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The new Netflix show The Beast in Me, about a Pulitzer-winning author and her suspected-murderer real-estate tycoon neighbour, has everyone buzzing (again) about Claire Danes’ crying face.
The Homeland actress plays writer Aggie Wells, and it’s true that her astonishingly mobile face is something to watch — every feeling is writ large on her visage, and none more than grief.
It’s a trick the actor has been using since her days on My So-Called Life; never was the highly labile state of teen angst so accurately portrayed. And it’s a real journey, a quivering that begins in her chin and works its way up to her welling eyes and furrowed brow.
Claire Danes arrives at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Ashley Landis / The Associated Press files)
Compare this with Kim Kardashian’s “performance” in the overheated law drama All’s Fair (on Disney+).
At 45, the shapewear mogul — whom author Sophie Gilbert recently referred to as an “avatar of sort of immobile, provocative expressionlessness” — is just a year younger than Danes, but her face has been sculpted and plumped into an immovable mask.
Rage, sorrow, malice, joy: they are all portrayed with the same utter blankness. (It’s clear Kardashian would be a terrible actor even if she were able to shape her lips into a grimace or a smile, but the lack of movement sure doesn’t help.)
Kim Kardashian waves as she arrives in May 2025 to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her hotel room in Paris in 2016. (Aurelien Morissard / The Associated Press files)
I would guess most actresses fall between the two ends of this spectrum — and you can’t honestly blame them for getting injected, nipped and/or tucked.
Hollywood is a merciless environment that worships youth. After the ingenue period, the roles dry up (unless you’re playing an Action Man’s wife) until they bring you out of your mothballs to play the wise and wizened crone.
The roles might be juicy, but don’t dare wear a sleeveless gown to an awards show, because ladies over 60 have no right to bare arms.
But try to hang on to that fresh-faced look, and the internet piles on, speculating about your possible eyelift, lamenting your inability to frown, posting your latest red-carpet shots under the headline “Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong?”
That said, it’s undeniable that the ability to convey emotion via facial expression is a key part of movie acting; filler-addicted actresses (and, increasingly, actors) are just not as interesting to watch.
You can just add this to the list of impossible positions women find themselves in: Don’t do Botox or have plastic surgery; you should age gracefully.
But, you know, not TOO gracefully, because what is with visible wrinkles and untaut neck skin and moving face parts?
I, for one, love Danes’ face; long may she weep… and age.
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