Do you have to be good looking to be an actor and how important is it?

[mids2019]

There are some great actors who aren't particularly attractive but in my opinion the acting really is of high quality. It does appear though that good looks do go a long way to overcome lack of true acting quality and I have seen a stream of US films over Christmas where you have dubious acting but the actors are drop dead gorgeous and this acts as a distraction.

How far in your opinion does attractiveness manage to put weigh being a slightly less than great actor?

I think that you probably need both the looks and the talent! But looks count for a lot, as it is generally a visual medium.

I remember watching a documentary where a young woman (very slim, blonde and pretty) was hoping to break into sports presenting. She had been given a chance to do a short segment on camera at the races, just interviewing someone after the race. She did ok, but messed up a couple of key facts and got her words a bit tangled.

The male producer was then asked for feedback and it was along the lines of: ‘She could definitely have done better but she looks great on camera and that’s the thing that you can’t train for, so we will give her another try.’

Character actors don't need to be good looking, rather more interesting looking and normally with bucket loads of talent. I suspect leading roles are often cast more on looks than talent. To have both is rare and wonderful.

Looks can help particularly as good looking characters are often quite basic. But acting skills are more important, being unusual looking can also work in your favour

Son if you are not conventionally attractive do you think you should give acting a miss as a career? It's such a competitive files any way that if you don't have model looks you would really need something extra.

Actors not conventionally attractive but great actors in my opinion:

Ian McKlellan
Judi Dench
Alan Rickman

Basically many stage actors that could transfer talent to screen

Good looking but maybe not the most expensive

Too many to mention but...

Keira Knightley
Brad Pitt
Keanu Reeves
Cameron Diaz

Obviously a subjective list but I can't think of many ugly actors? (Even the film Uglies had good looking actors).

What you're listing here are film stars. Turn on the TV and watch some soaps, dramas, comedies and you'll see plenty of actors who are across the spectrum of what we consider conventionally attractive

Devilinablackdress

Good poont.

You look at soaps and yes there are plenty of actors with less than perfect features but aren't soaps deliberately looking for more of a mix for authenticity.

I would argue the US is more likely to produce soaps and drama where looks are important.

I think if you are not conventionally attractive, you should try to stay in the UK, do stage work, British TV etc. Going to Hollywood would be a bad move.

There have been a lot of series that would have been ruined by swapping good, character acting for Hollywood good looks, e g. GOTs, the harry potter films. There's enough work for someone who isn't gorgeous, just don't try to be the next Cameron Diaz or Brad Pitt.

You won’t get offered romantic leads, but acting is a broader church than that — there are lots of actors who make a living from large or small character parts, soaps, theatre, voice acting etc. Though someone like Siobhán McSweeney was told at drama school that she’d never have an acting career, looking as she did, and she’s incredibly talented, and was making a (precarious) living, even before Derry Girls.

And while a very young Cillian Murphy’s first film success was Disco Pigs, after he’d created the role in the stage version, and he went on to a series of leading man roles, Eileen Walsh, who created the other lead part, wasn’t even considered for the film, and, while she’s always worked, has had a career of much smaller character roles. (They’re acting together for the first time since Disco Pigs in Small Things Like These.) She’s every bit as good an actor, but he was a plausible romantic lead type and she was considered too plain and gawky.

I think it’s not one or the other but one thing you do need is to be charismatic and for that to come across on camera. Someone like Dakota Johnson is conventionally attractive but (in my opinion) lacks any charisma and is fairly unwatchable in most things. Whereas some actors may be less conventionally good looking but are inherently watchable.

It is interesting though because I generally prefer to watch stuff with good looking people. Sometimes I see an ad with Angelina Jolie and I just can't stop staring at it, trying to work out what it is about her that is so beautiful. I think it’s similar to why we look at paintings. There’s lots of interesting research on theories of beauty.

It depends on what kind of career you want. Film actors are pretty much all gorgeous - people like Judi Dench and Alan Rickman (hallowed be his name) actually WERE very conventionally beautiful when they were young, they just had the chops to continue their career as their looks changed.

UK telly - broader range of looks, particularly into the soaps.

Stage - people will say it doesn't matter, but it does. From drama school onward you're sorted into 'character' or 'lead', there are more parts for lead and if you don't quite fit a mould there aren't that many character parts. People will mention folk like Siobhan McSweeney but she's very much the exception that fits the rule - and she's already switched to presenting.

