Admiration and Envy: The Star-Power List.

Asked which celebrities they most admire and which they’d most like to be, guys seem drawn to money, power, and influence, according to a new study by Teenage Research Unlimited. Girls, on the other hand, prefer the fame and fortune of pop-culture icons.

Findings from the most recent TRU Study suggest that teens overall envy savvy business leaders. Nearly half of respondents (48%) named Bill Gates as someone they’d like to be, followed by Michael Jordan (35%), Donald Trump (33%), Tony Hawk (31%), and Oprah Winfrey (29%).

Girls placed Hollywood wild-child Lindsay Lohan at the top of their list of most-envied individuals, while bad girls Christina Aguilera and Paris Hilton also made it into girls’ top-five. Only one Hollywood celebrity made it onto guys’ most-envied list: 32% of guys said they’d like to be Ashton Kutcher, the actor and unlikely Tinseltown wunderkind behind MTV’s “Punk’d.”

In a separate question, teens claim they admire Michael Jordan (42%), Oprah Winfrey (34%), Bill Gates (30%), Muhammad Ali (30%), and George W. Bush (29%).

According to Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU) Trends Director Rob Callender, this list gives a hint of the priorities teens consider important as they look toward adulthood.

“Overall, teens tended to list top-dog celebrities as those they’d most like to be,” Callender says. “Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey are without question the best at what they do.”

More disturbing is the fact that there seems to be a gender divide between guys and girls, Callender says.

Guys said they most admire Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Bill Gates, Tony Hawk, and George W. Bush. Remarkably, though, the only female on girls’ most-admired list was Oprah Winfrey. Guys including Ashton Kutcher, Michael Jordan, Eminem, and George W. Bush accounted for the rest of girls’ top five.

“While guys seem to have plenty of role models they both admire and envy, girls show a sharp divide between the people they admire and the ones they’d actually like to be,” Callender explains.

The research is based on the responses of more than 2,000 demographically representative 12- to 19-year-olds. The TRU Study is the largest of its type, surveying teens on attitudes, values, lifestyles, consumer behaviors, and trends. Last year, TRU, which is based in Chicago, conducted 1,000 focus groups, in addition to many in-depth interviews and customized quantitative studies. Over the past 23 years, TRU has interviewed more than half a million teenagers.