Weirdest/creepiest looking movie idol ever.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You don't find him good looking. That's fine. I am sure there are people who think that other leading men are not good looking. Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington probably all have their detractors.

You can criticize his looks but his eyes were not beady. Watch him in A Place in the Sun.

I never understood what was so beautiful about Elizabeth Taylor. I’m not saying she was unattractive but I just don’t get the hype.

Yeah, he doesn't fit any definition of classically handsome... yet he was fantastically photogenic! The camera LOVED him, at least before he smashed his face up and started drinking the pain away. He had a great deal of that mysterious quality known as charisma or "star quality", where when he's on screen he just draws the eye away from anyone and anything else. Burt Lancaster also had tons, but when they're on screen together in "From Here to Eternity", Clift has more.

He also seemed very transparent to the camera, as if you could see everything he was thinking and feeling, a rare and valuable quality in an actor. Director John Houston later said something like "It seemed like the camera could see right into his head, in a closeup you'd think that you could see the character's thoughts occurring in his head as they happened! But it was all an illusion, there was nothing going on in the man's head.".

That’s what a steady diet of Brompton’s cocktail will do to you. Especially apparent in Suddenly, Last Summer.

I watched both Top Gun movies recently, with Judgment at Nuremberg in between, and I was struck by how much Clift reminded me of Tom Cruise.

Not the acting, of course. When it comes to Clift's testimony, it doesn't matter how often I've seen that movie, I still cry. Cruise couldn't wring tears out of me if I were chopping onions.

you do realize his face was scarred from an accident.