OPINION: I did the thing that everyone said would happen, but I didn’t believe ever would: I, a 29-year-old, turned 30. During this recent period of self-inflicted grief for my youth, I’ve been totally insufferable. I refused to celebrate this milestone, and when my friends asked me what I wanted as a gift, I was honest. I want Botox and I want it everywhere. 

I didn’t feel guilty about it, but I did wonder how it would affect my abilities as an actor. What would be the creative price (if there was one) I’d pay to reduce fine lines and wrinkles?

I love actors. If you get into acting because you’re a freak who loves storytelling and the musty scent of theatres, good for you. Find the people that match your freak – they’re out there, at Basement Theatre. I also understand why injectables are so commonplace within the profession. When working as an actor in mainstage shows in my 20s, there was a running joke among the male actors. The gag was that I was so ugly, my face belonged at the back of the stage (hilarious). Another cast member said if I got any work past that show, it would be ‘because of the size of my tits’.

Acting is a double edged sword, particularly for women. The industry is both business and art. One day you’re skipping around a rehearsal room with your soulmates, feeling connected to all things bright and beautiful. The next you’re a meat puppet in a bikini, selling chafing cream for a YouTube ad. But the universal truth about both these experiences is that the actor must use their voice and body to tell the story. So what happens if we paralyse the muscles that are supposed to do that?

I spoke to Sophie Roberts, artistic director of Silo Theatre Company. “My experience is that injectables are a real technical limitation for an actor, or for the kind of actor I find compelling, which is someone with a face and body that is expressive, transformative and unique,” she says. 

“At the extreme end of the spectrum, where the face of an actor is quite frozen, it does become a kind of mask which I’ve noticed often manifests in one of two ways. You start to see vocal or physical overcompensating, which can make performance feel a bit uncanny and disembodied, or you see a vocal and physical diminishing which makes performance feels small and flat.”

On a personal level, I can only compare performances with heavy filler and Botox to my experience in… clown school. Months of paying someone to teach me how to use the eyes and the mask to tell the story in a shitty, cold studio in Melbourne has at least taught me this.

A friend of mine agrees with a recent trend on TikTok: she doesn’t want to “watch a period piece where the lead has iPhone face”. That is, a face that looks like it has seen an iPhone and not right for the era, if you’re reading, mum. For me, ‘iPhone face’ is a face with any kind of obvious cosmetic enhancement. I have to agree with my friend here – fluorescent veneers and filler look completely bizarre in any show set before 2002. But I’m also not suggesting we give our bodily autonomy over to a creative practice. If you decide that that life is for you and want to be a method actor, do it – but personally, I don’t want to see you running around the CBD practising CPR for your next Shortland Street audition.

Speaking of Shorty, I asked head writer Jessica Joy Wood her thoughts. “I’m not anti-injectables for actors at all, however there is no doubt that it has an effect on performance. If it’s subtle, you may not notice it. If your forehead is so frozen you can barely lift your eyebrows, or you’re struggling to get your lines out past your filler-filled lips, then you’re in trouble.”

As an actor herself, Wood has on set experience of the obstacles Botox can present. “I remember when I was acting on Shortland Street, one of the actresses told me about a time she had just had her Botox done and had decided to go for a ‘bit’ more than usual. Then there was a scene shuffle in scheduling and suddenly she was supposed to be crying over her mother’s dead body… with a completely frozen face. She had the grace to laugh about it, and personally I find it quite funny and distracting as hell to watch when actors in shows are desperately wrinkling their noses, squinting their eyes and making guttural sounds in an attempt give some semblance of emotion that the rest of their face is just not playing ball with.”

Because the practice of injectables feels so universal on screen and stage at this point, I wonder if this is a marker for the era we live in. When we look back in 20 years and the anti-ageing technology has no doubt moved along, will we know a 2024 film by the Botox or filler of the cast? I’m not a cosmetologist, but my bet is that one day, the billion dollar beauty industry will find a way to suspend us in time like Sharon Stone in Catwoman. 

I thought I could write about this without speaking on how this mostly seems to be a conundrum for women. Both Roberts and Wood acknowledged how cosmetic intervention perpetuates the gender ideals of our society. I have been delusional in trying to separate the stylistic consequences from the bigger picture – this is a symptom of the patriarchal pressures New Zealand actresses are under. But at the risk of letting every feminist I’ve ever loved down, I still don’t know if I will go through with it. I think I want to sit on my little fence a while longer.