Or maybe just wishing it was.
While some of our ’90s men have fallen from grace, we’re looking at you, Johnny, there are a few bright stars still shining. Sure, there has been some dimming over the years, but in this very moment, with nostalgia for the final decade of the last century at an all-time high, it feels like a handful of our dudes are stepping back into the spotlight. As the internet asks, “Mom, what were you like in the ’90s?” (this is our favorite answer, BTW), these crushes from our youth have begun to stir something inside of us we haven’t felt since we wore CK One and drank Jamba Juice.
Leonardo DiCaprio
I mean Leo hasn’t gone anywhere, and in many ways he’s stayed the same, truly embodying a beloved ’90s character played by his compatriot, Matthew McConaughey, who uttered the infamous line, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” Just replace high school girls with Victoria’s Secret models, you know.
But something is different about 2026 Leo, something that harkens back to the Leonardo of yore, who had not yet exposed us to his roster of 22-year-old girlfriends and Dad bod. Romeo + Juliet Leo. He didn’t win the Oscar this year, but that is nothing new. He did, however, bring a date for the first time in 15 years (and one who is remarkably 27 not 22), but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where this strange, yet oh so familiar, allure is coming from.
Maybe it’s that sexy mustache? (Though he will always have a baby face in our eyes.) Or is it the way his acting just seems to get better and better with age? (He was a chaotic delight in One Battle After Another.) Maybe he finally got that facelift his middle-aged A-list buddies seem to all be going for? (And a much better one, if so.) Whatever it is, Leo is taking us back to the Titanic days. Now, if he would just stop hanging out with Jeff Bezos.
Ethan Hawke
Have you heard basically anything Ethan Hawke has said lately? Someone should seriously make a coffee table book of his quotes. He gave his most recent embroidered pillow-worthy response on the Oscars red carpet when he was asked what advice he would give someone dealing with unrequited love.
“The one who’s in love always wins. It doesn’t matter if you get your heart broken. You’re living. When you’re feeling, you’re alive. The sun doesn’t care whether the grass appreciates its rays, it just keeps on shining,” he casually remarked with his signature cheeky half-grin and a literal twinkle in his eye, the interviewer—Amelia Dimoldenberg of Chicken Shop Date no less—melting into a puddle at his feet as if she was at the Reality Bites premiere in 1994.
Hawke clearly still has that brooding bad boy charm we all couldn’t resist back in the day but now he says things like, “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, they have a life to live…Until their father dies, you go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart…that’s when art’s not a luxury, it’s sustenance.”
Now we’re over here crying like we just watched Dead Poets Society
—and we’re not mad at it one bit.
Noah Wyle
Whoever cast Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch on The Pitt, 30 years after his role as Dr. John Carter on ER deserves a raise. Are the Emmy’s going to follow the Oscar’s lead and add a casting award this year, too? Just saying.
Having his kind eyes and earnest smile, and all that adrenaline, reappear on our screens three decades later has added even more fuel to our ’90s nostalgia fire. While on ER he was a newbie doc, this time around his character seems to have been written specifically with the “female gaze” in mind, making us swoon with his competence alone. And now, Wyle is perhaps at last getting his dues. After being nominated for an Emmy for ER five years in a row from 1995 to 1999, Wyle finally took home the best actor award last year for his first season of The Pitt.
In his speech, he thanked the powers that be for “allowing for the conditions to exist for lightning to strike twice” in his lifetime; we also couldn’t be more appreciative of his emergency room encore. And because he is just as dreamy and thoughtful as he ever was, after saying that half of his award belongs to his wife, he dedicated it “to anyone who is going on shift tonight, or coming off shift tonight.” Did you know that Wyle’s mom was a nurse? It all makes so much sense.
JFK Jr.
Finally, the real catalyst behind the rampant ’90s nostalgia we’re in the thick of right now: this man. Plus, hate to say it, one Ryan Murphy. (And of course, Carolyn Bessette.) It’s heartbreaking, someone having “a moment“ when they are no longer here to bask in it. But moments were different for the Kennedys, certainly not something to be indulged; the late John F. Kennedy Jr.’s whole life was a moment. All eyes were on him from the day he was born to the day of his and Carolyn’s tragic death in 1999.
Now, almost 27 years later, revisiting his life on Love Story, has rekindled a fascination for his and his wife’s story—but even more notably, for the time their short chapter took place. A time, where, yes clearly, some very famous people were hounded by paparazzi, but mostly a time when life was private. A time when if you made a plan to meet up at The Odeon for a martini at 6, you showed up there right after work. A time when you would spend the evening without ever feeling the need to check your (non-existent!) phone, or do anything but engage with the person (perhaps a dark-haired, chiseled-faced man in a tie) sitting across from you, occasionally enjoying a cigarette without ever having to leave the table.
Of course, we will never go back to a time without cellphones, or when you could smoke inside (we’re okay with that), or when you could spot JFK Jr. riding his bike through Soho in a backwards newsboy cap, but it’s truly blissful to think about.
Though today, we do have Paul Anthony Kelly. And dare we say it, he may be even more beautiful than America’s prince. RIP. (Has anyone else gone down a deep dive of his entire Instagram feed? He looks good with a beard, too.) We’re here to predict that life will imitate art (or tabloid magazines), and just like JFK Jr., PAK will be anointed People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive“ very soon. And probably for the first time since the ’90s we might actually care about it.
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Megan Cahn started her editorial career at Sassy’s less irreverent younger cousin, CosmoGIRL. She went on to work in the women’s lifestyle space at publications such as ELLE, Refinery29, Cup of Jo, and Best Life. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, cat, and five-year-old daughter, who has adopted her childhood Cabbage Patch Kids collection.
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