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Like a heightened state of regular-people romance, celebrity romance offers its famous participants more of everything—more passion, more love, more cheating—and, should it ever be blessed enough to get to that point, far more artistry when it comes to popping the question. Patricia Arquette recently shared the creative circumstances surrounding Thomas Jane's marriage proposal, and while it was long in coming (the couple has been engaged since 2002 and have a three-year-old daughter), it was certainly worth the wait. From Page Six:

"It was in a public movie theater, and we were watching Charlie Chaplin's silent film 'Limelight.' The other people in the audience just acted like nothing strange was going on. It turned out that he had rented the theater," [...] "When I saw him on the screen proposing, I said 'Yes! Yes!' He had edited the footage into the movie. I had not suspected a thing. I had no idea . . . I think Thomas Jane is the most romantic man in the world."

Forgive us if that story hasn't just rendered us a shade or two more blush. We must concur with Arquette's assessment: Ignoring for a moment all the surely accidental "Little Tramp" connotations, her paramour's elaborate, Purple Rose of Cairo-inspired proposal lands Jane at the very top of our annual list of Defamer's Least Eligible But Most Romantic Ex-Bachelors, to be toppled only when a certain highly anticipated and overdue bended knee, JumboTron announcement thrills millions with the full-color enormity of its gesture of enduring fake love.

UDPATE: Several readers have written in to tell us that Limelight is in fact a talkie, not a silent picture. Considering the story comes second hand through the Page Six filter, we'll give Arquette the benefit of the doubt in this instance. (Unless of course she was so rapturously in love with her husband/bored with the movie she failed to notice.)