Even Though I’m on TV, I’m Done with Botox. Here’s Why

I’m done with Botox. 

The facial injectable — a neurotoxin that relaxes muscles to smooth wrinkles — is used so much among my peer group that I recently saw it as a line item on another mom’s Excel spreadsheet as one of her family’s nonnegotiable monthly expenses. 

As an actor for over four decades, I’m not immune to Hollywood beauty standards.

I have been getting Botox since I was in my early 40s. But I’ve wanted off this muscle-paralyzing sweet stuff for a long time. Particularly because my body rejects it quickly — usually within three weeks. While most partakers in Juvéderm or Dysport, Restylane or Botox (all similar injectables with slightly different chemistry) enjoy the relaxed look for three months, I do not. I was told by my dermatologist that the medicine in Botox injections is made from the same toxin that causes botulism, a type of food poisoning. And if you’ve ever had food poisoning, it seems like your intestines are eager to break it down again.  

But given that I make my living as an actor, I didn’t really know if I could quit — not that anyone has ever said or suggested that I should, or must look younger. In fact, I’ve heard producer friends say they didn’t hire someone for a role because an actor looked “too frozen.” 

So I set out to find out what other people thought. I asked a cinematographer, an expert at lighting faces for the camera, if he thought I would seem far older than my actual age, on-screen and off, if my forehead had grooves in it. Did my doctor think that if my lips were surrounded by fine lines, it might look like I should be put out to pasture? And I asked my teenage kids — an age not particularly known for being polite to their mother — if my eyes have rainbow-like creases shooting out alongside them, would they even know what those are?

I heard a lot of platitudes: You look fine. You don’t need it. Who cares? No one is paying as much attention to you as you think. None of which inspired me to go au naturel. So I began my own research by scouring the internet for actors that I admired whose faces were aging naturally. And I found her.