Latin lover is a stereotypical stock character, part of the Hollywood star system. It appeared for the first time in Hollywood in the 1920s and, for the most part, lost popularity during World War II. In time, the type evolved, developing various local variants and gradually incorporating attributes other than the originally defining physical characteristics.
Rudolph Valentino, the original "Latin lover", who epitomized the type
Charles Boyer, creator of the French lover cliché
Antonio Banderas, one of the latest incarnations of the type
Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella, known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle,
and The Son of the Sheik.
Valentino in 1925
Valentino as a boy
Valentino in an advertisement for The Married Virgin (1918) in which he portrays a villain
Publicity portrait of Valentino as Julio Desnoyers in the 1921 Metro Pictures production The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse