There’s an old saying that the camera adds 10 pounds, but thanks to “beauty work,” a kind of digital cosmetic surgery that Hollywood’s top movie stars are undergoing, the weight and more can come right off these days.
An eye-opening new report published Monday on Mashable claims that beauty work has replaced plastic surgery, diet pills and Botox as Hollywood’s magic trick du jour. Mashable’s story is three years in the making according to its writer, Josh Dickey, who previously worked at TheWrap, Variety and the Associated Press.
A movie star’s best friend used to be the best plastic surgeon that money could buy, but now it’s the digital artists working long hours to erase physical imperfections for both their art and their egos. The old methods left results to chance, whereas beauty work is a failsafe procedure that uses special software called Flame to make stars more traditionally attractive, which is to say younger and thinner.
Beauty work is performed by many vendors, though the article sets its sights on three California companies — Lola Visual Effects, Method Studios and Hydraulx.
“Nobody looks like what you see on TV and in the movies,” Method’s Claus Hansen revealed. “Everybody is altered.”
Though Hansen declined to name names on the record due to strict non-disclosure agreements he has signed over the years, he decided to speak out after years of silence because he hopes to educate impressionable young people who idolize actors and other celebrities because of their looks.
Created in 2004, Lola Visual Effects started as a specialty division of Hydraulx before becoming its own entity. Lola was the company that de-aged Brad Pitt for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which featured the mid-40s star as nearly the same strapping young twenty-something hunk who captivated audiences in “Thelma & Louise.”
That’s an extreme example, as is Jeff Bridges in “Tron: Legacy,” but not every performer takes off 25 years per movie. The most common changes are much more subtle and hard to spot by the untrained eye. They’re also expensive, with shots ranging from $500-$2500.
A three-second shot can take an artist three-to-six hours, not counting image rendering. According to the article, it took one company three months to complete 600 shots of beauty work for a recent hit comedy that starred a top forty-something actress who won raves for her appearance.
Lest you think that women undergo the digital knife more often, artists say men get as much beauty work done as women, if not more.
It used to be only A-listers who received the special treatment, but more and more actors are having it done, and it’s so common these days that studios include the procedure as part of their budgets.
Just like in the Robin Wright movie “The Congress,” stars undergo in-depth scanning procedures that capture each hair on their heads and every muscle movement. Actors and their reps can spend days working with digital artists to correct their flaws, and studios indulge them because beauty work keeps talent happy and thus more likely to spend time promoting the movie.
Some stars even have beauty work done for their personal home videos, and Mashable relays a juicy tidbit about a comic book movie star who substituted his own crow’s feet for those of a younger co-star, since their complete removal looked unnatural.
Stars don’t like to talk about beauty work, and while some companies do receive credits on movies, many times they’re asked not to take credit by stars who want to keep the procedure secret.
While it’s true that high-definition cameras have made imperfections stand out, credit is due to women like Keira Knightley and Lena Dunham, who recently protested digital retouching and braved criticism by displaying their real bodies and posing without makeup.