She looks great in pictures and on TV but a few years ago I saw her up close and...holy hell. Like I said, I'm terrible at this game of "Did they or didn't they?" but it is painfully obvious how much work she's had done when you're right in front of her. It only makes me more curious about what some of these other celebrities would look like in person. I would hope I don't visibly cringe.
This reminds me of when a friend of mine met Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Lange last year (or the year before), for professional reasons. He told us afterwards that JL's face up close would knock you over with a feather, it's so awful. And it makes it worse that she used to be so stunningly gorgeous.
This breaks my heart because (1) I flove her in AHS; and (2) I was happy that she seemed to be growing old gracefully. I don't know who does her makeup, but s/he deserves a medal.
She looks great in pictures and on TV but a few years ago I saw her up close and...holy hell. Like I said, I'm terrible at this game of "Did they or didn't they?" but it is painfully obvious how much work she's had done when you're right in front of her. It only makes me more curious about what some of these other celebrities would look like in person. I would hope I don't visibly cringe.
This reminds me of when a friend of mine met Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Lange last year (or the year before), for professional reasons. He told us afterwards that JL's face up close would knock you over with a feather, it's so awful. And it makes it worse that she used to be so stunningly gorgeous.
I just want to "squee!" over someone meeting Barkshnikov. I love that man. He is the only "celebrity" I would really want to meet.
This reminds me of when a friend of mine met Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Lange last year (or the year before), for professional reasons. He told us afterwards that JL's face up close would knock you over with a feather, it's so awful. And it makes it worse that she used to be so stunningly gorgeous.
I just want to "squee!" over someone meeting Barkshnikov. I love that man. He is the only "celebrity" I would really want to meet.
Ha ha ha ha...that's so funny that you said that, because friend's wife and I were both like "UM WUT" when he casually mentioned that he spent a couple of days with them, when he went to NY to work on his play (Baryshnikov's foundation had awarded him a grant). And we then proceeded to squee and OMG profusely. Friend was all "Him? The guy is tinier than a pin!" And then about 20 middle aged females pounced on him for criticizing him.
I just want to "squee!" over someone meeting Barkshnikov. I love that man. He is the only "celebrity" I would really want to meet.
Ha ha ha ha...that's so funny that you said that, because friend's wife and I were both like "UM WUT" when he casually mentioned that he spent a couple of days with them, when he went to NY to work on his play (Baryshnikov's foundation had awarded him a grant). And we then proceeded to squee and OMG profusely. Friend was all "Him? The guy is tinier than a pin!" And then about 20 middle aged females pounced on him for criticizing him.
So funny!
He is just so talented and seems like he would be really interesting to talk to. It doesn't hurt that he is also handsome (sexy), and that accent!
Main point: we haven't really seen RZ for a decade. All our faces change in a decade, but because many celebs are in the spotlight, it happens slowly and we don't see it - - like seeing our friends age vs. somebody we only see at reunions.
There are a number of pics of RZ from the intervening years, and... well... it looks like she's aging.
Main point: we haven't really seen RZ for a decade. All our faces change in a decade, but because many celebs are in the spotlight, it happens slowly and we don't see it - - like seeing our friends age vs. somebody we only see at reunions.
There are a number of pics of RZ from the intervening years, and... well... it looks like she's aging.
I appreciate the point that RZ is a victim of the Hollywood mistreatment of women, but I think the author is being charitable. Eyes do not open up as they age; they sink and get smaller. If you look at older folks, many of them have hooded eyes because everything has dropped. Hers are not only more open now, they are a completely different shape.
In any event, I hope she is happy with her appearance and is rolling her now-much-bigger eyes at the uproar. Given how little makeup she wore, I'm assuming she was feeling pretty confident in her appearance (I wore a fuckton more makeup the other day just to do lunch duty. @smorriso would have been proud of my intense cranberry and cherry-chocolate eyes), so more power to her.
she's also apparently learned how to smile with her eyes open.
OK, but comments like these are why people get plastic surgery to dramatically alter their faces. She clearly had an eye structure before (hooded eyes) that gave her that look. It was distinctive, yes, but that is what makes people individuals.
I find all of this incredibly sad. Trying to look/stay young is one thing, but fixing our "flaws" with the knife is just so sad.
This is a great piece. I feel sorry for her because she really can't win, like so many actresses in Hollywood (and nearly all of them over the age of 40).
