Renee Zellweger's shocking makeover reveals Hollywood's ugly face

I woke up this morning to a series of pictures and commentaries on what seems to be the brand new face of Renee Zellweger. Zellweger, who reportedly hasn’t made a public appearance in five years, was attending Elle magazine’s “Women in Hollywood Awards” in Beverly Hills on Monday. And I’d give you a million bucks if any of you can recognise her after all the nipping and tucking and cutting and re-aligning. This isn’t a person who’s had a little ‘work’ done; she seems to have replaced her entire face.  But you can’t totally blame her for it. From certain angles you could mistake her for Robin Wright.

Why would someone who was pretty by almost any benchmark, obliterate her entire identity? After all, an actress (yes, how non-feminist of me not to say female actor) or actor is known for their face, along with their acting chops. Is the pressure to be eternally young really so high that you are willing to become a whole new person if that will prolong your career?

It seems so. Not just in Hollywood, but also here in Bollywood.

Of course, vanity plays a part. In the film, Death Becomes Her, two rival actresses drink a potion to remain eternally youthful. The potion’s effects get reversed and they become immortal while their bodies keep deteriorating and they have to do various procedures to keep themselves from literally falling apart. The roles were played by Goldie Hawn (who now looks a little stretched herself) and Meryl Streep, who leads the brigade for ageing gracefully.

But then everyone can’t be Streep or Helen Mirren or Judi Dench. And it’s not just the women. If you can recognise or find the original Mickey Rourke under the new bloated one, good on you.

In Hollywood they’re actually quite open about going under the knife. Kim Novak has admitted to fat injections in her face. Jennifer Grey, the poster-child for nose jobs (which led to a complete face transformation) has said it was a mistake.

In India though, we don’t talk about it. From journalists to the actors and actresses, we like pretending that someone’s breasts miraculously got bigger, another A-grade star’s nose suddenly transformed into Michael Jackson’s, another’s lips became magically plumper. Only Rakhee Sawant has openly spoken of her boob job, and commendably so. Worse, these are all young actresses – borderline 30 years old, give or take a year. Some were younger when they went under the knife.

Then we have our ‘Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, Back Again Day After’ brigade whose hairlines wax and wane like the moon. Different frames of the same film will have the same actor with or without the bags – make that sacks – under his eyes. Then again, if you’re 50 and still want to act as a college student opposite 18 year olds, you have very little choice.

For Bollywood actresses, there is little space for a Streep or a Mirren-esque turn in Bollywood. If you want to prolong your career, you have no choice but to keep tweaking yourself. Then again, you have to have the acting chops for people to be offered a Calendar Girls or Iris or Bridges Of Madison County (all of which celebrate the ageing woman).

It is no accident that Zellweger’s transformation has occurred in her 40s, which is a no (wo)man’s land where you’re neither young enough to play the young romantic lead or old enough to be the grand old thespian. Meg Ryan also famously underwent a disastrous makeover during a similar stage in her life. So maybe like Zellweger, you have no choice but to opt to be frozen in time.

But why blame actors when so many of us go under the knife for far flimsier reasons. The programme, Band Baaja Bride which is all about bridal makeovers, has an entire segment in which perfectly normal young women (between 18 to 24) are taken to the plastic surgeon and dental surgeon and undergo various facial reconstructions on camera. Why? Because everyone wants to be pwetty. And these people are as far from the arclights as possible. Then there’s of course our celebrity wives and career socialites who seem to have been dipped in formaldehyde – they may have one foot in the grave, but their breasts defy gravity and faces are in a permanent state of surprise.

If the common person whose career or livelihood has little to do with their looks can fall easy prey to vanity, why smirk at Zellweger for her desperation? Yes the change is drastic and could have been done far more subtly and effectively, but she’s not the first actress to make a cosmetic surgery mistake, nor will she be the last. And no doubt, the tabloids will make sure that she pays for it. For what we love most is shaming our leading ladies for aging, and then shame them again for trying to look young – and failing.

The rub lies in whether or not Renee will admit to going under the knife. Because that’s where a Jennifer Grey, David Gest, Patricia Heaton (the wife in Everybody Loves Raymond) and our very own Rakhee Sawant score. They’re honest about their insecurities and the pressures of their profession, which led them to become people with newer parts. But by stating that they’ve gone under the knife, they at least throw a spotlight on how important looking young is in the world of acting.

But everyone can’t be a Joan Rivers who happily announced that she’d undergone 739 procedures by the time she was 79 years old. Which also explains why she looked like she had stepped out of The Mummy. But hell, at least she was blasé about it.

After the initial shock of seeing Zellweger’s pictures, you can’t help but feel sorry for her and for our ingénue stars who radically sacrifice their faces at the altar of the movie industry. Not only do they look like a whole new – and not necessarily, a better – person, they’ve also destroyed the very face that was their fortune. Which is why they got the nip-tuck-tweak done in the first place. A classic case for why you should have more than one skill set and why vanity is not always fair.