Not to be outdone by a fluffy celebrity magazine’s sexiest man alive and their annual sexy men issue, more cerebral site Salon.com has some hotties for thinking women. Topping the list is Robert Downey, Jr., a former trainwreck bad boy who managed to reboot his career and is now an unapologetic star.

He was once arrested while driving naked in a Porsche, he’s done jail time for drugs and has cycled in and out of rehab — and yet still we love Robert Downey Jr. We find him wildly sexy not just because he is a rogue, but also because he is a romantic hero in the flesh, a bad boy brimming with goodness. Even in his darkest days (remember the time he wandered into a stranger’s house and fell asleep on the bed?) we wanted to see him make it back to us with all of his intelligence and wit and charisma intact…

But Downey himself is never “just a dude playing another dude.” He is an actor “forged in a cauldron of his own genius,” as Jack Black teased at the MTV Movie Awards earlier this year. He’s been dancing around the void for a long time now, pouring his self-destructive intensity onto the screen, his beautifully chiseled features now weathered just the right amount by the passing of hard time. Even Oprah looked like she might melt when she interviewed Downey and his then-fiancée (now wife), producer Susan Levin, a few years back.

This year’s Sexiest Man Living goes to Downey because he breaks our heart, onscreen and off. He wears his age and experience like a badge of honor and looks comfortable in his own gorgeous skin. The buzz is that Hollywood is looking for an excuse to give him an Oscar this year or next. To give him Salon’s highest accolade, we don’t need any excuse.

[From Salon.com]

Other top hotties include Presidential Elect Barack Obama, Michael Cera, Javier Bardem (who Kaiser noted was notoriously missing from People’s online slideshow of sexy), SNL’s Seth Meyers and Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar who works as college professor in his off time. In fact all of Salon’s sexy men have qualities that an intelligent fangirl can admire. An educated do-gooder trumps a chiseled douche any day.

You can read more about Salon’s sexiest men living on their website.