Teen Stars Weigh In on How to Realistically Portray Acne in Film
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Stockard Channing was 33 when she played the high school senior Rizzo in Grease. Tobey Maguire was 32 during his stint as teenage Spider-Man. Michael J. Fox was in his late 20s, moonlighting as a 17-year-old, for Back to the Future. All three performances are beloved by fans of coming-of-age films, but there's one crucial thing missing from fictional high schools of the past: acne. Lately, directors of movies like Eighth Grade and Ladybird have opted to go light on makeup, showing their teen actors as they truly are — zit and acne scars included. Because of this, critics and audiences alike have predicted that these two films are heralding a more realistic era of high school films.
Sofia Wylie, a 14-year-old who plays a character just one year younger than her actual age on The Disney Channel's Andi Mack, believes that teen movies are entering the no-filter movement. "I think directors of my show want us to look like regular kids," she told POPSUGAR. "But movies and TV can go further. I think the acne element in Ladybird made the performances so much more relatable."
Of course, Ladybird and Eighth Grade are two indie movies that don't represent the industry as a whole. We asked Wylie and other young actors what it's like to work on mainstream sets like It and Riverdale with teen acne.
Sofia Wylie, 14
"I think acne affects casting, especially in kids' television," Wylie said. "You're going through puberty, so you can't really stop acne no matter how many skin products you try. You just have to let your skin go through it, and when you're going out for roles and have a severe breakout, they might not cast you because they want someone who looks like a porcelain doll. That's all they want to see, and if you don't fit their image, they won't see the beauty underneath the skin. I wish it wasn't like that, but I definitely think it is."
Jeremy Ray Taylor, 15
"I don't think acne really affects casting, because directors know that they can cover everything with makeup," says Taylor, who starred in the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King's It. "But I think acne can definitely affect teens' confidence, and that might affect their performance. But you can't really escape it. It's something most everyone goes through."
Lili Reinhart, 21
"On Riverdale, as much as I love the show and it has such a specific look, we definitely are picture-perfect," Reinhart said in a recent interview for Dermalogica. "We're polished. Every hair is in place, and the makeup is flawless. There are fake lashes, and contoured cheekbones. You have all of that. That's just the style of the show, and that's totally fine. But I definitely am very open to working on projects that aren't like that. It makes the storytelling more relatable."
Chloë Grace Moretz, 21
"It was brutal growing up in the public eye," the 21-year-old actress and SK-II campaign star said. "It's so strange to be 15 years old on the cover of a massive woman's magazine, and think, 'That's a cool photo of whoever that girl is, but it's not me.' When I was younger and I would see magazines photoshop my face, I would think, 'Oh, they fixed me.' But now I know that there was nothing wrong with me to begin with. The industry is just working under these beauty standards and ideals that are all incorrect."
"Personally, I don't think acne has ever affected my auditions, but my hair has. Back when I was auditioning, my headshot was me with curly hair. But then I started to like my straightened hair better, so I'd come into castings with straight hair. And they would look at my headshot, and say, 'Who the heck is this girl with the straight hair? We did not want this girl.'"
"When I was filming It, I didn't really have acne. Then I started filming Goosebumps, and that's when I started to break out. I noticed that makeup started to take longer than it used to, and that definitely broke down my confidence a bit to realize they had to spend more time on me because I had acne. But I think you've just got to brave through it. I found a good face wash that I love [Rodan + Field Unblemish], and it's helped me a lot."
"It probably takes me an hour to be in hair and makeup before I go on set. And I think kids don't understand that. They think we all just naturally look like this. But we had professionals help us look this way. There are people fixing our hair in between each take to make sure it looks perfect."