I suddenly felt something had been taken away from me.

Celebrities, like anyone else, have the right to look however they want, but the characters they play become part of us.

I thought: She doesn’t look like Bridget Jones! Oddly, that made it matter more. Watching the trailer, I didn’t just stare at the actress and think: She doesn’t look like Renée Zellweger. Like everyone else, I’ve had this experience and followed it with my own makeshift seminar of perusing photographs on the Internet, scouring them for the before-and-after truth, which always comes down to one question: Did she or didn’t she?Īs familiar as the situation is, though, I was caught off guard the other day when I saw the trailer for “Bridget Jones’s Baby.” The movie’s star, Renée Zellweger, already had her “Did she or didn’t she?” moment back in 2014, and I had followed the round-the-world scrutinizing of her image that went along with it, but this was different. Her nose is thinner, or her lips are fuller, or her lips are thinner and her cheeks are bolder, or her forehead is younger, or maybe you can’t even quite put your finger on what the difference is, but you know it’s there. You go to see a movie that features an actress or actor - in most cases it’s an actress - you know well, and somehow she looks…different.

It’s a ritual of our vanity-fueled image culture.

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