Oh, Brave New World! Of Hollywood and Plastic Surgery

I’ll admit it: I’ve been traumatized. Every time I turn around, another of my beloved actors has had “work.” Last time I watched the Academy Awards, more than two years ago now, Antonio Banderas was slapping Melanie Griffith on the butt and saying, “I like her sexy.” Sexy, fine. But at fifty, did she have to look twenty-five? The woman’s face was nearly unrecognizable; her lips looked like they’d been stung by a nest of bees.

Everyone is having “work” nowadays. Even stars I never thought would stoop to it, like Michael Douglas, Meg Ryan, or Anthony Hopkins. While I'm not certain about Hopkins, the last time I saw him, he looked like a wax replica of himself. And we won’t even talk about Joan Rivers, who has morphed into a deranged twelve-year-old. One by one, our stars are being Jokerized, like the grinning citizens poisoned by Jack Nicholson in Batman.

I would like to believe that we, the viewing public, are not entirely responsible for our actors’ need to remain young, that we are not shallow narcissists, incapable of watching our favorite stars age. Instead, I believe that some people might have a lot to gain by convincing us that we are. Dr. Arnold Klein, one of Beverly Hills’ most celebrated dermatologists — known for creating the kind of swollen-lipped mouth that looks like an altogether different female body part — has gone on record as saying, “If we had movie houses filled with actors and actresses who were ugly, no one would come to the movies.”

Those surgeons who partake of a $9.5 billion industry have a great deal riding on that remark. But is it really true? Would we all walk away from the movies in disgust? Personally, I liked the wrinkles around Anthony Hopkins’ piercing eyes. I liked Meg Ryan’s laugh lines. These aging beauties looked real. Yes, Meg Ryan was adorable in the 1980s. She had an inimitable ingénue charm. But do we always and forever need her to possess that inimitable charm? Must our beloved actors, once successfully packaged, remain like so many frozen peas in the back of our psychic freezers?

One might argue that actors have always been vain, and that audiences have always loved youth. Female actors in particular have had a rough time in Hollywood. Back in the old days, all but the top female stars would be forced into retirement once they lost their sex appeal. Indeed, the “has been” actress — that pathetic, abandoned creature chain-smoking in the dark and picking up young boys in seedy bars — became a cliché, institutionalized in such Hollywood classics as Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve.

But there were exceptions, actresses who, whether through wisdom or sheer disregard, gave us the profound honor of seeing their life spans on celluloid. Bette Davis did not remain a society girl with a brain tumor (Dark Victory) her whole life. Ingrid Bergman moved from her role as the stunning spy in Notorious to the crafty old biddy in Murder on the Orient Express. Katharine Hepburn did not stay a coltish jock to Spencer Tracy’s burly coach in Pat and Mike. No, she evolved to become the compassionate, finely-wrinkled mother in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

How are our stars ever going to become compassionate, finely-wrinkled mothers (and fathers) if their faces look like mockeries of youth? The plastic surgeons’ knives are not only cutting out our stars’ valuable patina of the past, but altering their faces for future roles as well.

Article Author: Jodi Daynard

Jodi Daynard's essays and short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Harvard Review, Other Voices, and in several anthologies. To read more about her, go to www.daynard.com.

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