Sometimes you see a movie where a character is (accroding to logic and/or the film script) supposed to look crummy but the actor looks gorgeous, and it messes up the plot.
Example: I saw the 1980 prison move BRUBAKER the other day, starring Robert Redford as the prison warden who enters the prison he’s going to reform by pretending to be a new inmate. In the initial haircut scene, there’s some buzz about prisoners bribing their way out of a shaved head, and one of the reforms Redford later institutes is banning the humiliating shaved head as a form of discipline (?) In any case, he slips the barber a bill “just to take something off the ears,” but in the rest of the movie, he’s got his typical Redford head of golden fairly long hair. (Someone on IMDB called it a “John Edwards” cut, which is about right.) Obviously as the star, Redford drew the line at actually cutting his hair so the movie would make sense.
Other examples of a star’s vanity interfering with the plot of the movie?
I don’t know if it was vanity or if it was a conscious decision by the producers, but Terrence McNally’s play Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune is about an affair between two middle aged not-particularly-attractive people. For perspective, when it premiered off-Broadway it starred Kathy Bates as Frankie, later replaced by Rosie Perez when Bates went off to film Misery.
The movie starred Al Pacino- considered sexy by some certainly but, in middle age at least, not traditional matinee idol as Johnny, so no problem there. Frankie was played by a 33 year old Michelle Pfeiffer, who in addition to being far from plain in real life no attempt was made to “plain her up”.
I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but I once watched a Lifetime biopic about the life of soap opera star Deirdre Hall. The movie (which starred Hall as herself) depicted the ‘real life’ travails of the actress in the years between stints on “Days of Our Lives.” In the movie version of her life, she decides she’s had enough of being a soap star and wants a ‘real life’ and therefore quits the show, despite the producers begging her to return to the show. I raised my eyebrow at that, but can’t refute it.
But the real howler was when Hall is coming back from an audition for a TV role and sighs to her agent “They said I was too young.” At that, I burst out laughing. Hall was (and still is) strikingly beautiful, but in the movie she’s clearly in the 40 year old age range. I can’t believe she was turned down for a part because she wasn’t old enough.
And in an entirely different incident, while directing Waterworld, Kevin Costner reputedly spent thousands of dollars (on an already wayyyy overbudget flick) on CGI effects to have his hair look thicker!
In the 50’s, the test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base used to hang out at a bar/dude ranch run by a woman named Pancho Barnes. She was one of the first female pilots; did a bit of air racing and barnstorming. In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe describes her as not very attractive, and in the movie of that book she’s played by Kim Stanley as a no-nonsense, slightly foul-mouthed broad.
But Pancho deserved, and got, her own movie. Who did they get to star? Valerie Bertinelli.
I’d like a cite for this, because WW came out just 2 years after Jurassic Park and the technology was nowhere near sophisticated enough to execute such nuanced “fixing” as you allege.
Newsweek did report that Costner had his hair touched up digitally in Waterworld but Costner has denied it. Hudson Hawk came out 4 years before Waterworld and there was a lot of talk that Bruce Willis’s hair was touched up in several frames in that film as well. This was also denied by the studio citing the cost involved.
Edit: the CGI technology wasn’t great in the 1990s by any means, but they could still do things like add “more dark areas” to the top of a person’s head with about the same effort as removing the thick wires used in stunt work. It probably wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny with today’s hi-def viewing technology.
Movies do this all the time. A prime example is Jeanne White-Ginder, Ryan White’s mother and an early AIDS activists after her hemophiliac son contracted HIV+. She is- and I truly mean no disrespect in saying this- obese and with little by way of formal education or sophistication. I think it actually makes her story more moving that she didn’t have looks or credentials or the like to get her message out but she did and remains a major voice in the movement. Conchata Ferrell or Patrika Darbo would have been good choices to play her in the TV movie about her life.
In the movie Jeannewas played in movies by thin and attracive and cultivated seeming Judith Light, as if Hollywood thought that an overweight woman with a thick midwest accent was unbelievable in the role. (In real life Light [by all accounts I’ve read a super sweet person] and White-Ginder became very good friends during the shooting.)
I loved the scene in Soap Dish when the producer (of a soap opera for those who haven’t seen it) is shooting a scene in which the heroine (Sally Field) is working a soup kitchen and complains “Can’t we get some better looking homeless people!”
On Mad About You, Helen Hunt refused to wear any sort of pregnancy padding until her character was nearly ready to pop. Don’t wanna look fat, you know.
It’s very common for actors to look much better than the real people if the movie is based on a true story. In Goodfellas the real mafia guys looked nowhere as good as Ray Liota, DeNiro, etc.
Are you asking about characters who are supposed to be homely, but the actors/directors/producers didn’t care about making them unattractive? Or are you asking about actors who deliberately didn’t want to be unattractive in the role?
Because if the latter, I’m… actually having a hard time coming up with examples. Hmm. ponders more
Somewhat related: Leslie Jordan, the tiny gay actor who had a recurring role as and won an Emmy for playing Karen’s closeted nemesis Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace, replaced Joan Collins of all people for that role. In the character’s first appearance she (because it was a woman) was to be played by Collins and there was to be a fight scene in which she and Karen pulled each other’s wigs off. After contracting to do it and doing read throughs Collins sent word that no way was she going to allow her wig to actually be pulled off (she wears a wig in real life and didn’t want fans seeing her without it) and absolutely refused to relent.
Leslie somehow got the heads up from an insider that the show needed somebody to replace her fast and got to the studio and brought the house down with an only slightly rewritten role.
Here’s a cite but he’s told the story several times.
Are you sure it’s the actors’ fault? It seems to me that only the beautiful are cast in Hollywood in the first place, at least, in leading roles. Are we sure the director just didn’t want to make the star that the producers had paid so much money for look less attractive?
Now, it seems like prr is okay with examples where it could work either way, but I just thought I’d raise the question.
More “actors who deliberately didn’t want to be unattractive in the role” who, like Redford, opted to look chic though the role (or the plot) calls for them to look dowdy.
