Christian Slater

I try not to just be thirsty in these, but given the size of the crush I had on Christian Slater in high school, that is going to be quite the challenge. Because while I can talk a lot about his talent as an actor and so forth, what it boils down to is “I thought he was super hot in the early to mid ‘90s.” Which, you know, I wasn’t wrong. And if 56-year-old Christian Slater isn’t quite as sexy as twenty-year-old Christian Slater, well, time happens to all of us. He still isn’t an unattractive man, and while he’s got his past, he’s certainly not the worst person of the actors of his era. And it looks like, yeah, addiction’s going to do things.

Slater’s from a performing family. His father was actor Michael Hawkins, also credited as Michael Gainsborough and born Thomas Slater, and he was an alcoholic. His mother is casting director Mary Jo Slater. I suspect, but goodness knows cannot prove, that his mother’s career would have been more helpful to young Christian than his father’s. Though it is true that he has a few soap opera appearances in his early career in common with his father. At any rate, it was assumed that his launch to stardom would come with The Legend of Billie Jean, starring not-actually-related Helen Slater. But its flop prevented that.

What actually led to his stardom was, of course, Heathers. This is one of two movies he appeared in around then that I literally cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen it, the other being Pump Up the Volume. I haven’t watched it recently, and I know there are bits of it that haven’t aged well—the fact that the two football players would rather die than live as gay, for example—but man that was a hell of a thing in the ‘90s. (Yes, it came out in 1989, but I didn’t see it then and we watched it constantly a couple of years later.) He immediately became a heartthrob, and Lord I was not immune.

Heathers is, frankly, the movie that also led to The Jack Nicholson Accusation. To the extent that there’s an SNL commercial from around then where he’s selling a product that helps you with your own Nicholson impersonation. I think part of the issue is the eyebrows; they have very similar eyebrows. And if you act a certain way, and there’s nothing wrong with that style of acting, with those eyebrows, that’s not going to keep you from the accusations. Though there is a certain irony to his playing the lead in a stage production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a movie I actually hate.

I think Slater’s career has been damaged by that addiction. And I can’t blame people who wouldn’t hire him at its worst. Especially since he’s one of those people who seems to have responded to drugs by becoming violent. That doesn’t excuse things; it becomes your responsibility to deal with your addiction. But it does explain why he lost the spotlight for a while. He’s too young to be a Brat Pack star, but the age group he was in included River Phoenix. That’s a bad situation to consider.

But he did have a career past the mid-’90s. So okay, the last movie of his I saw in the theatre was in the vital role of “Easily Fooled Security Guard (uncredited)” in the first Austin Powers. And before that the truly bonkers Untamed Heart. But most of my movie-watching for most of my life has been at home. And the last movie of his I saw at home was If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, where I recognized his voice immediately in the small but infuriating role of Charles. It’s not an Oscar-worthy role; if anyone in that movie should’ve gotten a Best Supporting Actor nod, it was Conan O’Brien. But every performance in that movie is great, Slater’s no less than any of the others.

He seems to swing back and forth between indie darlings like, again, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and at-least-it’s-a-job like Rites of Passage, where he is somehow sixth-billed in a movie starring Wes Bentley. He’s done no little voice work, including a delightful turn as Milo’s nemesis the crossing guard on Milo Murphy’s Law, and of course other television. As in, any number of you are demanding to know why I haven’t mentioned Mr. Robot yet. The answer to which is that I am a Gen-X woman and I wasn’t done rhapsodizing about Pump Up the Volume and Heathers yet.

I’m still not. I never will be. J.D. is fun, but the role of Mark is frankly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Mark is shy and awkward, and when he’s on the air as Harry, he’s fearless and defiant. He’s trying so hard to survive in a situation that his parents don’t understand. There’s a reason I have bought multiple copies of that movie to make sure people I know have the chance to see it. I’ve been singing its praises since about 1991 and will do so for the rest of my life. And if the upcoming movie of his I’m most interested in is Young Guns III, well, did I mention I’m a Gen-X woman?