom. The show ran from 1997 to 2003,
with David Boreanaz playing the mysterious and dreamy vampire Angel. The character was such a hit
among viewers that he got his own spinoff series in 1999, which ran for five seasons on The WB.
Boreanaz then tried his luck on the big screen in films like The Crow:
Wicked Prayer, but he returned back to network TV pretty soon.
Starting in 2005, Boreanaz starred as FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth on the FOX series Bones. The
show was a mainstay on the TV dial for more than a decade, as it ran for 246 episodes over
the course of 12 seasons. After it wrapped up, Boreanaz quickly landed his next regular TV gig
on the CBS series SEAL Team in 2017. The busy actor lives in Los Angeles, but he still takes
time to support his hometown basketball team, the Philadelphia 76ers. He can frequently be
found in the Staples Center when the Sixers are in town to play the Lakers. He shows no signs of
slowing down anytime soon, perhaps taking a cue from the SEAL Team training of his current gig.
So many 90s kids can easily recite from memory the entire Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. It's no
wonder then that Will Smith has gone on to become and remain one of the biggest stars in the world.
Smith invented his sitcom alter ego during his early years as a hip-hop artist.
On The Fresh Prince, he could be suave, charming, and goofy,
often all in the same scene. When the show ended in 1996, he told the Los Angeles Times,
"On some weeks you spend more time with your TV family than you do with your real family.
It's hard to say goodbye to that atmosphere, but we felt like it was time. We’ve all grown
as actors and as people, we had an incredibly talented cast, but the show is just limiting."
It's no surprise that Smith saw things that way, as his film career was really starting
to explode after lead roles in 1995's Bad Boys and 1996's Independence Day. What followed was
an unprecedented run of success. During the 2010s, he managed to be the highest
paid actor of the decade. Not all of his films during that time were blockbusters,
but he nevertheless managed to walk away with tons of cash. He made most of his
money from 2012's Men in Black 3, for which he negotiated a base salary of $20 million
plus 10 percent of the film's gross income, which earned him an additional $80 million.
Outside of acting, Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith have created quite
the family dynasty. Their children Jaden and Willow have both pursued
musical careers and become icons in their own rights. And it's clear that Smith is still in
touch with today's youth, as he's amassed tens of millions of followers on TikTok.
New York City native David Duchovny became a star when he landed the part of agent
Fox Mulder in the paranormal Fox series The X-Files.
But despite that show's success, he had another obligation to fulfill during The X-Files' run,
as he had signed on to the erotic Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries. As he recalled for MEL Magazine,
"I could have told myself many things, but I needed a job. I wasn't being offered a bunch
of stuff. It was, 'Wow, a job!' And possibly a job in the future as the episodes spun out."
That responsibility to Red Shoe Diaries certainly didn't prevent Mulder from becoming the most
memorable role of Duchovny's career, though. Weirdly enough, he later returned to Showtime
for his first regular post-X-Files gig, starring in seven seasons of Californication as womanizing
writer Hank Moody. This role wasn't too far from real life for him, as the Princeton and Yale grad
is also a novelist himself. Duchovny reprised the role of Mulder when Fox rebooted
X-Files for seasons 10 and 11 in 2016 and 2018. The actor has joked that Mulder is
"'the worst F.B.I. agent of all time' because he never solved one case in nine years."
Another unsolved case is how Duchovny himself never seems to age.
He celebrated his 60th birthday in 2020 and is still just as hunky as ever.
Beverly Hills, 90210 followed young and attractive characters in the ultra-wealthy title city.
Jason Priestley starred as Brandon Walsh, who moves from Minnesota to Beverly Hills
with his twin sister in the first season. The series popularized the teen drama
genre and turned Priestley into a teen idol. After the show ended,
the Vancouver native continued to act and also started producing and directing.
There's unfortunately been some sad news in recent years in Priestley's circle. When his
Beverly Hills co-star Luke Perry passed away from a stroke in 2019, Priestley told Hello! Magazine,
"Luke's passing was very difficult because Luke was also a big part
of my personal life. His passing was so sudden
and so unexpected that it was very difficult to process and it's still difficult to process."
"Not having him there is uh, he definitely left a vacancy there that we all felt."
And when another of Priestley's former co-stars, Shannen Doherty,
was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2020, he told People Magazine,
"Shannen was a big part of my life. [She] and I will always
have a bond that is very meaningful. I'm very heartbroken about the news
and I wish her and her family the best in this very difficult time."
It hasn't been all tragedy, though, as Priestley was able to spend some time
on screen once again with Doherty and his other 90210 castmates when they appeared as
heightened versions of themselves in the 2019 series BH90210.
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