I should, as someone who repeatedly complains about the objectification of women, have some sympathy for a young male actor who complains that they feel bad for actively participating in the whole objectification process. Richard Madden, who had the lead role in the BBC drama Bodyguard, says he has been told to lose weight, has to go to the gym twice a day and do the no-carbs thing when he is preparing for nude scenes.
His actor mates face a similar plight: “We’re just feeding this same shit that we’re against,” Madden said. This shit is what he calls “a very unrealistic body image”. So the terrible thing that has been happening to women for ever is now happening to men as well. That’s feminism for you: making men feel equally inadequate the world over. Seriously, I am aware that many young men feel in despair about their bodies and that eating disorders are on the increase. But no one has to present an “unrealistic” body image, do they? Madden said he has started asking if a plotline requires nudity. Again, another question that women actors have never not had to deal with. Yet Chris Hemsworth felt the pressure to get in shape for his Avengers role. Then there is Aidan Turner, the Poldark guy, and Jude Law pictured in his tighty whities filming The New Pope.
Guess what guys – my sympathy is limited, because actors moaning about having to maintain their image is a bit like me moaning that I have to write sentences.
Part of these actors’ job is to be lusted after and objectified. That is what cinema is. That is what sex does. You could always go down the Danny de Vito, Timothy Spall or Steve Buscemi route. The few female actors who are allowed out in public past the age of 40 – Keaton, Streep, Close, Moore – have probably not eaten a potato since 1972: they just don’t go on about it.
The gym regime, as well as all the waxing, that are now required of young men of course comes from the osmosis by which homosexual desire is turned into heterosexual desire. We now require straight actors to be as finely tuned and groomed as gay men have been for yonks. All kinds of people lusted after the bad priest in Fleabag, although Andrew Scott, the actor, is actually gay. Scott looks, as some wit pointed out, as if Ant and Dec were merged. The lust then was not inspired by abs and pecs but because, for his character, sex was such a forbidden fruit that we knew he would be extremely good at it. This is called acting.
A lot of credit is given to actors for losing and putting on weight: Christian Bale, Robert de Niro and, more unusually, Renée Zelwegger. Not enough credit is given to actors for being fat in the first place if you ask me, but female desire is a wonderfully fluid thing and I often hear conversations about women fancying a middle-aged, cuddly dad-bod type like Mark Ruffalo. A tight little bottom is not the be-all nor certainly the end-all, but don’t break this alarming news to your personal trainer.
Some of the most beautiful, talented men in Hollywood, from Orson Welles to Marlon Brando, destroyed themselves with their own appetites, and in a way this is far more comprehensible than the tanned, hairless, mannequin look men now feel they have to aspire to. But whatever floats your fatberg.
The thing is, the pressure to look good on screen has existed since before Richard Madden was born. In 1976, when Dustin Hoffman was making Marathon Man, he took up running to lose a stone for the role.
He also asked to have his head held under water to understand drowning. This immersion was, of course, part of “the method”. One day he told Lawrence Olivier that he had stayed up three nights straight so as to be sufficiently wired for his performance. Olivier was unimpressed, and is said to have replied,“Why not try acting? It’s much easier”.
Pass the popcorn.
