Sentimental Stars Many Hollywood Celebrities Confess To Having A Romantic Side

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s time to take another fling at romance.

When it comes to romance, it’s usually our favorite movie star who first sparks our interest in affairs of the heart.

But how romantic are celebrities in real life? How do they see themselves? Are they the stuff of Shakespeare’s sonnets, or are they more Snoop Doggy doggerel?

Matthew Perry, one of TV’s tight-knit gaggle of “Friends,” thinks of himself as one romantic guy.

“I’m a person who sends flowers, opens doors. I invited somebody to come to my house, and I filled the house with lit candles and little notes and stuff like that. All for the same person, but unfortunately that’s no longer happening,” he sighs.

Perry, who plays the endearing wiseguy on “Friends,” is proving just what an amorous fellow he is in his new movie, “Fools Rush In,” where he comes off like a young Jimmy Stewart.

The movie manages to be both hilarious and touching, not an easy combination in an age where romantic flicks are considered as hip as Restoration comedy.

Perry inked the headlines when he became another in a long parade of escorts for Julia Roberts. But the female who rated the lighted candles and sweet nothings was not Roberts, he says. The most romantic thing anyone ever did for him was to name a star after him, which might be apropos since it looks like Perry’s star is in full orbit.

Andie MacDowell is an incurable romantic who thinks her husband, Paul Qualley, is the most gallant swain in the world.

“Just before Christmas we cross-country skied under the full moon up to a tree in the forest,” she recalls.

Qualley had placed a generator next to a tree and decorated it with dozens of lights. He turned on the switch and the tree lit up, and under the tree he had a blanket with a picnic basket with wine and cheese and my Christmas present. … No husband can be more romantic than that.”

But John Travolta thinks he’s a close second. He proposed to his wife, Kelly Preston, in Switzerland at midnight on New Year’s Eve. She wasn’t expecting it.

“I convinced her it would be months, maybe years, before I’d even consider the idea (of marriage). She so beautifully accepted that; she wasn’t disappointed. It was a setup, you see,” he grins.

Barbra Streisand thinks she’s a romantic person, too. But her idea of the perfect date sounds pretty tame: “A romantic evening is having our food in bed and watching TV, putting on video. That’s romantic to me.”

Tim Allen (“Home Improvement”) says he’s not as romantic as some: “I like a good love story, though.” Allen says his wife, Laura, makes up for what he might lack in the romance department.

“She calls me up sometimes in the middle of the day and says, ‘I just wanted you to know I love you.’ I say, ‘Right at this moment?’ And she says, ‘Yeah.”’ “Evita’s” Antonio Banderas is considered one of the most romantic leading men to come along since Robert Redford.

“I think I’m a really romantic person for real,” he says, “I feel like that. And I think that’s not a good thing in our days.

“I think people have to be more practical in our days, and being romantic is something you have to carry, because you are very attached to different things, and often you have problems.”

He says he thinks the most romantic thing you can do is “to be really in love, with honesty.”

Meg Ryan opts for the practical over the poetic.

“I’m not romantic,” she says. “Given the choice of being a practical person and a romantic person, I think I would err more to practicality. I’m extremely unsentimental. I don’t save stuff. It’s horrible, but it’s true. We waited four or five years to marry.”

How do you know when you’re in love?

“I don’t think it’s a decision,” Ryan says. “I think it’s a fact. Only in my experience you just go, ‘Oh, no, I can’t believe it. It’s not matching up on the checklist right now.”’

Lauren Hutton admits to being romantic occasionally but thinks men are far more romantic than women.

“They’re big girls,” she says. “All good men are big girls. We’re so practical. That’s why we should be in government. That’s what we were evolved to do. … to govern, because what governing is is caretaking, thinking way down the line. …”

Bruce Willis and Demi Moore have managed to keep the romance alive in their nearly 10-year marriage. Willis tends to be circumspect about that.

“People say, ‘Oh, you have this storybook marriage.’ BS. I don’t have this storybook marriage. We argue and kiss and make up. It’s like a little garden that you have to tend all the time.”