Am I REALLY the only star in Hollywood who hasn't become a waxwork horror? Frasier star Jane Leeves says the unsayable about her colleagues in Tinseltown
- Actress Jane Leeves attacks epidemic of cosmetic surgery in Los Angeles
- Says she is one of the few actresses over 30 who has not had surgery
- She says people know how old she is, so it is OK if she looks her age
Former Frasier star Jane Leeves says she is one of the very few actresses in Los Angeles over the age of 30 who has not gone under the knife
Former Frasier star Jane Leeves has attacked the epidemic of cosmetic surgery which she says is turning a generation of Hollywood women into grotesque ‘fish-faces’.
The 52-year-old comedienne, who was the highest-paid British actress during her 11-year run playing dizzy housekeeper Daphne Moon in the US TV show Frasier, says she is one of the very few actresses in Los Angeles over the age of 30 who has not gone under the knife.
‘I don’t want to have some hideous surgery that’s not even going to guarantee me any work and could make me unemployable,’ she says.
‘People know how old I am, so it’s OK if I look my age.’
In a city that is awash in Botox, but where even the most obvious cosmetic surgery is supposed to be kept strictly secret, the plain-speaking Leeves is unafraid to name names.
‘We all know who has and who hasn’t. There are some who look better than others, but you can tell at 50 paces,’ she says.
‘I don’t blame people for going under the knife. If someone is known as a beauty and a sex symbol, they are under a lot of pressure to keep looking good. But it rarely turns out well. Plastic surgery can age people terribly – it always makes you look older in the end and can ruin careers.
‘Meg Ryan destroyed her career with plastic surgery.’
Following her breakthrough role in When Harry Met Sally in 1989, Ryan went on to secure leads in a slew of big-screen hits but has struggled to find the same success since appearing opposite Hugh Jackman in romantic comedy Kate & Leopold in 2003.
On 55-year-old Melanie Griffith and her ‘trout pout’ lips, Leeves adds: ‘They never look right on somebody who’s not born that way. It always looks weird.
‘I don’t think she needed to have that done because she was a very attractive woman.’
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Meg Ryan: 'She destroyed her career with plastic surgery. She looks older'
Leeves says British actress Leslie Ash, 53, has ‘destroyed her face’ and thinks 60-year-old Oscar-winning actor Mickey Rourke’s cosmetic work is ‘so depressing’.
‘It looks as if they’ve all been in a fire at a certain point, it really does,’ she sighs. ‘It’s a slippery slope. Once you start, it seems you just can’t stop. There’s always one more thing you can do.
‘When people I know have had something done, the next year it’s, “Well, while I’m at it I might as well do this.” At some point they seem to lose perspective on what they look like.’
She added that Sharon Osbourne’s taut cheekbones were ‘too much’.
‘That shiny look . . . the skin is stretched so much! And this bit here,’ she says, pointing to the groove between her nose and upper lip, ‘it just disappears and is vaguely simian looking.
‘I’d be too afraid. Even Botox scares the cr*p out of me. Those women who do that all the time, they say it stops working because they develop an immunity to it.’
Sharon Osbourne: 'That shiny look... the skin is stretched so much. It's simian'
Leeves offers a dire warning to actresses tempted to have surgery.
‘Many directors are now saying they don’t like it.
‘If actors go ahead, they’re going to take themselves out of so much work when they’re older.
‘Don’t fight ageing,’ says Leeves, whose latest hit US sitcom, Hot In Cleveland, approaches its fifth year, with the fourth season poised to air in the UK.
‘Do everything you can to look good, but don’t try to look 25 when you’re 52, because we know how old you are.’
Having earned more than £250,000 an episode at the height of her Frasier success, and still earning an estimated six figures a year in residual payments from syndicated re-runs of the show, Leeves admits she never has to work again, which must alleviate much of the pressures on her own career.
Melanie Griffith: 'Melanie didn't need a trout pout. She was a very attractive woman'
She has been married for 16 years to Marshall Coben, a former Paramount TV executive, and is concerned about how her approach to ageing affects their children Isabella, 12, and nine-year-old Finn.
