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Jewish men are having a major Hollywood moment, with stars like Timothée Chalamet, Adam Brody, and even Oscar-winner Adrien Brody redefining the Jewish heartthrob. While Jewish actors have long been on screen, we’re now seeing a shift—these men aren’t just famous; they’re proudly Jewish, incorporating their heritage into their image and appeal. Whether it’s Brody’s charming Nice Jewish Boy (NJB) persona or Chalamet’s effortlessly cool Jewish identity, this new wave of Hollywood heartthrobs is making cultural representation hotter than ever.
Generally speaking, a heartthrob is a famous and attractive younger man—one who makes fans’ hearts throb, so to speak. So naturally, the Jewish heartthrob is considered physically attractive, but he’s more than that: He is someone whose Jewish heritage is part of his identity and is often recognizable in his appearance or manner.
Interviewing Adam Brody last fall on Today with Hoda and Jenna, Jenna Bush Hager shared a New York Times quote with him: “They said you’ve carved out a Jewish heartthrob niche,” to which he agreed, albeit somewhat modestly. That vibe–humble but not too humble—is part of it too.
Who was the first Jewish heartthrob? Perhaps it was Paul Newman, who was Jewish on his father’s side and starred as the Jewish heartthrob character Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus. Moment readers may recall the famous photo of the actor shirtless while wearing an eye-catching Star of David necklace. “He was a heartthrob outside of the Jewish community,” says Evelyn Frick, associate editor for the Jewish pop culture website Hey Alma. “As loath as I am to say it…his trademark features—his piercing blue eyes, for example—aren’t stereotypical Jewish features.” In fact, it may be more fair to call Newman a heartthrob who happened to be Jewish, as opposed to a Jewish heartthrob. Nevertheless, Newman’s necklace helped pave the way for modern Jewish heartthrobs’ being proud of their culture.
PJ Grisar, culture reporter for The Forward, has another perspective, “For so many years our Jewish heartthrobs were tormented or ambivalent about being Jewish. Woody Allen—whatever else you want to say about him—was a weird kind of nebbish sex symbol. Elliot Gould embodied cool but also neurosis.” Grisar suggests that Jewish pride “is a bigger thing now, because Jews are following the example of other minority groups vying for representation.”
At the same time, most contemporary Jewish heartthrobs come across as vulnerable and sensitive, and they are not afraid of people knowing that. And the more in touch they are with their culture, the more in touch they are with their emotions. This can be very attractive. Cindy Kaplan, a consultant for the Jewish Institute for Television and Cinema, which “champions authentic and nuanced portrayals of Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the entertainment industry and challenges tropes and stereotypes in media,” adds that “the rise of geek culture in general and a greater desire for nontoxic masculinity contributed to this idea that being sexy doesn’t have to come from being a ‘bad boy’ or ‘dangerous’ or a ‘player’ but that it can come from being wholesome, kind and vulnerable.” She says this is embodied in the “nice Jewish boy” trope.
Nice Jewish boys—NJBs—may be the most common type of Jewish heartthrob. That’s certainly the niche Adam Brody has carved out. Starting in the early 2000s, television viewers were introduced to Brody as sweet and cute Dave Rygalski in season three of Gilmore Girls and then as the ultimate NJB Seth Cohen on the hit teen soap opera The O.C. With his adorable grin, messy brown hair, snarky demeanor and sincere infatuation with his love interests, he was the ultimate teen Jewish heartthrob.
“That was the first time I can remember a character on TV who was nerdy, proudly Jewish and hot enough to get the girl,” says Kaplan. “Seth was unapologetically who he was, and that’s what got Summer to fall in love with him, despite herself.” (Summer Roberts, played by Rachel Bilson, was the classically pretty popular girl.) It is with characters like these that television viewers start to see Jewish men as desirable for their sweetness and their nerdy good looks. “The stereotypes of being meek and stoop-shouldered and not super macho have shifted as the culture has,” says Grisar. And while Seth’s father Sandy (played by Peter Gallagher) wasn’t the show’s heartthrob, his good looks, intelligence and compassion signaled what his NJB son would become. “To be reductive, these men are sensitive and smart. They’re family men. They’re good providers. They may write you poetry.”
