Charlize Theron’s Oscar nod proves that ugly does it for Academy voters.
If Theron–a favorite in the lead actress category for playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster”–wins next month, she will be the fourth actress in five years to win for a role requiring an extreme makeover.
Indeed, Theron’s performance is sensational–but what may seal the deal is that she completely hid her statuesque beauty in the process. After all, Oscar can’t dismiss Theron as just another gorgeous starlet when she has mottled skin, scraggly hair and crooked teeth.
In commercial terms, Hollywood requires its women to be gorgeous. This tyranny of beauty is nothing new, but in today’s increasingly competitive environment, it’s spurred unprecedented reliance on plastic surgery, implants and starvation diets among actresses.
Such pressures ease, however, when it comes to awards and acclaim. Oscar night is the one time each year that a glossy, beauty-obsessed, money-first industry can pretend it’s not about glamor and wealth, but about talent and art.
It’s no wonder, then, that actresses who spend hours each day looking gorgeous are willing to go from glam to gloom, playing down their looks while punching up their performances.
Until now, the 28-year-old Theron has rarely distinguished herself on screen, appearing to be just another blond MTA, or model-turned-actress. Even while playing a dying woman in the romantic drama “Sweet November,” she looked amazingly radiant, not unlike the dying Ali MacGraw in “Love Story” decades before.
But for “Monster,” Theron abruptly shifted gears, filling the real-life role of a bitter, wasted woman with uncanny precision. Looking hardened, unkempt, bloated and sun-damaged, she submerges herself in the fiercely combative Wuornos, a sex-abuse victim who became a homeless prostitute on Florida’s highways before murdering roadside clients.
To portray Wuornos, Theron gained 30 pounds, plucked her eyebrows and wore special makeup, false teeth and dark contact lenses.
Yet for all her mastery of physical change, Theron’s performance drives home the character and makes her so real. It turns out this beauty can act, after all. She just had to become beastly to persuade us.
Handsome men have played ugly too. Ralph Fiennes nabbed Oscar gold for spending much of “The English Patient” swathed as a burn victim, and Daniel Day-Lewis won for playing a tortured cerebral palsy sufferer in “My Left Foot.”
But Hollywood, run largely by men, doesn’t require actors to be drop-dead handsome, so negating good looks isn’t considered as much of a sacrifice. Oscar ignored Tom Cruise (“Vanilla Sky”) and Mel Gibson (“The Man Without a Face”) for playing disfigured men.
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Beauties and their beasts The trend for Oscar-winning actresses seems to be “going ugly.” Consider the recent past:
Hilary Swank
Role: In 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” Swank played down dolling up. Cutting her hair boy-short, she portrayed a young woman who passed herself off as male–surely the biggest switch of her career.
Payoff: Best-actress Oscar
Halle Berry
Role: In 2001’s “Monster’s Ball,” the former beauty-
pageant winner went wan, playing an impoverished waitress bludgeoned by tragedy.
Payoff: Best-actress Oscar
Nicole Kidman
Role: In 2002’s “The Hours,” Hollywood’s reigning glamor queen and couture clotheshorse transformed herself into plain, drab, suicidal author Virginia Woolf via a large prosthetic nose, ratted hair and muted makeup.
Payoff: Best-actress Oscar
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Trivial pursuits Tidbits and trivia from Tuesday’s Oscar nominations
– The best picture nomination for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” marks the second time all three films in a trilogy have been so honored, following nods for the first two “Lord of the Rings” installments in 2001 and 2002. “The Godfather” films in 1972, 1974 and 1990 each received a best picture nomination.
– The nomination for 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes in “Whale Rider” makes her the youngest lead actress nominee to date. Isabelle Adjani was 20 when she was nominated for 1975’s “The Story of Adele H.” Younger players have been nominated in the actor, supporting actor and supporting actress categories, with the youngest being 8-year-old Justin Henry for supporting actor in 1979’s “Kramer vs. Kramer.”
– “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” received 11 nominations but none for acting, making it the first time a film has received that many nominations without any acting recognition.
– Sofia Coppola is the first American woman to be nominated for directing. Other nominated female directors include Lina Wertmuller of Italy for 1976’s “Seven Beauties” and Jane Champion of New Zealand for 1993’s “The Piano.”
– If Sofia Coppola wins an Oscar in any of the three categories in which she’s nominated, it would make her the second third-generation Oscar-winner, following grandfather Carmine Coppola and father Francis Ford Coppola. The first family members to achieve this generational feat were Walter, John and Anjelica Huston
RedEye news services.
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