January 30, 2009 | Celeb Watch

Hotties from the dark side

From Heinrich August Ossenfelder's poem 'The Vampire'  in 1748, to Bram Stoker's classic 'Dracula' in 1897, to the current teen-must-read 'Twilight' series by Stephenie Meyer, vampires are the rulers of the monster world. And they only get hotter on TV and the big screen.

The super straight Tom Cruise pulled off a convincing Lestat, Anne Rice's bisexual main character in 'Interview With A Vampire' (he even got to bite Brad Pitt's neck). Rice initially said that choosing Cruise was "so bizarre, it's almost impossible to imagine how it's going to work." She later confessed that "from the moment he appeared, Tom was Lestat for me."

A new breed of undead has been created in HBO's 'True Blood,' which is about vampires coming out of the coffins and fighting for equal rights in a human dominated world. Stephen Moyer plays Bill Compton, a fanged and brooding southerner with a crush on a human waitress.

And then there's the the whole 'Twilight' phenomena. Robert Pattinson has become a household name (amongst teen gals and gay boys, anyways) as the 108-year-old virgin, Edward Cullen. He's a lover, a gentleman, and somehow makes pasty white make-up look good.