April
8
Botox Backlash
I thought I was the only one. I see the likes of Meg Ryan, Courtney Love, Goldie Hawn, Melanie Griffith, Elizabeth Taylor and Cher and feel like I'm looking at the results of a science experiment. Partly it's because I know what they're supposed to look like. I hail the women who are willing to look their age, from Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren and Vanessa Redgrave to Julie Christie. Here's a fascinating WSJ story on botox and TV casting. Also, the web has countless sites, from TMZ.com's "Fake or Real" series to awfulplasticsurgery.com that are obsessed with how celebs mash their faces and bods. Who's fooling who? As every F/X master knows, the human eye can detect the slightest deviation from reality instantly.
Part of the WSJ story is posted on the jump:
Call it TV's Botox crisis. For the first time, Hollywood's addiction to cosmetic surgery is affecting how television gets made. Studios such as Fox have started doing more movie-style screen tests for TV roles, in part to see how overzealous cosmetic treatments will play on screen. In recent years, Warner Bros. has doubled its casting staff in foreign countries like England and Canada where Botox is less common. And writers, particularly for daytime shows, say they now sometimes write plastic surgery into roles to explain to audiences why characters have retreaded faces.Looking for Reality
"We try very hard for authenticity," says Marcia Shulman, Fox's executive vice president of casting. "If you're playing a mom you need to look like a mom. Otherwise it takes viewers completely out of the show." A rival studio says it made an offer to a star this spring on the highly unusual condition that she "lays off the injectibles." Ultimately, the actress lost the job when the network tweaked the script to call for a male character.
Both TV and the movies have been coping with the effects of cosmetic treatments and plastic surgery for years. But the problem is greater for television shows, because there are more close-ups. With the majority of camera shots in TV from chest to head, faces are more heavily scrutinized and harder to hide with lighting. As in movies, peer pressure and a cultural fixation on youth play a role in the Botoxing of the small screen. (While facial surgery and treatments are more prevalent among actresses, casting directors say that actors are also loaded up with injections.)
Even greater culprits are high-definition programming and the exploding sales of giant flat-screen TVs -- and not only because high def picks up flaws once fixable with makeup. High definition also cuts the other way, showing facelift scars, overly peeled and pulled skin and extra-firm foreheads. "The Botox used to be less noticeable but high def has changed that," says one network president. "Now half the time the injectibles are so distracting we don't even notice the acting."
Joel Thurm, who served as Aaron Spelling's casting director during the late megaproducer's "Fantasy Island" and "Love Boat" period, says high-def television shouldn't shoulder all the blame. As networks have grown more corporatized -- and as intense competition and rising costs have pinched profitability -- they have come to rely more heavily on "name" actors and actresses to lessen the risk of launching new shows.
"They used to take more of a chance on casting and if you made one or even two mistakes it wasn't the end of the world," he says. "It's drastically different now. The heads of drama and comedy at the networks are trying so hard to protect themselves that they want people with proven track records. Well, guess what: A lot of those folks have had a little work."
The shortage of "stars with no scars" has contributed to the increasing globalization of television casting. In years past, the major studios say they only went searching overseas as a final resort. Now the likes of CBS-Paramount Television and ABC Television Studio often scout internationally. NBC plucked a British star for the leading role in its high-profile "Bionic Woman" pilot; ditto for ABC and "Pushing Daisies," a drama about people who come back to life.
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To all those getting shot up, boobed up, lipoed out, and generally reshaped I suggest you listen to Lucinda Williams sing "The lines around your eyes." She never sings about "Your expressionless forehead."
Posted by: mitkid | April 09, 2007 at 12:49 PM
ha ha. It's about time people faced up to the fact most of these Hollywood people don't even look human. I would have nightmares if I was a kid and many of these alien looking women were playing a mother.
Posted by: Lesley Lawson | October 25, 2007 at 05:44 AM
The worst botox scenario is the show Dexter. Everyone look Neanderthal. I can actually see the needle marks in their heads. It is so distracting.
Posted by: dede dean | November 26, 2008 at 10:23 AM
in the movie "He's Just Not That Into You" - there is a scene with Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck - she looks great but all I could stare at was his obviously botoxed forehead as opposed to her natural forehead. It was freaky.
Posted by: Amy O | February 08, 2009 at 08:28 PM