Plastic surgery is ruining Hollywood, and most movie stars don’t want to talk about it

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TThis month, Netflix is ​​releasing a movie with a very famous movie star who performed some of the most horrific plastic surgery I’ve ever seen on a man. This actor has been around for a few decades, but his face is relatively new. His cheeks are fuller. His jaw is unusually square. His skin had a strange sheen to it. Given how we talk and don’t talk about celebrity “edits,” I can’t name this guy or the movie he’s in. But when you and your family gather around the TV this Christmas and watch one of the leading Oscar nominees, at least a few of you will be asking the same thing: “Did he do something?”

Watching a modern movie or TV show is to see a sea of ​​often identical faces that have been pulled, modified, and injected. It’s regularly distracting and out of proportion, contradicts what we already know about the characters (isn’t anyone going to talk about the Marvel superhero who looked like he got a massive jaw implant between sequels?), and is sometimes also historically inaccurate (they had Botox) and fillers in age Oppenheimer? Who knows?!).

It’s not something that’s discussed outside of gossip blogs and your desk at work. There seems to be a code of silence in modern critical discourse, whereby elective plastic surgery is unfairly lumped in with discussion of appearance or weight – two topics that are rarely relevant to any legitimate kind of criticism, and all too often become a pointless vehicle. . rude. But when a heavy lick of Botox not only limits an actor’s ability to emote, but takes you out of the movie entirely – isn’t it right to call it that?

A real test of this kind of discourse occurred in 2007, when noted film critic Stephanie Zacharek saw Noah Baumbach’s black comedy. Margot at the wedding She came up with one main idea: “What did Nicole Kidman do to her face?” In her review published in Salon magazineZacharek acknowledged Kidman’s insistence at the time that she was “completely natural,” before writing: “It’s disingenuous to pretend you haven’t noticed any change. Kidman’s skin is undoubtedly beautiful. But it has turned to its greatest limit, a limit beyond which it cannot extend.” Several sentences were devoted to a scene in the film in which Kidman made a “huge effort” to “trim her forehead.”

Even now, wherever you stand on the accuracy or importance of Zacharek’s criticisms, it’s hard not to wince at the audacity of publishing these ideas. For some reason, it seems more brutal when it’s put so eloquently, compared to a sensationalized headline on the sidebar of a tabloid’s infamy. Or annoyed by some random guy on X/Twitter named BonerDude92.

Zacharek’s review generated intense controversy at the time of its publication, and is often associated to this day – as is the magazine’s re-evaluation of Kidman’s career. BuzzFeed In 2017 – with a spate of online cruelty in the Noughties that we seem to be seeing all too well now. You won’t see much of that in recent reviews of the latest releases. But Zacharek had some right, if not with Kidman — who is so good at what she does that she can act from under a block of wax and still look great, frankly — then at least with the creeping expectation that we should get used to actors acting somewhat mummified.

There are, of course, understandable reasons why movie stars seek cosmetic treatments — a brutal Hollywood, a system built on ageism, sexism, and rampant paranoia, where someone younger and more beautiful is always waiting to take your place. But there has to be a happy medium, where actors can temporarily inject themselves with whatever they like for red carpets and photo shoots, but also allow the effects to settle or dissolve by the time the filming location is decided upon. Nothing is more devastating to a film’s credibility — and often to an actor’s sheer talent — than a star fighting through layers of an injectable substance. And for the love of God, at least be open about it if things go wrong.

I was pleasantly surprised, for example, when it was done earlier this year Sex and the City Star Kristin Davis admitted she’s had work done, which makes talking about it less problematic for all of us. I spent a lot of the first season watching the show’s sequel And like that Davis had a distracted face, which looked artificially different in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Davis is a wonderful actress, and the changes in her face — which also affected her comedic flexibility and ease on screen — made me sad. Talking to TelegraphDavis admitted she had to dissolve her fillers after they went wrong, adding: “I’ve been ridiculed relentlessly. I’ve been in tears over it. It’s very stressful.” She said that originally no one told her that her lip injections “didn’t look good… and luckily I have good friends who eventually said that.”

Once I read Davis’ interview and started watching And like that In season 2, I stopped noticing the work she did. Since I had context — that it wasn’t intentional, that Davis knew it went wrong and made him feel bad about it — it didn’t bother me anymore. I didn’t feel like an elephant in the room and no one was addressing it at all. It also made me realize that the problem with a lot of cosmetic surgeries done by celebrities is the mystery surrounding it all – that sense of knowing. something It’s different from the face of someone you’ve been observing for years, but can’t quite recognize.

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Plastic surgery or other types of cosmetic maintenance are not things to be ashamed of, and it doesn’t demystify Hollywood glamor to admit that your face was sculpted not by the gods but by Dr. Ayllift, MD. But context is important! If you’re starring in an expensive Oscar movie shot decades ago, you might as well avoid looking like a living Instagram nominee. Or at least we admit it, so we can all avoid those lengthy debates about which parts of an actor’s face are real and which are toxic.