Josh Duhamel Reveals His Pick-Up Line on Fergie

"The crush of a lifetime," and he nearly blew it, the Las Vegas hunk admits

Josh Duhamel nearly blew his chance with Fergie when the singer and her band appeared on his show Las Vegas, he says.

“After they finished rehearsing, I was walking out, and all of a sudden she was walking toward me,” Duhamel, 34, says in the July/August issue of Best Life.

“I was like, Oh boy. She stopped. And this is so sad, but I said, in this desperate voice, ‘You’re hot!'”

“The crush of a lifetime, and that was my line!” he recalls of the September 2004 encounter. “But then an interesting thing happened. She replied, ‘Yeah, I read InStyle. So … how was I in your dream?”

(Fergie, 32, told Playboy earlier this year: “I had read in a magazine that he had a naughty dream about me.”)

Now, the 6’3″ actor and the 5’4″ Black Eyed Peas singer have a new home together. “It’s a big house,” Duhamel tells Best Life. “A girl like Fergie comes with stuff – a lot of stuff. And there just wasn’t enough room for the stuff.”

As for why their personalities mesh, he says, “She’s a real total star. I’m more subdued than that. I’d rather sneak up on people. But that’s what makes us work. We have similar fundamental values. We both grew up in similar families. She’s just got a great soul.”