Who Are The Hottest On-Screen Santas Of All Time?

With the holiday season in full swing, adults across the country will be enjoying the festive period in many fun and exciting ways. 

That might range from donning the latest “Sexy Santa” outfit in an attempt to raise romantic eyebrows at Christmas get-togethers, to recovering from said holiday parties by Netflix-and-Chilling in front of the fire, with a Christmas movie marathon in full flow.

Christmas entertainment draws a broad range of fun debates every year, from which is the best Christmas Number One song; whether there will be a White Christmas; which is the outright best Holiday picture of all time; to which actor is the most authentic Father Christmas. 

And with a wealth of Hollywood heartthrobs providing their best interpretation of Saint Nick, some Mommies wouldn’t mind kissing some of the on-screen Santa Clauses that are on display, with many a rugged Hollywood star swapping their chiseled, tanned image for a festive Dad Bod in their efforts to give their best portrayals of Sant Nick.

With that in mind, one Festive debate that hasn’t been answered (until now!) is: who is the hottest on-screen Santa Claus? 

Top 20 Hottest On-Screen Santas

As we all know, beauty is subjective. However, with technology being an ever-increasing factor in people’s daily lives (and as a bit of light-hearted festive fun), researchers at Gambling.com turned to popular beauty measurement app Golden Ratio Face (which uses algorithmic technology to score facial imagery) to help determine, once and for all: who is the Most Handsome On-Screen Santa Claus!

Which Saint Nicks are rocking the Dad Bod to a tee?! And which Father Christmas has eaten too many mince pies in-between scenes?

Well, according to the latest beauty technology analysis, the research team at Gambling.com can reveal that it is Hollywood Legend Beau Bridges, who has been crowned “Hottest On-Screen Santa Claus”, with a scorching Santa Hotness score of 9.26, for his portrayal of Father Christmas in The Christmas Secret (2000)!

In close second place is Don Beddoe, who played Santa Claus in a 1967 Christmas episode of Bewitched, scoring an almost as impressive score of 9.23.

Clearly, the Bridges’ genes meant Hollywood Handsomeness was written in the stars, with first-placed Beau Bridges’ father, Lloyd Bridges, ranked third Hottest on-screen Santa Claus with a Handsome-Santa-Score of 9.06.

Making up the remaining top-five Father Christmas Hot Spots are Billy Bob Thornton who has been named fourth most handsome on-screen Santa Claus of all time with an impressive 9.02, following his appearances in Bad Santa (2003) and Bad Santa 2 (2016); and Andy Devine (9.01) who played Santa in a 1966 Christmas episode of Batman.

Other famous faces who made the Top 20 Hottest On-Screen Santa Clauses are Jim Broadbent (8.59); Hume Cronyn (8.31); a pre-Breaking Bad Bryan Cranston (8.28); and Kevin James (8.21).

The Santa Clause Narrowly Misses Out On Top 20 Ranking

Some surprise omissions from the Top 20 include Tim Allen at #22 (8.09) who is one of the most famous Father Christmas’ in his portrayal in The Santa Clause series; Kurt Russell who was tied with Phil Pierce for 24th place with a Santa Hotness score of 8.02; and Mel Gibson in 44th place with a score of 6.87.

Those who missed out on the Top 20 Hottest On-Screen Santa rankings shouldn’t feel too disheartened though, as according to the beauty facial recognition technology, a score of over 9.00 is deemed “perfect.”

Who are the Top 5 Least Attractive On-Screen Santas

So, with over half of the Santa Clause actors receiving scores of 7.00 or higher, it’s safe to say that this is one good-looking group of Santas!

It was bad news for WCW and WWE superstar Bill Goldberg though, who was the only Santa Clause actor in the study who (much like the festive weather) was deemed sub-zero by the beauty data algorithm. 

Maybe, it was his scary IMDB profile picture that gave him a bad score, but you can’t argue with the science, right?!

Methodology

The research team at Gambling.com used Wikipedia to identify every actor over the age of 18 who has portrayed Santa Claus on-screen (excluding voice actor-portrayals). 

IMDB Profile pictures from each actor were then used in conjunction with the Golden Ratio Face app. If profile pictures were not available from IMDB, the most appropriate image was used from manual Google Search.

A. Cameron Grant (I Love Lucy Christmas Show-1956); Jay Clark (Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny - 1972); and Douglas Campbell (Once Upon a Christmas - 2000) were not included in the study as pictures of each actor could not be found or didn’t qualify for assessment.

Downloaded by over one million users on their smart devices, Golden Ratio Face is inspired by the Golden Ratio of Beauty Phi - a measure of physical perfection according to ancient Greeks. Users are given the opportunity to upload portraits to the app and then they receive a ‘Face Beauty Analysis’.

The real Golden Ratio is approximately a score of 1.618, however the app has simplified matters to give users a basic score out of 10 on facial symmetries. It is incredibly difficult to achieve a high score though, as you’ll see in the results of the research we’ve conducted.