Is Botox ruining cinema? | Dazed

In her thought-provoking book Trophy Lives: On the Celebrity as an Art Object, Philippa Snow observes that “there is something self-abnegating about the desire to be a very famous person, requiring a saint-like level of devotion to personal transformation, sometimes extending to mutilation and self-sacrifice”. The “mutilation” that Snow is explicitly referring to is plastic surgery, and while we don’t have the statistics to showcase the number of celebrities who have resorted to cosmetic surgery, we do know that a number of them get work done – from the celebrities who have different faces and hairlines every few months, to the fact that more and more of them have been transparent about their cosmetic work over the last few years. 

Because of their incredibly public-facing jobs, where they are subjected to intense scrutiny on and offline, celebrities engage in acts of mutilation as a way to assert some control over their constant surveillance. They are also constructed (by their teams and the press) to be recognised as God-like figures, even when they do not desire to be seen as such. Still, they follow the rules to maintain relevance, admiration and, ultimately, their careers, moulding, breaking and rigorously altering their bodies in the search for perfection. However, invasive or non-invasive cosmetic surgeries can come into conflict with what made them famous in the first place, especially if they’re actors. 

“I loved Wicked, but I was so distracted by Ariana Grande’s performance as Glinda because her face didn’t move during the film,” a friend complained after watching Jon M. Chu’s Wicked late last year. This wasn’t the first time my friends and I have had this conversation after watching a piece of media recently. While everyone on my timeline raved about Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, the American romantic comedy show starring Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, I could barely get through the first episode. In part because I thought it was cringe, but also because I was so distracted by how much Bell’s face had changed from when she was on NBC’s The Good Place from 2016 to 2020. In The Good Place, Bell is mouthy and emotive as Eleanor Shellstrop, but in Nobody Wants This, her face is tight and snatched as she plays Joanne. This became even more apparent when she shared the screen with Brody (who seniors her by only one year), whose crow’s feet and forehead wrinkles are deep and prominent – and I wasn’t the only person who noticed this either.

Beyond being distracting, Botox and fillers can significantly impact the believability of an actor’s performance. An actor’s main job is to convey to the audience the emotions, thoughts and feelings the character is experiencing and tweakments block the face from producing the expressions and micro-expressions which help portray these. They also hinder believability when portraying characters from the past. For instance, Dakota Johnson’s role as Annie in Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1817 novel, Persuasion, faced harsh criticism not only for the film’s poor portrayal of Austen’s work, but because critics believed Johnson had “iPhone face” – a face that has not only seen an iPhone before but has been impacted by modern beauty standards prevalent on smartphones. As a result, viewers find it difficult to believe that such characters belong to a different era.

The use of Botox and filler by actors has been a topic of conversation for a long time. In 2003, Amelia Hill wrote an article for the Observer titled, “Actors warned to keep off the Botox”. In the piece, she writes: “Botox injections and collagen implants have become so widespread in the British film industry that producers and directors are refusing to employ actors who have fallen under the thrall of the so-called pretty poison”. At the time, directors such as Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann complained that “Botox is so popular among actors that they are no longer able to act with facial expression”. 22 years later, the “pretty poison” problem is far more widespread among the Hollywood elite, with films now including plastic surgery storylines and using actors’ own relationship with cosmetic surgery to enhance their narratives, from Halina Reijn’s Babygirl to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. This situation is already arguably confining talented performers to roles of characters who have undergone plastic surgery or are perceived to have had access to it, such as Nicole Kidman, who, in recent years, has been typecast as the sad, affluent wife accustomed to cosmetic procedures.

While actors having work done is a more normalised fact of acting now, it still worries casting directors like Emily Brockmann. “It is now actually quite unusual for actors to have not changed their faces as they reach a certain age threshold. I would say it’s mostly the 40s plus category,” she tells Dazed. “Botox and filler give you a very specific look, and I do think the general public is much more attuned to it now because it’s becoming much more prevalent in society. And that’s where I think it becomes difficult. It doesn’t lend itself to the credibility of the role. It detracts from not only the performance the actors are giving but also the part they’re playing. It doesn’t ring true, it feels quite false.” It’s not surprising that Brockmann has noticed that some actors’ performances feel false, as it has been reported and hypothesised that Botox not only removes visible signs of ageing (as well as signs of happiness and frustration) but also impairs one’s ability to convey and feel certain emotions.

Botox and filler give you a very specific look, and I do think the general public is much more attuned to it now because it’s becoming much more prevalent in society. And that’s where I think it becomes difficult. It doesn’t lend itself to the credibility of the role – Emily Brockmann

Even with all of this in mind, Brockmann is sympathetic to the plight actors face nowadays, particularly women who are pressured to look ageless and are punished professionally when they don’t. In a recent interview with the Guardian, actress Keeley Hawes remarked that roles for midlife women are slowly improving but are still not great. By the age of 38, Hawes was cast as a grandmother, and now, at the age of 48, she is playing a retired hitman in the upcoming Amazon Prime thriller series The Assassin. Unlike their male counterparts, women “age out” of younger roles incredibly quickly (and when you’re a person of colour, gendered ageism hits harder), which leads many actresses down the road of cosmetic surgery or considering it by the time they’re in their mid to late 20s. To many of them, it doesn’t feel like they have any other choice. 

30-year-old actress Zoé is considering getting Botox for this exact reason, but feels deeply frustrated by how hypocritical the film and TV industry is regarding how they want actors to look. “If you listen to any professional in the field, from make-up artists to actors to directors, everybody claims that a natural look is best, that ageing is beautiful, and Botox is fake. There are so many concerns around Botox making you look fake or desperate, and nobody wants to give a desperate woman a job,” she remarks. However, at the same time, “we see the faces of the people who get to work through different decades and they all have work done”.

So, where do we go from here? Many of us have noticed the negative impact Botox and fillers have on an actor’s performance, and it can feel like there’s no way out of the twisted hellscape they exist in. Actress Annice Boparai believes that “The acting industry always has and always will be an industry where you are cast largely on your appearance. I don’t think that will ever change”. She continues: “But I think the narrative around ageing is what needs to change. We need to carry on writing better roles for older women and celebrating the beauty found in age rather than erasing it.” And she’s right; the acting industry has always been about appearance. In the 1930s, several Hollywood starlets swallowed tapeworm eggs to lose weight, and Marilyn Monroe had work done on her chin-line. An excellent solution is to write better roles for ageing people, particularly for women. But could more be done to change the way we view acting primarily through the lens of aesthetics? 

In 1955, Elia Kazan, director of several culturally and historically significant films and plays such as Pinky (1946), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (1955), wrote what is known as “The Actor’s Vow” – a pledge that an actor took (and still take to this day) before performing on stage to commit fully to their craft. He wrote: “I will take my rightful place on the stage, and I will be myself. I am not a cosmic orphan. I have no reason to be timid. I will respond as I feel; awkwardly, vulgarly, but respond. I will have my throat open, I will have my heart open, I will be vulnerable. I may have anything or everything the world has to offer, but the thing I need most, and want most, is to be myself.” Who adheres more to Kazan’s vow than those who allow themselves to be themselves, to live in the discomfort of their own bodies and to let the world see them as they are? Is this easier said than done? Of course. But what’s the alternative? Either we all have the same perfect teeth, immovable foreheads and Eurocentric features, or we could fight for difference, vulnerability and the chance to truly have our throats and hearts open for the world to see.