When Jerry Maguire hit theaters in December of 1996, 27-year-old Renée Zellweger was tagged as Hollywood’s new “It Girl.” By January, Toronto Star lifestyle reporter Judy Gerstel was praising the actress’ staying power: “In a business that regards lovely young things as a raw, renewable resource—witness Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler of recent memory—Zellweger is here to stay.” But by March, Gerstel had replaced Zellweger with another young blonde: Hope Davis, she wrote, was “This year's Renée Zellweger.” Wasn’t Renée Zellweger supposed to be that year’s Renée Zellweger? “It Girl” is both a welcome and a warning shot.
Actresses who receive the label are said to possess an ineffable quality that defies the vocabulary of even the most competent critics. Gerstel pegged Zellweger as a “beguiling concoction of wholesomeness, ingenuousness, vulnerability and sensuality.” And in her review of Jerry Maguire, New York Times critic Janet Maslin praised Zellweger’s “open, eager, unconventionally pretty face,” and noted that her “fetching ordinariness” was somehow “quite extraordinary.” The word these writers were searching for was young.
When the now-45-year-old Zellweger appeared at Elle’s Women in Hollywood awards Monday night, she earned a new set of mysterious qualifiers: “utterly unrecognizable,” “drastically different,” and “suspiciously puffy,” the Daily Mail said. Zellweger’s transformation was so alarmingly obvious that Gawker covered the event by simply publishing a gallery of Zellweger shots, each accompanied by the incredulous caption, “Here's a picture of Renée Zellweger,” no other commentary needed. Surgeons who have not treated the actress are comfortable getting more specific while hawking their wares: Zellweger, they say, is now a beguiling concoction of “blepharoplasty,” “Botox,” and “fillers around her nasolabial folds.” One plastic surgeon told the Mirror that the procedures had “opened up her eyes and face dramatically.” Zellweger’s face is again open, but now it's too eager.
Plastic surgery is upsetting to watch. The tautness of Botox and the bloat of injectables provide visual proof that actresses are more valuable for their youth than their humanity. Stars rework their faces until they are neither pretty nor unconventional, at which point they are discarded. The alternative—where former female stars age direct to DVD, then quietly retreat from IMDB—is easier for us to stomach, as there’s nothing to see. But when fallen It Girls like Zellweger re-emerge in middle age with radically retooled faces, we can't look away.
It only took a few years for Zellweger’s “unconventionally pretty face” to be recast in the public imagination as just plain ugly. And let’s be clear: Zellweger would not have been praised for “aging gracefully” had she showed up Monday night un-nipped. In Hollywood, “aging gracefully” is a euphemism for “good plastic surgery,” the kind that successfully skirts an unarticulated line between sagging and frozen. (See: Sandra Bullock.) Character actresses like Melissa Leo can grow into great careers later in life, playing hard, complicated broads, but our baby-faced ingénues are specifically prized for their youth; it's nearly impossible for them to “get better” with age. (See also: Meg Ryan.) Zellweger's last critical hit came out in 2005. Hollywood discarded her a long time ago. So now, she’s returned looking nothing like the old Renée Zellweger—you know, the actress nobody wanted to look at anymore. Can you blame her?
When 81-year-old Kim Novak took the stage at this year’s Academy Awards, viewers harassed her for the plastic surgery that had turned her once-beautiful face into a poorly constructed mask. To hammer home the point, commentators compared photographs of Novak in 2014 to glamour shots she took in the 1950s. They did not, of course, compare her to the faces of other “normal” 81-year-old women. You don’t see many of those onscreen. Plastic surgery is fake. So is the Hollywood fantasy where women over 40 just don't exist.
Well, here's hoping she can do a Mickey Rourke and get some really good roles. I honestly don't think I had realized she had been gone from the scene for so long.
I actually think Mickey Rourke is a great analogy. Yes, I do hate (despise) the culture that encourages ladystars to do this ("aging" = good plastic surgery, etc) BUT, I think that the publicity that this is getting is because she looks like a completely different person. Who knows why she did this or if she even did anything at all...but it's just a shock to see someone look like they got a face transplant. At whatever age!
I know that when I am thinner my eyes look more open when I smile. My whole face puffs up when I am heavier and my cheeks look a lot like hers. I think overall she looks a lot thinner too.
In short, there is something wrong with a culture (and an industry) that values women primarily and hugely for their youth and youthful beauty, but when a woman tries desperately to keep her youthful beauty, it's worthy of ridicule and shame. It's like we want women to either magically naturally look 30 when they are 55, or else they ought to just disappear completely after they turn 40 because they're no longer worth anything to us.