‘I don’t want to be suddenly coming home with my face tied up,’ she says. ‘I don’t want Isabella to think that’s what it’s all about.
‘There’s enough pressure on young girls nowadays without them having to worry about that.
‘It just doesn’t send the right message to young women, and that’s a big concern.’
Leeves admires those actresses who dare to age gracefully.
‘I love looking at a naturally ageing woman,’ she says. ‘Look at Helen Mirren, she looks great, and men find her sexy.
‘I think maybe Susan Sarandon had a little something done just recently, I don’t know, but she is ageing nicely.
Pamela Anderson: 'You think, "Oh, you poor darling, how are you going to grow old?"'
‘Meryl Streep is ageing beautifully. I can’t imagine Meryl getting Botox. But again, they’re not known for just being a pretty face, they’re known for having substance.’
Leeves is also no fan of Nicole Kidman’s famously line-free forehead which, despite the 46-year-old’s protestations, looks surprisingly smooth.
‘I think at some point it’s going to exclude you from a lot of work and I know a lot of directors who are against it,’ says Leeves. ‘But I can’t really condemn anyone.
‘Maybe her forehead was a real mess.’
Leeves earned her Equity card as a chorus-girl in panto in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and made her name as a long-legged French maid in TV’s The Benny Hill Show before moving to Los Angeles in 1984.
Her breakthrough came in 1986 with US TV sitcom Murphy Brown, and she struck gold in 1993 playing the Northerner Daphne in Frasier.
Nicole Kidman: 'At some point [Botox] is going to exclude you from films'
With the success of Hot In Cleveland, she is one of the few TV stars to have ‘lightning strike’ repeatedly – with three hit sitcoms. But the British beauty, who was born in Ilford, Essex, is also sympathetic to the pressures forcing actresses to go under the knife.
‘I don’t blame other people for doing stuff,’ she says, grazing on her Caesar salad – ‘without the croutons’ – over lunch at the L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills.
‘I’m sure people have their reasons. If you’re known as a beauty and a sex symbol there’s a whole lot of pressure on you.
‘For the likes of Pamela Anderson, and Raquel Welch it’s very hard to get old, because the expectation is there.
‘But you look at Pamela and you go, “Oh, you poor darling, how are you going to grow old?” ’
Madonna, 54, suffers similar pressures. It is this that has prompted the pop icon’s surgical enhancements, believes Leeves. ‘That’s her choice. She is also one of those sex symbols where it’s going to be hard for her to grow older.
Mickey Rourke: 'It's depressing... it looks as if they've all been in a fire at a certain point'
‘It’s not going to be hard for me to age because I’m not known for my giant rack!’ she laughs, grabbing at her slender chest.
‘These are real. You wouldn’t buy these – I should get a refund, right?
‘That’s not how I’ve made my career. The pressures for people like that are different. If you’re known as a comedic actress, the pressures are not the same.’
'I’m sure people have their reasons. If you’re known as a beauty and a sex symbol there’s a whole lot of pressure on you'
- Jane Leeves
Comedian Joan Rivers, 80, a well-known cosmetic surgery addict, has all the natural looks of a shop-window mannequin, yet Leeves says: ‘I love Joan. She owns it, she’s totally honest about it, and that’s the difference. And she makes fun of it.’
Intriguingly, Hot In Cleveland is a celebration of the sexuality of mature women.
Leeves, and co-stars Valerie Bertinelli, 53, and Wendie Malick, 62 – ‘none of them Botoxed and pulled’ – play ageing Hollywood vixens who move to Cleveland after finding the men in Tinseltown are all seeking teenage girlfriends and trophy wives instead of women their own age.
‘It’s not just actresses,’ she adds. ‘Many of the mums at my children’s school suddenly turn up with their faces pulled up to here,’ she says, tugging the skin back behind her ears until her eyes bulge.
‘It’s just insecurity, and this town breeds it. I catch my kids staring at people sometimes, they call them fish-faces.’
Representatives for the actors did not respond to requests for comment.
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