Glamor vs. Good Acting on TV | Golden Skate

Glamor vs. Good Acting on TV

Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Does anyone else here watch Drop Dead Diva? It's a semi-fantasy, on the Lifetime network, about a rather bubbleheaded pretty young model who dies and returns in the body of a very smart lawyer who is not slim. With that premise (and one of the best titles ever), the show explores (in a light-handed way) ideas about identity, facades, and body image. I was looking forward to the new season, and then the show announced that a guest role would be played by Kim Kardashian. Ick! I am thoroughly sick of that entire bejeweled tribe, who are famous for being famous. I was tempted to boycott the show. But I'm so glad I watched last night because otherwise I would have missed a real actress showing how it's done. One of the law firm's hard-luck clients was a pint-sized granny-aged lady with a temper. I was half watching when I suddenly realized that this woman was Patty Duke. If anyone remembers, she was a child actress who won an Oscar at the age of 14 (ice skater age!) in The Miracle Worker, playing Helen Keller. She's also won at least one Emmy and a Golden Globe, and has served as the president of the Screen Actors' Guild. These days she does mostly character parts, and if you look at her, you see why. She's about the same age as Goldie Hawn, who now looks like a girl of sixty. By contrast, Duke has let her hair go gray--here it was white--and she wears it short. No flowing hair extensions. Her face has every wrinkle she has earned through a strenuous life. Just imagine: an actress who wants to portray realistic human beings. She illuminated every scene she was in, and I was heartened to see her.

Over on NCIS, I noticed a bit of the same thing. Mark Harmon has allowed himself to go gray (and doesn't it look dazzling on him), but even nicer, Jamie Lee Curtis also appears with short, gray hair. Among them, these performers show that there's more than one way to be a knockout.
 

Tonichelle

Idita-Rock-n-Roll
Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2003
Jamie Lee Curtis has allowed her "real age to show" for years. Diane Keaton's another one that thumbs her nose at the in crowd.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Yes, I've noticed that about Keaton. Another refreshing face.

One of my favorite models years ago was Cheryl Tiegs. Such cheekbones! Recently I saw her on TV, and I was distressed to notice that she had that strange puffy mouth--what's it called, "trout pout" I think. She looks awful. If she'd aged normally, she'd be beautiful, in a different way from when she was in her twenties, but beautiful. Has none of these surgically smoothed-out ladies ever seen a Jessica Tandy movie? I can't completely blame them; they're in a brutal business. But it's dissatisfying nonetheless.
 

Tonichelle

Idita-Rock-n-Roll
Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2003
I think the botox lips and facelifts are disgusting actually. Those that have done major work done aren't pretty to me at all.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I agree. That's what's so sad. I mean, the basic goal of acting is to portray people, and some of these people end up looking less like people--certainly they don't look as if they can express emotions. Not beautiful at all.

Here's a portrait by one of my favorite artists, Thomas Eakins. It shows his wife. She's got some years on her, but she also has the radiance of human experience. No plastic surgeon's embalming techniques can match that.

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&h...w=140&start=0&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:77
 

PolymerBob

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 17, 2007
I have noticed for many years that most women on TV shows are beautiful. That's not the way it is in real life.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I have noticed for many years that most women on TV shows are beautiful. That's not the way it is in real life.


My favorite example of that: on Law and Order for a long time, the consecutive assistant DA's were all former models: Jill Hennessy, Carey Lowell, and Angie Harmon. I don't know about subsequent ones, but all of those were, I think. I'm fairly sure that's not how it is in the real New York DA's office.
 
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