Of all the monsters haunting the collective unconscious, there’s no question the vampire is the sexiest creature of them all. While their earliest incarnations might have been less than appealing –the undead bloodsuckers of Eastern European folklore were described as bloated, purplish corpses– at this point in pop culture history, vampires have solidified their status as a symbol of our deepest desires.
Having transcended their humanity, vampires have permission to dispense with all the usual impediments to human pleasure, like guilt, obligation, and that pesky matter of “morality.” So, it’s no surprise that the rest of us mere mortals have been lusting after vampires for decades…especially because they just keep getting hotter. This year alone, the sultry Sinners reigned supreme at the box office, production started on a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and fan conventions everywhere were filled with hopeful attendees lining up for autographs from the cast members of the Twilight movies, The Lost Boys and The Vampire Diaries. But who will go down in history as the most toothsome sanguivores of the screen –both big and small?
‘The Vampire Diaries’ • The CW.
Though the decidedly not hot Nosferatu is generally credited with bringing vampires to the cinema in 1922, the onscreen undead have evolved considerably in the aesthetics department since then (including the later incarnations of Dracula).
Jonathan Frid introduced a more compassionate version of the darkly handsome vampire archetype to TV as Barnabas Collins in the late ‘60s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (later made into a movie by Tim Burton, starring, unsurprisingly, Johnny Depp). As explained in the 2019 documentary Master of Dark Shadows, it was Frid who encouraged the show’s writers to give the character of the long-confined Collins an emotional depth. Collins doesn’t want to drink blood; he has no choice if he wants to survive…and so the stage was set for countless conflicted antiheroes to come, inspiring endless viewer fantasies of ravaging and redemption.
‘Twilight’ • Photo: Deana Newcomb/Summit Entertainment.
Beyond Dark Shadows, vampires were largely missing from TV throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, but the movies during those decades had plenty of lustful vamps to offer. As anthropologist-turned-vampire Dr. Hess Green in 1973’s Ganja & Hess, Duane Jones is understandably irresistible to the widow of his maker, thus initiating one of the earliest star-crossed vampire affairs on film.
In 1974, Paul Morrissey’s lesser-known take on the Dracula myth, Blood for Dracula (later billed as Andy Warhol’s Dracula) gave us Udo Kier –one of the first vampires with hypnotically ethereal eyes– on a comical hunt for virgins through the Italian countryside. Nearly a decade later, David Bowie as the doomed John Blaylock made a stylish contribution to the genre in Tony Scott’s directorial debut The Hunger (1983), literally steaming up the screen in a slippery shower sex scene with fellow vampire Catherine Deneuve.
Not long after,The Lost Boys (1987) introduced the world to cute teen vampires (showcasing Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland at peak ‘80s coolness), influencing such future blockbuster properties as the aforementioned Twilight films, Vampire Diaries series and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and show (plus spinoff series Angel). Since this category is, obviously, intended for teenagers, there’s not much to be found in the way of explicit content – but that doesn’t mean heartthrobs Robert Pattinson and Ian Somerhalder in their leading roles aren’t worthy of the pinup status they achieved (it’s worth noting that both actors were over the age of 21 when they played their vampire characters, who were each over 100 years old).
‘The Lost Boys’ • Warner Bros.
Of course, any discussion of vampires and sex worth having must credit the Queen of the Damned herself, Anne Rice.
Both the film and TV adaptations of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles – particularly Interview with the Vampire– are heavily erotic, populated by stunningly beautiful immortals, but only the small screen version features vampires actually having sex. Rice once said that her vampires transcend gender and are no longer capable of –or interested in– having intercourse after being turned. That doesn’t mean the vampires in Rice’s universe don’t get off, however; it’s just that killing and feeding replace fucking.
While the 1994 film version of Interview starring Tom Cruise as “Brat Prince” Lestat and Brad Pitt as his tormented protégé Louis is sexy enough, the desire-fueled tension between the two vampires is left relatively unexplored. By contrast, the current Interview series on AMC takes the dysfunctional couple’s relationship to the exact place fans have been desperate to see it go for decades…and the results couldn’t be hotter. Watching Sam Reid as Lestat and Jacob Anderson as Louis in all their fully realized naked undead glory is like witnessing the artful coupling of two Michelangelo sculptures come to life.
‘Interview with the Vampire’ • Warner Bros.
Though Rice died in 2021, a year before Interview’s television debut, her son, writer Christopher Rice, has been involved in the production – and it’s safe to say she would have approved of the direction it took, considering her opinion of perhaps the hottest vampire show to date: HBO’s True Blood.
In a 2011 interview with The Daily Beast, Rice praised the series (based on the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris) for its depiction of vampires as “primal, sexual beings.”
“I’m a fan of the show,” Rice said. “I see it as a logical part of it all. [Harris] has expanded the sexuality that’s inherent in that idea. I didn’t think of that, but as my books went on, I involved my vampires in more sexuality. But I couldn’t go as far as Charlaine Harris did, because I had said that my vampires can’t have sex; that the act of drinking blood is orgasmic for them. She’s doing it a different way. She’s saying that this blood drinker must also be dynamite in bed. Makes sense!”
‘True Blood’ • HBO.
Speaking of True Blood, one need look no further for ridiculously gorgeous vampires having all the sex, all the time, than this wildly entertaining (if ultimately uneven) show, which ran from 2008 to 2014. Vampires aren’t the only seductive supernatural creatures in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana – there are also werewolves, shifters, and faeries to contend with, just to name a few – but they are the sexiest of the “supes,” to be sure. As Bill Compton (a.k.a. “Vampire Bill”), Stephen Moyer fully inhabits the “vampire-with-a-conscience” persona, seducing Anna Paquin (on and offscreen) with just one iconic, Southern-accented word: “Sookie.” Playing Viking-turned-nightclub owner Eric Northman, meanwhile, Alexander Skarsgard could easily win the title of Sexiest Vampire of All Time. Whereas Vampire Bill follows in the tradition of Rice’s anguished Louis, Northman takes up the gleefully hedonistic mantle of Lestat…and looks like a Norse god in the process. (The fact that Sookie doesn’t choose Eric in the end might be the most unrealistic thing about this over-the-top fantasy, which is saying quite a lot.)
While True Blood’s time on TV is over – at least for now – the vamp-obsessed can at least take comfort in the fact that Interview with the Vampire is returning for a third season in 2026 (re-titled The Vampire Lestat). Our love affair with vampires will live on forever. Luckily, so will they.
