I was trying to quantify likability recently.

I thought it'd be fun to make a list of 'Most Likable Actors,' based purely on their perceived likability from watching their movies. But then I realized that the problem is that what I know about the actors personally from press tours and Hollywood gossip would color my selections. Some actors seem nice in movies but are also famously nice in person (Tom Hanks, for example), while others have been run down so thoroughly by the press that it's impossible to buy them as a nice person in movies anymore (Katherine Heigl, Megan Fox, etc.). I had to tryto mentally separate that out, which is harder than it looks. Here's the tack I took:

Pretend for a moment you are not a resident of Earth. You have never watched television, surfed the internet, or read a single newspaper (yeah, yeah, I get it, nobody on Earth reads newspapers either). You arrive in your spaceship and steal every movie and TV show ever made. While watching these movies and shows back in your cushy spaceship movie room, you determine you'd like to meet and hang out with some of the actors, the ones who seem nicest based solely of their performances. After all, some people seem likable even in unlikable roles, whereas others can't seem likable even when rescuing puppies from hot lava. If I were that alien, hanging around in my spaceship, here's the list I would come up with:

10. Ryan Reynolds

9. Nathan Fillion

8. Michael J. Fox

7. Neil Patrick Harris

6. Zachary Levi

5. Jorge Garcia

4. Jackie Chan

3. John Krasinski

2. Will Smith

1. Tom Hanks

For fun, I tried to think about the reverse. Here's the group the aliens would most likely try to kill.

10. Chris Cooper

9. Mickey Rourke

8. Jack Nicholson

7. Ray Liotta

6. Sean Penn

5. Jesse Bradford

4. Christian Bale

3. Steven Baldwin

2. Dane Cook

1. Matthew Lilliard