Celebrity Romance Fiction We'd Like To See

Simon Cowell may have triumphed when British women were asked which celebrity they would most like to see featured in a romantic novel, but we think we can do better! Our dream scenarios?

In a way, we can see why Cowell would beat out Johnny Depp and Jake Gyllenhaal. Okay, not really, but we get the principle of the thing: who doesn’t love romances in which the curmudgeon is tamed, often by an adorable child? So we guess that explains his 17% of the vote, since we don’t generally like our heroes in skin-tight mock-turtlenecks.

If we were choosing real-life dudes, we’d be more inclined to go with the following:

George Clooney. If you’re gotta go Hollywood, doesn’t the unavailable perennial bachelor make the most sense? In this case, our heroine is probably some kind of nurse or physical therapist, very no-nonsense and impervious to his charm, who’s forced to live with him in sexy isolation for a month. Love ensues.

Benicio del Toro stars in a historical: a tortured, brooding marquis in a secluded castle, he’s vowed to devote his life to vengeance. But when a scrappy, practical spinster with an anachronistic knowledge of chemistry shows up in the middle of a blizzard, his secluded existence will never be the same…

Johnny Iuzzini. A strong-minded food critic, our heroine find herself trading zingers and barbs with the hotshot pastry chef, who’s just a little too arrogant for his own good! But hard feelings melt like chocolate as the one-time adversaries become collaborators on a cookbook…and then more than just colleagues…

Tim Gunn. The silver fox who seems to have everything is secretly lonely. And when a talented, wounded designer of a certain age decides to take one more shot at glory on Project Runway, both men, who thought they could never love again, find themselves taking another shot at romance.

Kanye West. He’s the most infuriatingly arrogant man she’s ever met! But when a crack publicist is hired by the notorious loudmouth, sparks fly — and not just of anger!