Chris Evans Is PEOPLE's 2022 Sexiest Man Alive | PEOPLE

Hi, I'm Chris Evans and you are at People's Sexiest Man Alive photo shoot and apparently it's me, according to my mom. What went through my mind? My mom will be so happy. You know, it's, I mean, she's proud of everything I do, but this is something she can really brag about. It's something that as, you know, I become old and saggy that I can look back and say, I remember then. I mean, really, this would just be a point of like bullying to my friends. I mean, this is, you know, ripe for harassment. What would my middle school self think about this? He'd probably be pumped because this would probably be like the road to the cool table, which I was not at. I can't say that I was terribly good at sports. I played sports, you know, I played soccer and lacrosse. I wrestled, but it wasn't like that was my thing. That was just kind of something you did to fill the time. I think I did my first play in sixth grade. My older sister did theater. So, you know, whatever she did, we did. And it was just instantly something I knew I loved. And we started going to theater camp, which I'll tell you a little bit about me. But yeah, it was just, it was pretty kind of like a fish to water. I just loved it. And it started to be the thing that I wanted to fill my time with. First crush was probably maybe like Winnie Cooper, maybe Elizabeth Shue, maybe Punky Brewster. First kiss was, I think, Maggie Sullivan. I feel bad, you know, blowing her spot up here. Although I think I said it on a talk show. So I was in sixth grade, I think. There was a play, a middle school play, and I got one of the leads. So very magically, after getting the lead, one of the cool girls liked me. And what the cool kids did at recess was walk into the woods and kiss. First paid acting job was probably in seventh grade. There was a Boston casting director. College Pickman casting. I bet they're still going. But they would just do local jobs around Boston. And it was like some little commercial for a CD-ROM or something. As local as it gets. My closest friends are the friends that I've grown up with, kids that I've known since I was eight, nine years old. That's the beauty of my youth, that a lot of the kids that I grew up with all kind of stayed around Massachusetts and we're all still incredibly tight and we're all married and we have kids. I always feel bad for people in this industry who don't have the home friends. If your only friends were the ones post-career, post-industry, it would make me sad. I like that I have a group of friends who love me for me and remember me as exactly who I am and nothing to do with my resume. An early risk was saying yes to Captain America. I said no to it a couple of times and was really nervous about taking the job. It ended up being the best decision of my life. I can't even imagine what my life would have been like without it. That was a big risk that paid off. Oh my God, you'd be a real jerk to not enjoy it. You get paid to take care of yourself. This is what you do as a kid. You run around your backyard and pretend to be a comic book character. It's been one of the greatest choices of my life being able to dive in and prepare for these movies. They're challenging, but the beauty is the movies are great. I could do this all day. You get out what you put in. It's been a wonderful, very symbiotic relationship. I've been thrilled to do it. I think when the movies end, you're very happy to have a break, but very quickly you miss it. I miss it now, but yeah, I'm very grateful and very happy to have been a part of it. I haven't had to play a role like Captain America in a little while, so things like diet and workout regimen really haven't been on my radar for the past couple of years. I'm going to have to turn over a new leaf. It used to be for me, it used to be in good old days. I could just eat whatever I wanted, have a couple workouts per week, and be okay. That is not the case anymore. It's just not. If I have two beers, I wear it. So it's, you know, but that's good though. It forces you to kind of rethink, you know, the amount of water you're drinking, how many hours of sleep am I getting, and what's my general mental state. A hobby I wish I had? Woodworking. I really do love the idea of waking up on a Sunday, putting on some music, and just making something by myself. So for me, woodworking would be something that would really be, you know, some sort of carpentry, furniture making. Like, I'd love to have like a workshop and just, you know, just take time to do little repetitive motions of just kind of measuring, cutting, sanding. It just seems very therapeutic, meditative. I really like music. You know, I play a few instruments. I like singing. I like dancing. You know, it's, to me, it's what would you do if you were the last person on earth? Because I always think I, I like a lot of things, and so I always think I want to pick up new hobbies. But some of those hobbies I want just to be able to say I can do them. The things I would do if I were the last man on earth, I would sing. I would dance. I would want to work with wood, you know. So those are the things that I would pursue. And like I said, singing, dancing, music, those are things I do now and would continue to. Hi, dude. Look at you. I love the love my dog has because I love him the same way, you know. And the more love we can pile on him, the better. Good boy. All right. The amount of ones that I post are dwarfed by the amount of ones that I have in my phone. This is the man pulling the look off better than I ever could. He hates wearing things. Halloween, Christmas, even if it's just cold outside, he despises it. He's furious. I came into set one day on, on Grey Men, and one of the wardrobe people was laughing about how they had shrunk one of the shirts. And I said, you know what, can I actually keep it? Because I had already posted that thing with him wearing the sweater from Knives Out. I just thought how clever it would be when the movie came out if he wore it. You look great in it. Damn, what a good dog. My God. What a lucky thing, because you don't know. You don't know what you're going to get. Anyone who's a dog owner knows that it's a bit of a gamble. And I hit the lottery. Wife, kids, building a family. That's absolutely something I want, you know. When you read most of the best artists, whether it's actors, painters, writers, you know, most of them later in life talk about it wasn't about the work they made, it was about the relationships, the families they created, the love they found, the love they shared. So that's also something that through my experience, through my long 41 years, has also rang true, that those things are the most important. So yeah, I love the idea of tradition and ceremony. I had a lot of that in my life. So the idea of recreating that is, I can't think of anything better. I don't like to argue. I don't like to raise my voice. I don't like, you know, any forms of manipulation or, you know, I just think, what do I look for? I find a certain level of humility sexy, but that doesn't necessarily mean physically at all. Just, you know, I think it's very wise to recognize that you might not know everything, you know what I mean? It's wise to recognize that you could be wrong. It's wise and mature to be able to say, sorry, or I made a mistake, or just to be vulnerable and to not always be looking for the argument or looking to kind of take things to a combative argumentative place. That takes a lot of maturity. I find that very sexy. I mean, I think declarations of love are great. I love love, you know, I'm a bit of a sap like that. I like being sentimental. I cry pretty easily. I like all that stuff. So yeah, absolutely. I feel a deep sense of contentment with my life and my career. And as a result, I think that takes a lot of the weird pressure off in terms of how you're perceived in the opinions of other people. We have that saying, show me a content man and I'll show you a failure, which I think is such a strange perspective, because to me, being content is the ultimate goal. And by no means do I think my contentment is at my ambition. It's just kind of shifted my focus a little bit to things maybe outside this industry. I don't know, I've settled into a nicer phase where I'm just happy being at home.