Yet another movie was ruined for me this week by the inflated lips of the leading actress. I cannot take any character seriously who has paid someone to inject who knows what into her lips, inflating them until she cannot close her mouth or properly enunciate. I need a back-story to explain why the character made that utterly bizarre choice, why she is a woman of low self esteem and high ambition.



I understand why the actress did it, the pressure to conform to some mythological photographable archetype is very strong in Hollywood. More and more men and women are succumbing. Hair plugs for men, weaves, cheek implants , false chins, dental veneers, on top of nose bobs, hair dyes, skin peels. If you've got the money and the time and it's important to you - sure go ahead. But when actors DO do it, they have lost me forever. Every role they play is for me a resident of planet Hollywood no matter how much the writer, director or the other cast members try to suggest otherwise.

Years ago, though I had enjoyed Pat Conroy's book, when I watched the movie version of Prince of Tides, I could not get over Barbra Streisand's manicure to get to her pivotal part in the story. It completely held me outside her characterization of the intellectual and empathetic therapist. I KNOW how long it takes to have nails like that, how much it costs, how unnatural they are, how vain it is, how useless those long false attachments make one's hands. No intellectual do-gooder could consider it time well spent . Ruined the film for me. And that was just a manicure.

Cosmetic facial alteration has become so commonplace in a certain sector of America that what might have been called ghouls fifty years ago are now commonly presenting on television or acting in the programs and movies. If people feel the need to present a false face to themselves and the world, that is their right I suppose. I don't understand it myself. But forever after, whatever role they play will be changed by that decision.

Don't producers and directors notice how weird they look, how unlike the rest of us humans who still have the old fashioned skin and bones we were born with?

Copyright 2006 Fiona Jackson