If Tay doesn’t want him, we’ll take him! Sean O’Pry set millions of hearts aflutter when he appeared alongside Taylor Swift in her just-debuted music video for “Blank Space,” the second single off her new album, 1989.
In the clip, the 24-year-old pop star falls hard and fast for the 25-year-old hunky male model, only to go totally berserk when he fails to live up to her expectations. (Among other things, she stabs a cake, slashes the portrait she painted of him, takes an axe to the tree where she carved their names, and smashes his car with a golf club.)
Swift wasn’t the only one who went crazy over him, though. After the video premiered on Monday, Nov. 10, O’Pry was everyone’s new crush — including ours! Below, check out five things to know about the sexy new star.
1. He was discovered on MySpace.
ForbesLife estimated in October 2013 that O’Pry made $1.5 million in 2012, making him “the most successful male model in the world.” His career has included campaigns with Giorgio Armani, Versace, H&M, Zara, and Hugo Boss, among others — and it all started, he told the mag, because a couple of top industry folks (including former America’s Next Top Model judge Nole Marin) discovered him on MySpace when he was 17 years old.
2. He auditioned to be Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie.
“I read for it,” the aspiring actor told Access Hollywood of the role of the S&M-loving billionaire, which went first to Charlie Hunnam and then to Jamie Dornan. Asked why he didn’t get it, given his undeniable good looks, he replied, “I think it was more the acting ability at the time.”
That’s something he hopes to improve upon in the future. “I’m in school for acting,” he told Vanity Fair. “I want to be well-accepted as an actor, not just [as] a prop…Doing this video really motivated me further.”
3. He’s a country music fan.
“I am from Georgia, and Tim McGraw is my favorite artist,” O’Pry told VF of whether he knew Swift’s music before he starred in her video. “And when this little girl released ‘Tim McGraw,’ yeah, I had teardrops on my guitar, not going to lie about that.” (Both “Tim McGraw” and “Teardrops on My Guitar” are songs from the “Shake It Off” singer’s 2006 debut album.)
He’s also a fan of her new, pop-y stuff. “The album is phenomenal,” he gushed of 1989. “You can listen to it from the first song to the last.”
4. “Blank Space” is not his first music video.
Back in 2012, O’Pry appeared alongside a number of other male models — including Simon Nessman, Jon Kortajarena, and Rob Evans, according to NY Mag — in a sexy clip for none other than the Queen of Pop, Madonna. He and his fellow hunks showed off their hot bods (and more!) in Madge’s homoerotic vid for “Girl Gone Wild.”
5. He restores cars in his spare time.
“[When I was] a kid, my grandfather had a beautiful mint green and white 1951 [Ford] F-100,” he told Forbes in 2013. “And I grew up looking at this truck. And there was just something about it.”
He was young at the time, though, so he never pursued cars as a hobby until much later in life. “When I finally did get something in my pocket, I started collecting,” he told Forbes. “My first car was a 1973 [Ford] Bronco, and then soon after that — not even a couple months [later] — I got a 1970 [Chevrolet] Chevelle.”
