Welcome to the first annual Official Horror Crush Database!
Since 2011, I have been paying homage to the beautiful and talented actresses who have contributed to the horror genre. Now, for the first time, I’ve gone back through the entire Horror Crush collection and compiled the numbers behind the crushes!
These results cover the 94 women who currently comprise the database, from the very first inductee, Jill Terashita, to the most recent addition, fellow Canadian beauty Laura Harris. This is an idea I’ve been playing with for years, but my recent seven-month hiatus and return to the site finally inspired me to go through with it.
Part One focuses on the more basic statistics and demographics of the database, giving us a look at the numbers behind these 94 actresses. Part Two will take things much further, diving into the fun, surprising, and sometimes downright wild facts and connections that came up during the research.
I think some of the numbers will surprise my fellow readers, while others will probably turn out exactly as you expected. Either way, there were definitely a few results that caught even me off guard!
So, sit back, enjoy, and let’s take a look at The Numbers Behind the Crushes!
🌎 Where Are They From? — The Countries Behind the Crushes
| Country | Actresses | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 United States | 67 | 71.3% |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | 8 | 8.5% |
| 🇦🇺 Australia | 4 | 4.3% |
| ❓ Unknown | 4 | 4.3% |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 3 | 3.2% |
| 🇧🇾 Belarus | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇫🇷 France | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇬🇷 Greece | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇲🇽 Mexico | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇵🇱 Poland | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇷🇺 Russia | 1 | 1.1% |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 1 | 1.1% |
| TOTAL | 94 | 100% |
It comes as no surprise that the US of A takes the top spot, since the majority of movies, horror included, come from us. That makes this result a given, so, instead let's jump right to:
🥈 Canada officially takes silver!
8 Canadian Horror Crushes = 8.5% of the entire database.
I definitely expected our friends up North to take silver. After all, their involvement in the genre and the fact that it is home to some of the most beautiful women in the world, made me confident of these results.
The Canadian contingent is:
- Jill Terashita
- Elisha Cuthbert
- Angela Featherstone
- Lisa Schrage
- Tara Spencer-Nairn
- Kristen Hager
- Sharlene Martin
- Laura Harris
And Australia takes bronze with 4:
This one really surprised me. And, yes there is while there is no denying that Australia not only has some gorgeous women but also also many actresses hail from the Land Down Under. Still, I had never realized just how many of them were in the database!
❓ Unknown: 4
You can think of these results as the actress equivalent of when The Ultimate Warrior would come out to wrestle and be introduced as being “from parts unknown!” 😂 Except this is real life!
In all seriousness, I had no idea the database contained this many actresses whose countries of origin are unknown. Then again, when you consider that some of these women are obscure even within the horror community, it actually makes a lot of sense. Some of these actresses have very little biographical information available about them, making their origins surprisingly difficult to track down.
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Lorraine De Selle being our sole Italian representative is honestly one of the most surprising results to me. Considering my love of Italian horror—and especially the women who appeared in those films—I expected Italy to have a much stronger showing in the database. It turns out that Italian horror productions often featured actresses from other parts of Europe instead.
It will be interesting to see whether this statistic holds up in the years to come as the Horror Crush Database continues to grow. Perhaps Lorraine will eventually get some fellow Italian company!
And now, we get to the classic battle of Betty vs. Veronica (vs. Cheryl)! It's time for the blondes, brunettes, and redheads to go head-to-head and see which hair color dominates the Horror Crush Database!
💇 Hair color
🤎 Brunette — 53.2%
💛 Blonde — 40.4%
❤️ Redhead — 3.2%
🎨 Multiple/variable — 3.2%
In other words:
🤎 Brunettes Win — This is honestly where the idea for this entire category was born, as I kept wondering which hair color was the dominant one in the database. It is fun to see brunettes come out on top. Yay for the Veronicas of the horror world!
💛 Blondes Take a Strong Second — They put up a good fight and came close, but ultimately our golden-haired beauties could not overcome the ladies with the darker locks.
❤️ Redheads Remain a Very Small Minority — We all love redheads, but unfortunately there just aren't that many of them in the genre. Just as natural redheads are rare in the real world, they are also a rarity in the cinematic world of horror.
🎨 Multiple/Variable Hair Colors — This small category covers actresses such as Jane Levy and others whose hair color has varied significantly throughout their careers, allowing the database to avoid forcing them into a single potentially misleading category.
And, now for another section that I have long wondered about, which is the era that not only dominates the database, but also where do the other eras compare to it:
📅 When Did They Rule Horror? — The Primary Eras of the Crushes
| Primary horror era | Actresses | Percentage of 93 |
|---|---|---|
| 🕰️ 1980s | 37 | 39.4% |
| 📼 1990s | 31 | 33.0% |
| 💿 2000s | 28 | 29.8% |
| 📀 2010s | 26 | 27.7% |
| 📼 1970s | 11 | 11.7% |
| 💻 2020s | 10 | 10.6% |
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It is also important to mention that these percentages intentionally exceed 100% collectively, because many actresses have legitimate horror credits across multiple decades. We are measuring database era representation, rather than assigning every actress to one—and only one—decade.
At the same time, an actress can have horror work spanning multiple decades, while her primary era represents the decade in which she had the largest or most significant concentration of horror work. Later credits can still contribute to her overall career totals without necessarily changing that primary-era designation.
In other words, determining an actress's primary era is essentially handled on a case-by-case basis, taking the full scope of her horror career into account.
And, now here is another fun bit of results as we look into what subgenre is the one that the most amount of Horror Crushes worked in:
🔪 What Kind of Horror Do They Love? — The Most Represented Subgenres
👻 Supernatural — 58
🔪 Slasher — 40
👹 Creature — 27
🤖 Sci-Fi — 24
😂 Horror Comedy — 21
🔥 Possession/Demonic — 19
🧛 Vampire — 18
👁️ Psychological — 12
🧟 Zombie — 11
🩸 Giallo — 3
Well... I was wrong. 😂 It turns out that the horrors of the supernatural world dominated the results, which was definitely not what I expected.
Equally interesting is another statistic that continues to baffle me: despite my love of Italian horror, there are only three giallo representatives in the entire database! That's pretty crazy in my book.
Well, that's for this part of the database numbers.
Be sure to stay tuned for Part Two, where we dive even deeper into the database for some truly fun, wild, unexpected, and quite literally WTF results! Trust me, this is where things are going to get really interesting. 😈
A Note on the Research: The statistics in this article were compiled from my Horror Crush Database and researched with the assistance of AI. It was used as a research and organizational tool to help analyze the data, cross-reference information, and crunch the numbers, while the final classifications, methodology, and decisions regarding the database remain my own.
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