Telling the truth about youth
Saoirse Ronan didn’t cover up her acne in Lady Bird because she wanted to realistically depict teenhood. It’s a welcome departure, says Ed Power, as he looks back at the best, and worst, teen screen portrayals
Can you spot what sets Saoirse Ronan’s Lady Bird apart from other teenage movies? Zit’s easy to see the difference: in this Oscar-nominated coming-of-age drama, Ronan’s character stands before the world in all her acne-splotched adolescent glory.
Saoirse’s blemished complexion has become an international talking point — largely because awkward, oily-skinned adolescents, so familiar from the real world, are rarely depicted on screen.
Ronan (23) didn’t have acne in her teens. However, a year before shooting the film, she suddenly broke out. “I’d never had bad skin before,” she commented, “but because I was really tired and wearing a lot of make-up, I started to get acne.
“It felt like it was a great opportunity to show someone as they really are at that age. Because most young people do get bad skin.”
Lady Bird writer/director Greta Gerwig, also an actress and thus used to being judged by her appearance, agreed.
“All I see in movies about teenage girls is they have perfect skin and perfect hair, even if they’re supposed to be awkward,” she says. “And the reality of teenagers is, they don’t! And it doesn’t make them less beautiful.”
One reason cinema has not always faithfully depicted teenagers is that directors usually cast actors significantly older. Amid the stampede to praise BBC Troubles-comedy Derry Girls, for instance, it was overlooked that, though ostensibly portraying school girls, the main cast were all in their 20s and above.
Cult mid-2000s high school drama
Mean Girls, for its part, opted for stars whose adolescence was fast vanishing in the rear view mirror. Queen meanie Regine George was played by 25-yearold Rachel McAdams. Similarly, Gossip Girl’s “school-goers” Blake Lively and Leighton Meester were 20 and 21 respectively when the series started.
Nor is this a recent phenomena. John Travolta was 23 playing a Brooklyn teenager in Saturday Night Fever in 1977 — and a full year older when he once more donned a leather jacket as Danny Zuko in Grease (opposite a 30-year-old Olivia Newton-John).
Matthew Broderick had recently celebrated his 23rd birthday when cast as eponymous footloose teen in Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off. His co-star Alan Ruck was 29 and “worried that I’d be 10 years out of step, and I wouldn’t know anything about what was cool, what was hip, all that junk”. By the end of Beverly
Hills 90210, meanwhile, most of the cast looked more in need of zimmer frames than zit cream.
Sometimes “age-washing” is taken to extremes. Jennifer Love Hewitt was
31 when, in a 2010 episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, she played a character both in the present day and as a 15-year-old schoolgirl — a transformation that was not remotely convincing.
It is no slight on these stars to point out that having older actors stand in for teenagers has led to a distorted impression of what an ideal adolescent should look like. In their 20s and above, they typically have glowing complexions and the confidence that comes when you’ve been out of school a few years and knocked around emotionally in the real world.
“I don’t think that’s something you get to see much,” Ronan pointed out. “Growing up, a lot of the teenage girls I saw in movies and TV shows were played by these fully-formed 30-year-olds with great skin. I hope it helps young people — and anyone who struggles with their skin — to connect with the character.” It isn’t simply that Hollywood is averse to portraying teenagers as scrawny and acne-scarred. Employment regulations place strict limits on how many hours minors can be on set each day — and obviously depicting under-aged actors in a sexualised fashion is beyond the pale. Consequently, film studios often save themselves a world of hassle by casting older stars — who can toil as hard as everyone else and, for strictly artistic reasons, may be portrayed as romping around in skimpy hot-pants (see 20-year-old Megan Fox in 2007’s Transformers).
Still, there have been exceptions. Claire Danes was just 15 when playing a confidence-lacking teenager in the short-lived mid-Nineties series My SoCalled Life. Danes plausibly brought to life a young woman not quite at ease with herself — a role she would not have inhabited nearly as convincingly were she 10 years older.
And though unlikely to be mistaken for a sober meditation on the travails of being young and misunderstood, Channel 4 comedy The Inbetweeners similarly gave a realistic depiction of adolescents. Its juvenile lead characters were gormless, gawky and immature as teenage boys tend to be and in refreshing contrast to the jocks and (airbrushed) geeks invariably populating American high school dramas.
Tellingly, one of the great teen icons, Breakfast Club star Molly Ringwald, was in the throes of her own adolescence when cast by director John Hughes. She was 16 — but Hughes judged her just right for the role and, limitations on working hours notwithstanding, was determined to have her in his film.
Ringwald’s performance was instantly acclaimed — just like Saoirse Ronan’s in Lady Bird.
Perhaps showing teenagers as they really are, spots and all, isn’t such a risk after all.