Laurel Canyon, Frances McDormand
Image credit: Laurel Canyon: Neal Preston

Foreign faces take their places

One way around the problem: Import stars from outside Hollywood. Says one top television producer, ''You know what I do about all those frozen faces and weird duck lips? I cast out of New York.'' The part of Mark Wahlberg's mother in The Perfect Storm, written in the screenplay as a hard-bitten woman in her 50s, was filled by a Canadian. ''All we saw were these really done dames,'' recalls Jenkins. ''We finally found [fiftysomething] actress Janet Wright, who was a little on the stocky side and never had any plastic surgery.''

And then there's Europe — a virtual smorgasbord of tantalizingly furrowed actresses (see, for example, Julie Christie in Finding Neverland): ''Americans haven't yet exported the Botox-frozen face to Europe,'' says Harwood. ''There is a certain chic that older European actresses have that's not influenced by America.''

Can we import it? Bening and a few other American actresses — like Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, Diane Lane, Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Clarkson — have had long, rewarding careers while aging naturally. But in a country in which juicy roles for women past a certain age are paltry, and where youth is prized above all else, that can be a tough career choice. With Being Julia, Bening got especially lucky. That film's plot, about a beautiful but aging 1930s stage actress coming to terms with the loss of her youth, is not exactly typecasting, but it's close enough.

Originally posted Dec 01, 1979 Published in issue #796 Dec 10, 2004 Order article reprints
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