Mark Gallagher, "Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal" (U Texas Press, 2025)

Jan 30, 2026

Mark Gallagher, screen scholar and author of Cosmosexuals, maps how male sex appeal is staged and circulated globally. He discusses historical stars, modern examples like Idris Elba and Pedro Pascal, and how race, accent, and performance shape international stardom. Short, sharp takes on spreadable charisma, exoticism, and the labor behind male screen sex appeal.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Sex Appeal Is Constructed, Not Natural

Male sex appeal on screen is not intrinsic but produced by performance, production, and reception contexts.
Mark Gallagher argues that analyzing sex appeal reveals larger dynamics of globalization, craft, and cultural taste.

ANECDOTE

Valentino And The Birth Of Screen Sexiness

Early film stars like Rudolph Valentino provoked mass female hysteria and helped popularize the language of 'sexiness'.
Cinema's close-ups and picture-palace screens in the 1910s–1920s amplified bodily spectacle and desire.

ANECDOTE

Conrad Veidt's Transnational Career

Conrad Veidt moved between German, American, and British cinemas and cultivated varied fan cultures.
His career shows early twentieth-century international mobility shaped by politics and studio systems.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

In Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal (U Texas Press, 2025), Dr. Mark Gallagher presents an examination of male screen sex appeal and the ways that race, ethnicity, and national origin combine with performance tools and film and television style to aid or inhibit actors’ circulation on an increasingly global stage.

Sex appeal is complicated, especially for screen actors. Looking good is not enough. Charisma and charm have to register when the camera rolls. And sexiness has to travel. Today’s heartthrobs are expected to raise temperatures all around the world.

Cosmosexuals theorizes male sex appeal as a form of capital in an age of international stardom. Screen scholar Dr. Gallagher assembles a diverse cast—Idris Elba, Pedro Pascal, Simu Liu, Ryan Gosling, and more—analyzing how each actor uses his appearance, voice, and movement to perform in ways that viewers across cultural divides register as sexually appealing. Cosmosexuals also explores the intersection of global sex appeal and exoticism in historical and contemporary contexts—from the malleable racial identities of Omar Sharif and Conrad Veidt to Mads Mikkelsen’s “accented whiteness”—and assesses the barriers that confine nonwhite actors, in spite of their talent or celebrity. Far more than handsome faces and chiseled abs, male sex symbols emerge as laborers subject to disciplinary regimes steeped in patriarchy, racism, and structural inequity. As such, they have much to tell us about the economies of taste at work in the construction of screen masculinity and the terms of human desire.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network