Hookers We Love

With those cat eyes and that raspy voice De Mornay plays every straight high-school boy’s fantasy prostitute. She’s refined and beautiful enough to feel like a real catch, but also down-and-dirty enough to happily indulge in sex on the Chicago El train with her young client (Tom Cruise).

Despite being an opium-puffing madam in the foulest frontier town ever, Mrs. Miller (Christie)—a ball-busting career woman with a thick bramble of hair and delicate blue eyes—provides the only bit of beauty in Altman’s bleak rendering of the American West.

It’s Mercouri’s soulful exotic beauty and charm that make her character the most popular prostitute in the entire Greek city of Piraeus. So when the film, directed by her husband, Jules Dassin, a Hollywood blacklist exile, opens with her stripping down to a little bitty black bra and jumping into the ocean, it’s no surprise that half the town jumps in after her.

Arquette has never been sexier than she was in this Quentin Tarantino–written, Tony Scott–directed crime drama, as the hooker-girlfriend of raspy operator Christian Slater. She’s cupie-doll cute on the outside and sharp as a stiletto underneath.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not. As long as you don’t hurt me… more than I like to be hurt.” With that opening monologue from Fonda’s superslick call girl, Bree Daniels, we’re hooked. Although the movie is titled Klute — the surname of costar Donald Sutherland’s detective — it’s Fonda’s fearless (and sometimes topless) performance as Bree that makes it a classic. With her plucky confidence masking loneliness and a penchant for wanton self-destruction, Bree—clad in thigh-high boots and miniskirts—ranks as one of the sexiest and most complicated messes to ever spill out on screen.

As a wily prostitute looking to lead a more respectable life, Loren is in peak form playing opposite her frequent costar, Marcello Mastroianni, and director Vittorio De Sica makes sure to keep the camera positioned to catch her from the lustiest angles possible.

“She’s like a cool, beautiful, innocently deadly cat that people can’t keep their hands off,” wrote legendary film critic Pauline Kael of Louise Brooks. There was something modern about her, radiating a flapper-like sexual freedom that was rare on the screen. She fled Hollywood to Germany to make Pandora’s Box, which showcases Brooks at her seductive best as the showgirl Lulu, whose sexual decadence takes its toll on everyone who veers into her orbit.

As a glamorous call girl named Gloria Wondrous, Taylor got to utter this epic line: “Mama, face it—I was the slut of all time!” Even as Gloria’s appetite for sex and spirits causes her emotional unraveling, Taylor’s killer curves—accentuated in that instantly iconic white silk slip—make her as seductive as ever.

There’s one hot romp on a hotel piano, but what really makes Roberts’s star-making turn as a call girl sexy is the way she uses her huge smile, giddy laugh and angelic personality to turn the world’s oldest profession into a career every girl-next-door could aspire to. Having Richard Gere as a lovable, super-rich john certainly helps.

In this subversive masterpiece from Luis Buñuel, Deneuve plays a prim housewife with an active fantasy life who delves into prostitution while her husband is at work. Deneuve’s porcelain features and regal bearing juxtaposed against her character’s sadomasochistic cravings—she dreams of being bound and whipped—creates an unforgettably erotic mix.