Hot Take: Actors Should Wear Fewer Prosthetics in Movies

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 1, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 1, 2023 |

Acting is a difficult skill to judge. In my field, it’s often the hardest part of reviewing a film, trying to convey to an audience the nuances and seemingly simple gestures that bring a performance to life. Opinions can wildly differ on what makes a great piece of acting tip from fascinating to cringeworthy. Those who tend to downplay things face being dinged as ‘boring’ or not acting at all. So, we see a lot of the most forceful and vocal performances getting the most attention, partly because we can at least tell that a lot of work has gone into the process. We like to see the labour, the sheer sweaty craft that reveals the true struggles of acting to the world. What better way to do that than to make yourself completely unrecognizable?

We’ve talked a lot about prosthetics in film and TV these past few years, particularly as public conversations around body image, fatphobia, and diversity have become more amplified. None of these tools are new to the medium, nor has there really been a time when they haven’t been present on-screen, but it does feel as though we’re more cognizant of such things and the complicated emotions they inspire. Consider Brendan Fraser in The Whale, Sarah Paulson in Impeachment: American Crime Story, Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour, Charlize Theron in Bombshell, Tom Hanks in Elvis, Viola Davis in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Christian Bale in Vice, to name but a handful of examples. This past month alone has seen controversy erupt around Bradley Cooper’s questionable choice to wear a fake nose to play Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein as well as Helen Mirren’s vast prosthetics for her turn as Golda Meir. The discussion around those two actors has delved heavily into the reality of anti-Semitism and long, cruel history of Jewface, as well as questions over which actors get to play which roles (Lindsay wrote a wonderful piece on the subject you can read here.) It also left many of us wondering about prosthetics as a whole and whether they’ve become overused as part of the actor’s hunt for realism.

To be clear, I’m not talking about stuff like John Hurt in The Elephant Man or the myriad examples of actors who played aliens and supernatural creatures in sci-fi and horror. Indeed, I wish we saw more examples of this kind of make-up work in film. It’s something that is curiously underrated by the industry, as evidenced by how rare such work gets attention at the Oscars in comparison to the fetishized transformational work I’m discussing here. What I’m specifically weary of is the omnipresent trend of actors being smothered by make-up, fat suits, and fake noses to make them unrecognizable, all in the name of achieving some kind of verisimilitude while (mostly) portraying real people.

We’ve seen for decades how the most reliable route to Hollywood prestige is to play a real person, and how weighty with nobleness it becomes when you willingly put yourself through the wringer to achieve it. It’s not enough to act: you have to live it, and you have to let everyone know how arduous the process was because talent is not enough. Of course, this trend extends beyond the biopic, whether it’s Colin Farrell as the Penguin in The Batman or Fraser in The Whale. The easiest way to get the audience to gravitate towards the work is to show it, to replicate the subject in the most visually accurate manner. Is Rami Malek’s performance in Bohemian Rhapsody actually good or was he just good at mimicking some videos of Freddie Mercury’s stage work while wearing very large fake teeth? There’s this general idea that audiences won’t accept a biopic performance if the subject doesn’t look 100% like the person they’re playing, which I don’t entirely buy. If we wanted staid impersonations then we’d watch that, but surely we crave a fully layered character that eschews the quirks in favour of organic personality? I’m probably somewhat alone in this opinion given that every biopic casting news is followed by a barrage of complaints that they didn’t cast that person’s non-existent identical twin. I’ve talked before about how I think this attitude leads to a lot of bad performances, and I think it also encourages these lazy choices that make both actors and audiences over-reliant on things like prosthetics.

Much like an actor’s choice to gain or lose weight for a role, the problem isn’t necessarily about the tools themselves. It’s a question of when such things go from being but one part of a full arsenal to a crutch that glorifies aesthetic over craft. I remember the story of how Julianne Moore was sacked from playing the part of Lee Israel in the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? Reportedly, she came to blows with the director because she wanted to play the late writer and forger with a fat suit and fake nose. The role was eventually played by Melissa McCarthy, who doesn’t look much like Israel and didn’t slather herself in plastic to embody her, yet gave one of her greatest performances and received an Oscar nomination for her troubles. What did Moore hope to gain by using these prosthetics to play someone who the vast majority of viewers aren’t familiar with? Would they have helped her performance or hindered her natural talent? At what point would we have stopped paying attention to the actor and become too focused on the padding and plasticine?

Frankly, I’m pretty bored and rather insulted by the endless cycle of prosthetics for a number of reasons, but it’s hard to avoid the central allure of gorgeous actors making themselves slightly unattractive and being heralded as brave for their decision to do so. When Colin Farrell talks about enjoying the chance to be ugly for a while when playing the Penguin, you can’t help but roll your eyes. Wow, what a change of pace for one of the world’s hottest men, slumming it with us uggos. Like an actor who gains a ton of weight for a part, the media is lavishly obsessed with the before/after pattern, letting the world know how selfless the hot dude of the moment is for eating like an average person for a while then returning to dry chicken breasts and broccoli after a few months. It’s not good for anyone, least of all the actors. At least prosthetics aren’t physically damaging in the long term.

I wonder what Bradley Cooper thought he would achieve by playing Leonard Bernstein with that fake nose. On top of drawing further attention to the fact that he’s not Jewish and there’s a sordid history of non-Jewish people wearing fake noses to denigrate them, it makes you wonder about his basic intentions as an actor. Did he think people wouldn’t buy him as a composer with minor 21st-century facial familiarity without it? Was it a crucial part of his own process, and if so, why? Perhaps the tides will turn once Maestro comes out, but for now, it feels like the fake nose is the eye of the storm and nothing else can compete with it. Prosthetics have a habit of doing that in performance. Maybe it’s time for actors and audiences alike to trust themselves more and buy into the craft ahead of the make-up.