Hi-5: The Hottest Celebrity Smokers

Katherine Heigl

You wouldn't expect a clean-cut lady like Katherine Heigl to light up every once in a while, which is what makes it so special that she does; with most chicks who look great smoking, there's something about them that just fits with the image of a cigarette to their mouth: with Heigl, there's nothing at all. She looks like she should be teaching orphaned kids how to read or something, yet she enjoys smoking just like everybody else. Seeing someone as cute and friendly-looking as Heigl actually smoke is sort of a humbling, unusual, yet enjoyable experience.

It's also hot.

Keira Knightley 

I couldn't find a "real life" picture of her, but who's complaining? Not me, so long as she wears runny mascara. 

Keira Knightley uses different aspects of the cigarette look in different movies: in Domino, the idea of a frail British beauty holding a cancer stick is ironic to the point of being totally hot and badass, whereas in Atonement the cigarette fits her perfectly within the period. You can take a picture of Keira with a cigarette in pretty much any movie she's ever been in, and then turn that photo into a smoking advertisement with little to no photoshopping.

The girl makes cigarettes work in a myriad of different ways depending on the context, so more power to her.

Scarlett Johansson

There's a reason that Scarlett Johansson smokes in almost every single one of her movies: the woman looks fucking spectacular with a cigarette in her hand. Whether as the sexy moll in The Black Dahlia, the pretentious art student in Lost in Translation, or the sexy seductress in Match Point, Scarlett Johansson makes smoking hot in pretty much every way imaginable.

Given those huge lips of hers, the woman was born to hold a cigarette to her mouth. Just look at that above photo: some dude randomly took it with a digital camera, just by chance, and yet she still looks like a motherfucking supermodel thanks to the cigarette. Sorry, kids: cigarettes are cool, and they can make you look really hot, if you've got the face for them.

Scarlett Johansson has a face for them.

Kate Beckinsale

As hot as cigarettes are, one must admit that, often, the image of a makeup-less female celebrity sucking deeply on a small white stick can be less than attractive. What's surprising (and more than a little attractive) about Kate Beckinsale is that even while sucking and inhaling and potentially looking her worst, she still looks awfully goddamn pretty.

Not hot, necessarily. Not drop-dead beautiful. Just really, really pretty. Beckinsale is remarkable in that cigarettes, and the smoking thereof, have absolutely no effect on her attractiveness level; she's pretty without a cigarette, and she somehow manages to be pretty even when her cheeks are caved in with suction as she tries to get the last bits of nicotine out of a Marlboro. The potential inherent unattractiveness of cigarettes is in no way detrimental to Beckinsale's natural beauty, and that's pretty damned impressive in its own right.

Alessandra Ambrosio

Jesus, man. That's not a posed photo -- she looks like that in real life. If I'd wanted to point out how hot she could look posing with a cigarette for a photo shoot, I could have used this photo.

But... yeah. I mean, what is there to say that you can't glean for yourself from that picture? The woman looks incredible, and the cigarette only increases her attractiveness tenfold. She simultaneously looks cute, sexy, and gorgeous with that cigarette in hand, attributes that the aforementioned women can only possess one at a time, if at all.

In all honesty, it's sort of unfair to put Alessandra Ambrosio on a Hi-5 list; I mean, the other women look great, yeah, but they've got nothing on Ambrosio. It'd be like running four Olympic sprinters against The Flash -- they're all great, but one of the competitors is way out of their league. 

Anyway -- smoking is sexy. Don't believe what your parents tell you.