Emma Thompson is against plastic surgery and says it is a “form of collective psychosis.”
The 62-year-old actress talked to The Wrap about what it is like to be an actress in her sixties, as she stars in Good luck to You, Leo Grande, a British comedy-drama film.
She was asked whether she would ever consider plastic surgery. She replied she is against such procedures.
Thompson said, “Why would you do that to yourself, I simply don’t understand. I do honestly think the cutting of yourself off to put it in another place in order to avoid appearing to do what you’re actually doing, which is aging, which is completely natural, is a form of collective psychosis. I really do think it’s a very strange thing to do.”
However, she said this is not a new opinion of hers now that she is at an age when people often try to undergo plastic surgery.
She said, “I’ve always thought that, though. But I’ve always been a kind of card-carrying, militant feminist when it comes to women’s bodies and what’s been done to them, what we’re told to expect of ourselves, what we’re told to do to ourselves.”
The two-time Golden Globe Award winner said that “one of the great triumphs” of the movie “is that it presents the untreated body.”
Thompson prepared for the role by rehearsing “entirely nude and talked about our bodies, talked about our relationship with our bodies, drew them, discussed the things that we find difficult about, things we like about them [and] described one another’s bodies.”
She also said that societal expectations made going nude difficult. She said, “It’s very challenging to be nude at 62. Nothing has changed in the dreadful demands made upon women in the real-world world but also in acting. This thing of having to be thin is still the same as it ever was, and actually in some ways I think it’s worse now.”
“I don’t think I could’ve done it before the age that I am,” Thompson continued. “And yet, of course, the age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren’t used to seeing untreated bodies on the screen.”
However, she said having her co-star Daryl McCormack around made it easier. She said, “That was very important that we could hold onto each other and laugh.”
