Anna Paquin Jessica Pare Split - H 2012
Getty ImagesInstead of fixing their teeth, aspiring actresses may do better to leave well enough alone. Seems the times of perfection are a changin’.
In fact, some of Hollywood’s freshest faces, including actresses Anna Paquin, star of HBO’s True Blood, and Jessica Pare, the hot new face on the fifth season of AMC’s Mad Men, are proud of their gap-toothed grins, which make them unique in Hollywood’s Perfection Parade. (Check out THR’s gallery of gap-toothed actresss and models here.)
Pare’s quirky grin may even have have landed her the job on the hit series. Reports have Weiner initially fascinated by her teeth. So much so that he even wrote a scene for the show in which she tells her husband, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), that a casting agent once told her she would never get an acting job because of them.
Paquin has been outspoken about her unusual grin: “I think anyone is as critical as they have the energy to self-obsess, but I also know as an actress you are more limited if you interfere with your looks. If you have a whole bunch of work done with your teeth and your face and your boobs, then you’re only going to play modern people. That’s a big choice to make. Very limiting.”
PHOTOS: Gap-Toothed Beauties Take Over Hollywood, The Fashion World
These TV actresses join top fashion models such as Lara Stone, Lindsey Wixson and Abbey Lee Kershaw who proudly flash their popular imperfect smiles on designer runways and in high fashion editorials. They’re the reason why Tyra Banks sent a 22-year-old America’s Next Top Model contestant to a dentist in 2011. It was not to have her gap fixed but to have it widened.
But there’s a history to this tooth-spacing issue.
Young Lauren Hutton placated her new modeling agent agent Eileen Ford in the late ’60s when she promised to fix her front tooth gap before she could join Ford Models. She had absolutely no intention of doing that. And by the time legendary photographer Richard Avedon refused to shoot her until she removed the wax that disguised that gap, she was already an established supermodel. Her revealed gap simply made her all the more unique and memorable.
Madonna was born with a gap between her two front teeth. And throughout all her transformations over the years, she’s keep that dental stamp of individuality. Although some say it seems to have gotten a bit smaller.
Vanessa Paradis, the French singer-actress (and companion to Johnny Depp), never bothered to fix her gap and it still adds a intriquing touch of vulnerability to her astonishing kewpie-doll beauty. Even ’60s era French sex sympol Brigitte Bardot had a space between her front teeth that she has never had changed.
According to cultural research, a gap is considered a sign of beauty and fertility in countries such as Ghana, Namibia and Nigeria. But sociological experts believe our renewed modern interest in the gap-tooth smile represents a backlash against unattainable modern standards of beauty and the media’s increasing obsession with perfection.
Tell us: What do you think of the imperfect gap-tooth trend?