Twenty years after The O.C., Brody is back on the small screen playing Rabbi Noah Roklov on Nobody Wants This opposite Kristin Bell, whose non-Jewish character refers to him as the “Hot Rabbi.” Brody is still playing an NJB, and one for whom religion is an even bigger part of his identity. Fans of the series have been gushing over the actor (nominated for a Golden Globe) and his character, wishing that they could find an NJB who says things like “I can handle you.” That’s what people want in a Jewish heartthrob: Someone who represents a new era. Acknowledging “an explosion of Jewish TV and movie moments,” Lior Zaltzman, deputy managing editor for the Jewish motherhood website Kveller, also notes that “the more Jewish creators, and especially the more Jewish non-cis-male creators come up behind the camera, the more nuanced a portrayal we get of Jewish life and identity and of NJBs.”
“Just the fact that Nobody Wants This was one of the biggest shows of 2024 still feels amazing to me,” says Frick. “The complicated discussion of representation aside, as a Jewish pop culture writer, I felt like the whole world was entering our little corner of the culture. It was so fascinating to witness that happen.”
Zaltzman and Grisar both mention the 2000 film Keeping the Faith, in which Ben Stiller plays a young rabbi caught in a love triangle, as another example of a character whose Jewish pride is part of what makes him so attractive, and therefore a representation of the Jewish heartthrob. “I love Ben Stiller in Keeping the Faith as an example of the NJB who isn’t perfectly an NJB,” Zaltzman says. “His Rabbi Jake can be a bit of an asshole with a martyr complex in the way a lot of self-proclaimed nice guys are, but he is also handsome and charming (spoiler: he does get the girl in the end).” Grisar recalls a scene where Rabbi Jake wraps tefillin. “His arms look really good when he does it, and I suspect that not a few in the audience considered becoming rebbetzins in that moment.”
Arguably one of the biggest heartthrobs today, Jewish or otherwise, is the French-American actor Timothée Chalamet, who is Jewish on his mom’s side. His breakout role was in the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name playing the character Elio, whose Jewish identity was important to his journey, and this year, of course, he’s nominated for an Oscar for playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. By playing these Jewish characters, Chalamet is embracing his culture and identity, which can be an attractive quality and is contributing to his status as a Jewish heartthrob.
“I immediately think of Timothée Chalamet as the Jewish heartthrob archetype—long, brown curls, on the slimmer side, short, pale,” says Frick when asked what kind of person she pictures when she thinks of the Jewish heartthrob. “It’s someone who is traditionally handsome but who has a little je ne sais quoi that gives away their Jewishness,” says Zaltzman. “Alternatively, it’s someone with a very uniquely Jewish look who’s more quirkily handsome.” “I think it’s very cool that one of the modern young movie stars is Jewish,” says Kaplan of the Jewish Institute for Television and Cinema in reference to Chalamet. “I don’t know that his throngs of fans all know he’s Jewish, but it’s certainly something for us to brag about!”
Where might this trend be heading? For starters, we are seeing some more diverse Jewish performers in terms of race, ethnicity and sexuality. Grisar is hopeful for the Jewish heartthrob future, “with people like Daveed Diggs [Hamilton] and Kingsley Ben-Adir [One Night in Miami] and some LGBTQ representation. Andrew Barth Feldman [No Hard Feelings] and Gabriel LaBelle [Saturday Night] are short kings. Fabien Frankel from House of the Dragon and Oliver Jackson-Cohen [The Haunting of Hill House] could make it big. Morgan Spector [The Gilded Age] is already there and Brandon Uranowitz [Falsettos] should be too.” Kveller editor Zaltzman also thinks there could be a rise in Israeli representation in Hollywood too, naming Michael Aloni, who had a small role in the miniseries by Israeli director Hagai Levi called Scenes from a Marriage. She also cites Amit Rahav from the new World War II series We Were the Lucky Ones as having “huge heartthrob potential in my opinion. And I think Tomer Capone [from] The Boys is a dreamboat, too.” All of these actors have dazzling looks and acting skills, and wearing their Jewish status on their sleeves brings a new level of attraction, fueled by passion and sincerity. Of course, every heartthrob is unique, and they each appeal to different fans in their own way, but overall, it has never been a better time to be a hot Jewish man in the public eye.
