Botox vs. Drama

Many people watched the Academy Awards last week and noticed that Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock never changed her expression. New York Magazine asks the question, if you can’t move your face, can you still act with it? Aging Hollywood stars have always resorted to plastic surgery, but Botox injections are faster, cheaper, and less invasive -and they have become almost required for an actress to look young enough for starring roles. How has this affected the art of acting?

Some actors appear to be underplaying their characters, consciously making them cool, without affect. If you can’t move your face, why not create an undemonstrative character? Others have taken the opposite approach: On two cable dramas starring actresses of a certain age, the heroines are brassy and expansive, with a tendency to shout and act out, yet somehow their placid foreheads are never called into play. Usually, when a person reenacts a stabbing or smashes a car with a baseball bat, some part of the face is going to crease or bunch up. Not so with these women. As though to compensate for their facial inertia, both perform with stagy vigor, attempting broad looks of surprise or disappointment, gesticulating and bellowing. If you can’t frown with your mouth, they seem intent on proving, you can try to frown with your voice.

The bright side is that public opinion may eventually turn to a preference for naturally aged thespians. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Hannah Whitaker)