If you grew up in the 90s, you definitely had a crush on someone from these 10 movies

If you were a 90s kid, your first crush probably lived in a movie theater.

They flashed across the screen with frosted tips or a center part, wore flannel or silk slip dresses, and made you feel things you didn’t yet have language for. We didn’t swipe—we rewound. We memorized monologues. We quoted them at lunch until our friends begged us to stop.

Here are ten films from that era that practically manufactured 90s crushes. I’m not ranking them—this is nostalgia, not a competition—but I am owning up to a few of my own along the way.

1) Clueless (1995)

“Ugh, as if.” The line that launched a thousand eye-rolls—and, for many of us, a lifelong crush on someone in a yellow plaid skirt or a laid-back college boy with suspiciously perfect hair.

Clueless took Jane Austen’s Emma, dropped it in Beverly Hills, and gave us Alicia Silverstone’s Cher and Paul Rudd’s Josh—two archetypes that defined 90s magnetism: earnest charm and effortless cool.

Even if you didn’t want to be them, you probably wanted to date them. 

Micro-memory: I had a friend who started calling every minor inconvenience a “full-on Monet.” We were unbearable. But that’s the point—this movie rewired how we flirted, joked, and clocked chemistry.

2) Titanic (1997)

You can argue all day about the door—but you can’t argue with the cultural takeover. Titanic turned the world into a collective crush machine. If it wasn’t Leo’s floppy hair, it was Kate’s fierce softness.

Jack drew; Rose smirked; we all imprinted. The film was a sweeping romance that made grand gestures feel possible and steamy handprints feel like destiny. It also became many people’s first cinematic “ugly cry,” which has its own intimacy.

3) 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

The stadium serenade. The paintball date. Heath Ledger’s grin. Julia Stiles reading the poem and cracking her own voice. This one was adolescent longing distilled into a high school hallway.

For a lot of us, it set the template: you can be sharp, stubborn, and still get the person who sees you. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the sweet underdog? Instant formative crush. 

A guy in my school tried to recreate Heath’s bleacher scene for the spring talent show—borrowed the marching band and everything. Security didn’t love the unsanctioned field invasion, but the moment he slid on his knees during “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” the auditorium basically proposed.

The girl he liked didn’t date him (timing), but she said something like, “That’s the first time I felt seen in this place.” Those movies didn’t just give us crushes—they gave us scripts for bravery.

4) The Mummy (1999)

This is a two-for-one crush starter pack: Brendan Fraser as a rakish adventurer and Rachel Weisz as the bookish-but-fearless librarian.

It’s action, banter, and whip-smart sparks.

If your type is “competent and kind,” this movie ruined you (in a good way). People talk about chemistry like it’s intangible; here it’s practically a special effect. 

5) Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Baz Luhrmann gave us glitter-stained tragedy, gunfights labeled “SWORD,” angel wings, and the kind of balcony scene that made your chest ache.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play young, reckless love with a vulnerability that feels radioactive.

For a lot of 90s kids, this was the first time Shakespeare didn’t feel like homework—it felt like lust, sweat, and fate, all in one. 

6) The Craft (1996)

Maybe your crush wasn’t the prom queen; maybe it was the outsider with chipped black nail polish and a spine of steel. The Craft made room for a different kind of crush: the girls who didn’t ask for permission, the ones who wore boots and gave you goosebumps with a smirk.

For many of us, Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Rachel True, and Neve Campbell—individually or collectively—shaped what magnetism looked like outside the mainstream. 

7) She’s All That (1999)

Say what you want about the makeover trope; this movie minted crushes like a factory. Freddie Prinze Jr. played the golden-boy jock with a conscience; Rachael Leigh Cook turned “art-girl with paint on her overalls” into an era-defining vibe.

And yes, we all knew she was gorgeous before the glasses came off. The point was how seeing—really seeing—someone changes everything. 

8) Scream (1996)

Horror crushes are a thing. Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott is the blueprint: resilient, wary, brave.

Then you’ve got Courteney Cox as hyper-driven reporter Gale Weathers and Skeet Ulrich with that “is he trouble or just misunderstood?” energy.

The 90s were quietly excellent at giving us characters who could run, fight, and still make your stomach drop with a half-smile.

9) The Matrix (1999)

You can pretend your crush was purely philosophical, but we all know how this worked: Keanu Reeves in a long coat, Carrie-Anne Moss in sunglasses doing that lobby run.

Neo and Trinity were sleek, efficient, and intimate in a way that made competence look impossibly hot. If you walked out of the theater and bought a black trench coat, I hope you’re thriving. 

10) Cruel Intentions (1999)

Toxic? Yes. Unforgettable? Also yes. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Reese Witherspoon made Upper East Side scheming look like opera. It was a movie that taught a lot of us the complicated truth that attraction doesn’t always align with good judgment.

But the charisma here is undeniable: icy smiles, sharp tailoring, and a soundtrack that branded itself onto our teenage hearts. 

I once watched this with a group of friends who were all older siblings. After the ending, nobody spoke for a minute. Then one of them said, “That was the first time I realized a person can be magnetically attractive and profoundly bad for you.”

It wasn’t a moral lecture; it was a revelation. Some crushes teach you about chemistry. Others teach you about boundaries.

Why these movies hit the way they did

Looking back, it wasn’t just faces or fashion. It was archetypes we were meeting for the first time—sometimes the first time in ourselves. The gentle rebel. The smart romantic. The chaos agent who would burn it all down. The best friend who’d been the right person all along. These films gave those archetypes clothes and playlists—and then they gave us permission to claim them.

They also taught us how attraction works beyond the obvious. We learned to fall for the way someone moved through a scene. The tiny acts: a character waiting, listening, apologizing. The line deliveries that weren’t flashy but landed in your chest like a small, precise meteor.

And honestly? A lot of these crushes were about being seen. So many 90s protagonists looked at each other with clear eyes and said, in words or subtext, “I recognize you.”

Whether it was Cher cluelessly becoming less clueless, or Neo choosing Trinity over the prophecy, those moments made thousands of teenage brains light up. It wasn’t just “they’re hot.” It was “they get me.” That feeling tends to stick.

Honorable mentions (because how could we not?)

I promised ten, and I’m sticking to it. But if you felt a pang for characters in The Sandlot (Wendy Peffercorn hive, rise), Casper (Devon Sawa’s brief human reveal basically caused a generation-wide fainting spell), or Can’t Hardly Wait, you’re in good company. The 90s were generous like that.

The point of all this

Crushes seem trivial until you realize how they contour your taste—sometimes your ethics.

These films weren’t just posters on a wall; they were practice runs for the real thing. We learned what pulled us in, what pushed us away, and how to spot the difference between chemistry and compatibility.

If any of these titles made your heart race, that’s not an accident. You were there. You rewound the kiss, memorized the monologue, and tried a haircut you could not pull off. Same here. That’s the legacy of 90s cinema—messy, earnest, and still surprisingly alive in the people we’re drawn to today.

And if reading this made you want to rewatch one (or all) of them, I support this important scientific research. Just, you know, keep tissues handy for Titanic. Some things never change.