One thing you don't talk about is body type and I think that's even more exclusionary than facial looks. To a fault, actors are thin with maybe one in a hundred to take on the 'chubby best pal' role.

SMcS hasn’t ’switched to presenting’ — it puts her in the desirable position of having a regular gig so she can be choosier about scripts and work on her own material.

One thing you don't talk about is body type and I think that's even more exclusionary than facial looks. To a fault, actors are thin with maybe one in* a hundred to take on the 'chubby best pal' role*.

This 100%. I'm astonished by how tiny many of the women lead actors are when you see them up close at the theatre.

Some of my favourite actors are/were not conventionally good looking but had talent in spades.

I can remember when Daniel Craig was announced as the new Bond. I wasn't really aware of his previous work but then realised I'd seen him in Road to Perdition and he certainly didn't come across as good-looking in that.
Within the first 30 minutes of Casino Royale I'd started to think he was actually attractive, for me it was totally a case of charisma over conventional good looks.

I think most TV people are attractive. In the UK at last. They tend to have symmetric faces. And usually quite normal indistinct features. I quite like watching some French TV where they have all manner of almost normal looking people. But they still tend to look pretty good. They look great when the film is paused. And even fine off film half the time, in interviews etc. Whereas most mere mortals and even 'good looking' people can look bad on camera. I die when I see myself on a zoom call.

So even the 'ordinary looking' people I think are actually far from that. There are some actors that just blend in and fall back into the film and you don't notice them necessarily. It's great when the player dissolves. Someone like Michael Stuhlbarg.

There's this other weird thing with movie people where people are picked as they have an almost similar look to existing or past stars. I don't even think it is particularly deliberate. Nicholson/Slater. Redford/Pit. The atypical faces are sometimes the ones that stick out as you can discern them from every other actor. There's quite a homogeneous look about many actors. And there's that terrible plastic surgery look that many American actresses have. Quirks can be a good thing. Even blemishes.

Symmetry goes very far. There's on screen presence. Like Nick Cage has. And the real experts are the total chameleons: you know the actors and yet you still believe the characters. I guess that's great acting. Sometimes you see a stage play and the players do multiple parts and your brain is happy to play along and the player dissolves before your eyes. It's actually a bit of a nuisance when you start to recognise people, for me it is, as it can detract from the story.

It’s an interesting question.

one other point I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that to be an actor you do need to be a pretty confident person - interviews, no private life, so many things known about you, face up on a huge screen….. and you’re more likely to be confident if you’re good looking! So some of it is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy I expect. I imagine there are plenty of ‘less attractive’ people who are or could be excellent actors but simply don’t have the confidence to do it.

You won’t get offered romantic leads

Unless you’re a man…

Not so sure about the no private life thing. Some actors are very guarded. And for me it really helps with the magic of it all. I really don't want to know. There's nothing worse that hearing: oh such and such is a bit of a shit in real life.

There are plenty of actors who undoubtedly only got where they are due to looks.
However who are the two most talked about actors in the UK right now? James Corden and Ruth Jones.

I was thinking this while watching The Holiday for the zillionth time a couple of days ago. Can you imagine the female physical doppelgänger of Jack Black being cast as either of the female leads?? Imagine a worthy, slightly humorous, musically talented yet not aesthetically blessed American female tourist falling head over heels with poor widowed Jude Law and wowing his two motherless wains 😂

That’s exactly who I was thinking of! Also John Hannah in Sliding Doors who was also an intensely irritating character on top.

I think there is a big difference between UK stars and US.

Any US stars will have the American smile with veneers etc whereas UK actors, at least those on TV rather than films are more real and relatable, David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin in Ludwig both have unconventional looks / teeth, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Suzanne Jones although both have fab smiles seem more 'real' perhaps aging more naturally than their American counterparts.

I think alot of English TV stars wouldn't make it in the US.

The could have cast Melissa McCartney in the Holiday but there aren't many others I can think of @Undrugged although would have to b. Comedian rather than musician

There also something in America to do with their acting card I'm not familiar with the ins and outs but apparently alot easy to get as a child starting and keep forgetting a lifetime rather than as an adult so it's more common for American stars to work their way up and exposed to that lifestyle from an early age and learn on the job.

Whereas it's more common for British actors to go to Uni and then RADA and then start to act properly meaning they are fully grown into themselves before they start acting professionally.

I have to disagree about Alan Rickman - he was gorgeous.