Hollywood’s idea of beauty once meant polished and slim, not altered and gaunt. This new look is unsettling

Jim Carrey with his César award in Paris. ‘He looked so altered that people thought the person on the podium was a body double,’ Brigid Delaney writes. Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

Once upon a time in Hollywood, if you were an actor preparing to walk the red carpet at the Academy Awards, you might have been fasting to fit into your outfit. You definitely had access to the best hair and makeup artists, and designers and jewellers lent you thousands of dollars worth of incredible products. Maybe you even had a subtle bit of plastic surgery. You looked great!

For a long time Hollywood operated a fairly coherent beauty ideal that, however unattainable, was at least legible.