# Vain actors **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 7, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963 "2010-09-07T20:57:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/1 "2010-09-07T20:57:22Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/2 "2010-09-07T21:18:26Z")
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”. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/3 "2010-09-07T23:41:43Z")
I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but I once watched a Lifetime biopic about the life of soap opera star [Deirdre Hall](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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! ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/4 "2010-09-07T23:50:27Z")
All actors are vain. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/5 "2010-09-07T23:56:49Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/6 "2010-09-08T00:07:47Z")
> [@The New and Improved Superman](#): > > 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! 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. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/7 "2010-09-08T00:25:28Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > > [@The New and Improved Superman](#): > > > > 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! > > 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_](http://www.newsweek.com/1995/05/14/under-water.html) 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. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/8 "2010-09-08T00:28:54Z")
> [@The New and Improved Superman](#): > > 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. Was she auditioning for _Driving Miss Daisy_?😛 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/9 "2010-09-08T00:35:27Z")
[QUOTE=Robot Arm] But Pancho deserved, and got, her own movie. Who did they get to star? Valerie Bertinelli. [/QUOTE] 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 [Jeanne](http://www.smwc.edu/news/blog/media/3/Jeanne%20White-Ginder-web.jpg)was played in movies by thin and attracive and cultivated seeming [Judith Light](http://www.labelscar.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/Judith-Light.jpg), 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!” ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/10 "2010-09-08T01:35:53Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/11 "2010-09-08T02:15:28Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/12 "2010-09-08T02:17:15Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > 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? 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_ ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/13 "2010-09-08T02:29:37Z")
Somewhat related: [Leslie Jordan](http://orlandotheater.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/leslie.jpg), 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](http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=theatre&sc2=features&sc3=&id=41841) but he’s told the story several times. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/14 "2010-09-08T02:54:41Z")
All the stars of [Fantastic Voyage](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060397/) were incredibly vein. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/15 "2010-09-08T03:53:09Z")
**One Million Years B.C**., Raquel Welch. I expected a _Homo erectus_ and I got the foxiest _Homo sapiens_ ever. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/16 "2010-09-08T04:28:01Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/17 "2010-09-08T05:05:46Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > All the stars of [Fantastic Voyage](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060397/) were incredibly vein. 🙂 Boooooooooooooo… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/18 "2010-09-08T13:11:24Z")
> [@Kythereia](#): > > [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_ 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. ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/19 "2010-09-08T13:31:26Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > **One Million Years B.C**., Raquel Welch. I expected a _Homo erectus_ and I got the foxiest _Homo sapiens_ ever. Raquel Welch could _make_ a homo erectus. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963/20 "2010-09-08T13:33:49Z")
In the book, Carrie White was a fat, unattractive high school student. In the movie, Sissy Spacek was none of that. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vain-actors/552963.md?page=2)