Letters to the Editor
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face acting
When you are a stage performer, you need to use your face, voice and body very differently than a screen performer. Stage performers need to telegraph their message to the upper balcony. So, gestures and vocal inflections tend to be bigger, movements more energized, and performances more physical. (Not to say that some fantastic stage can't be understated and sedate, but we're speaking in generalities).
With film, and especially tv, those tight-focus shots and quick-cutting close-ups require screen actors to act "from the neck up" a lot.
Onstage at Shakespeare in the Park, I might need my whole arm to sweep across my body, point to the door, and spit out "Leave!" But were I filming the same scene, I could communicate the same intention with a tilt of my head and the raising of an eyebrow, with a quiet but forceful "Leave. Now."
My point? Screen actors need to have mobile faces. They need to be able to smile, frown, leer, sneer, arch an eyebrow, twist a mouth, quiver a chin. If plastic surgery freezes their face into a still photograph instead of a fluid dance, then their work can be compromised. And that is worth remarking.
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Huh?
It's not nice to talk about the physical appearance of persons whose entire public life and career is based on their physical appearance? Suck it up, Nicole.
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I call them the puppet people
Because, like marionettes, their jaws and eyes move within a frozen wooden mock-up of a face.
If you want an interesting experience, watch some TV and movies from the sixties and seventies one weekend and really look at people's faces. Thirty years ago, even the most attractive actresses still looked like normal women you would see at the post office. They also actually looked different from one another, instead of like creepy customizations of the same basic template. The sight of naturally grown breasts is quite a shocker too. I hadn't realized how I'd gotten used to the sight of silicon chest orbs.
The men aren't immune to the "hot" phenomenon anymore either. Does anyone think the Gene Hackman of the seventies would get cast as a leading man anymore?
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Wrong approach
I've said it before in a variety of forums: if people really want to see the rush to plastic and cosmetic surgery slowed, they should be complaining to the networks and studios that refuse to hire older- and older-looking women, rather than complaining about the women themselves. A massive refusal to attend any movies or watch any shows produced by people who put pressure on woman to surgically preserve their youth will cause some change in the casting policies right quick.
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scary
During the writer’s strike I started watching old Dallas re-runs. One of the things you notice right off the bat is how normal women look. Sure they’re all beautiful, wear high heels, crazy outfits and tons of jewels – but their faces all looked normal and their teeth don’t glow that scary bright white. If you were to take some old episode of that show and compare it to a modern show full of rich and fabulous women the modern actresses start to look like great big, ugly bugs. It’s not a good look.
I know for a fact that Pricilla Presley was a beautiful woman – but she’s now completely deformed herself to the point I can’t look at her without it hurting my own face. And it’s so sad because she should be this elegant lady. It’s really strange that this plastic look is becoming normal on TV – I think more people should start talking about it and those freaky looking actresses should be told they look bizarre.
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Lonnie Anderson's Face
The other day I happened to see, or be forced to focus on because it was right in front of me in the supermarket check-out line, Loni Anderson(Burt Reynolds ex if I don't have her name right). There beside her new face(and bod!) was a pic taken more than twenty years ago. She now looks sort of like a cross between Peter Pan and Pamela Anderson. Terrible. The marionette methaphor is apt. One of the things about these faces, and there certainly seem to be more, is the lack of warmth. Its all about appearance. And yes, it does need to be considered by critics when us theater goers/DVDers spend half the movie wondering, not about the movie, but the star: Is it Real? The nose? The breasts? The smile? Eeks!
Like something out of Orwell's 1984. Ah, but vanity....
Now please, can somebody answer a question: Meryl Streep?
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Bah!
"sagging jowls and smile lines are perfectly normal -- and attractive -- traits."
Normal, yes. Attractive, no. Men & women have gone to some amazing lengths through out history to stay younger looking. It's not a modern thing and it's not an American or Western thing it's part of human nature. Face it, the quest to appear youthful will always be part of the human experience only the technology used to achieve that goal is going to change. So cap the moralizing , thoughts of tapping some sweet Judi Dench booty and focus on something that actually matters.
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I hate the plastic face look!
I hate all the plastic looks. Sure some is worse than others, like Pricilla Presley and Janice Dickinson, just really really bad, verging on Skeletor looks. All I do is stare at how bad it looks, even if technically the skin is tighter and the breasts are higher.
It's never going to stop because there are always going to be people who can't accept the passage of time and the cycle of life. They don't want to give up the beauty and youth and freedom of their 20's and 30's or they don't want to accept that they are 50 and menopausal or whatever the issue is. Or they hate the sagging places and just figure they'll have a doctor nip and tuck it. While there will be people who accept that you go through phases in life and the best thing to do is just accept that you are no longer in your 20's and 30's and 40's and leave all those experiences to those who follow behind you.
Plus let's be realistic, we rarely watch any movies with men past 50 or 60 in them either and the only ones who make it work are people like Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, DeNiro and Pacino, who've all had face lifts. I'm unsure about Harrison Ford, plus I'm fairly certain hearing a lot of ridicule aimed at Stallone for his 60 yr old Rocky and Rambo and I'm pretty sure steroid boy isn't above botox and spray tans. So the older men in Hollywood aren't exactly getting away with not visiting the surgeons office either or not being made fun of for not acting their age.