Courtesy of Microlina
Welcome back class. One of the downsides of protracted absences is I lose the advantage to stir the pot, as it were. For instance, take the old news of Richard Armitage’s nose job that sneaked up on us way back in 2013. At the time, there was heated debate over whether it had actually occurred or that anybody would suggest it had. Clearly, he had a slight nose bob with the faintest shaving over the bridge bump. The change is subtle but obvious overall when seen from different angles. Great job, eh? I applaud the cosmetic surgeon who showed restraint in altering it from the allegedly “mean” and “sinister” looking (according to RA) to a more classically formed Caucasian nose.
Personally, I like the result. RA stated repeatedly that he never
Courtesy of Microlina on Tumblr
liked it but had become resigned to it because his mother discouraged him. It’s likely he finally did it to satisfy himself and gain access to more roles and advance his career. I say more power to him. If it makes him happy, then it’s all good.
Now that three years have passed and the heat has died down, what to you think? Is he better with the new nose or should he have left it alone? Is it too pointy and “Disney prince” like?
Comment below.
Following comments.
Heh, the nose issue is so old now, nobody cares any more probably.
When I read the speculation (which wasn’t in 2013) I was disbelieving. Could our man really be that vain? That was where I was at the time. But now I think that it’s pretty obvious and I do think it enhances the pretty. I don’t see it too much differently than the waxing and hair dying now, although I think it’s too bad that the type of career one might want would make those things necessary.
I’m all for enhancing the pretty. It is sad that RA has to resort to looking for the fountain of youth at this point in his career. The upside for him is that as a man, he will be described in the future as having “aged well.” A woman on the other hand would already have been kicked to the curb career-wise.
The photos above are actually the first time I’ve been able to decipher a difference. Good for him if it makes him feel more confident but I despair of a world where he might be turned down for roles because the old snout.
Agreed Bolly, although I can see how he might have been stereotyped into playing baddies after Guy.
I like it and all power to him if it makes him happy. FYI, I am married to a man who has a similar nose issue and had considered having the bump fixed. He still has the same nose and let his hair go grey. Several weeks ago I noticed that our teenage son’s nose is developing a similar bump.
Welcome Carolyn! I’ve noticed that my nephew acquired the same nose when he hit puberty and it was absolutely straight before. Maybe it’s an adolescence growth thing?
I like the nose, before and after. Of course, I probably never would have noticed a difference if people hadn’t pointed it out even though it’s obvious in those pictures. A nose isn’t really something I pay attention to unless it’s my own. So whatever his reasons, if he’s happy I’m happy (same for his romantic partners).
I agree Snickers. I liked it before and after, although truth be told, I’m glad he had the surgery because he would have been forever wondering whether his nose was holding him back.
I don’t want to be petty(but I am 🙂 )so I say only this- hope it didn’t hurt too much.
I imagine painkillers were his friend. I always wonder what people think during their recuperation: OMG this hurts, will it be worth it, what if it’s BOTCHED???
I loved his old nose, and missed it at first, but have to admit I’ve grown quite fond of his new one. I’m glad though it was such a subtle change. Does anyone else think that it has “settled” a bit and isn’t looking quite as sharp as it was at first?
I also want to belatedly say welcome back Judiang! 🙂
Do you mean along the length of the nose, or at the tip? He used to have a small flat space on the tip, but I think that’s filled out. What? You think I’ve been studying too many photos? 🙂
Yes, Mezz, it has definitely dropped a bit from when it was first done. One can compare photos from Berlin’s Hobbit premiere to more recent ones. That nose can’t win against gravity – but, LOL, usually a nose often drops up to 6 months after surgery. I like it better now than I did when I first noticed it. It’s more like his original.
I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t notice it at first at all (bad fan), and then claimed for a long time that it was just a trick of the light, or strange angles of photography. But eventually I did come to the conclusion that he has had work done. I don’t particularly like the pointy nose – too pointy, really. The bump and the aquiline silhouette always looked very distinctive – and distinguished – to me. The new nose looks more “ready-to-wear” – picked from a catalogue and tacked on. However, as I am getting older myself, I am also feeling more sympathetic to people enhancing whatever they feel does not fit their face. I have huge problems with the signs of ageing in *my* face, so I think it is only fair to allow *him* to do something that helps him feel more comfortable with his appearance…
To my American eyes, his nose looks European pointy, kind of like when Disney wants to depict a European prince (which he could portray). However, this was an effect that couldn’t have been avoided considering what he wanted corrected about the original nose. The old nose was distinctive but did make him look mean at certain angles. I agree with you about aging. I look at my own face and wish I could get a complete face lift. LOL!
I was staying out of this because after reading about 9 months of passive aggressive commentary about my non-writing on the topic (“people who analyze everything else to death refuse to talk about this!”) I had sort of resolved that I would not speak about it. The other piece of that was that it never seemed to make anyone happy to talk about it, even in analytical terms. It was just another bat that fans beat each other the head with (“you’re naive if you don’t believe/accept that …” / “people who think he had a nose job are crazy” / “Richard Armitage would never have a nose job, what kind of fan are you?”). There were these graphics that demonstrated the changes (or argued against them) with obnoxious captions. I didn’t feel like providing another boxing ring for that particular battle.
And then I didn’t want to write that at the top because I didn’t want to appear to be delegitimating the discussion. But all that interests me now is how it becomes a fan identity issue (and by extension, why is one thing an identity issue and another not). I remember reading a comment at pi’s blog that said, paraphrasing, “it broke my heart when he got his nose fixed.”
As I stated on your blog, it seemed that Pi was one of those fans very invested in preconceived ideas of what they wanted their ideal actor to be. Any deviation was a blow. Why should RA’s appearance be bound in an fan identity issue? Maybe because his face was the first thing we beheld in the beginning of the our crushes and it continues to be the first thing we see in any media appearance.
Well, it wasn’t pi who made the comment. However, she was very invested in the idea that he was a certain kind of artist and his roles after Strike Back didn’t fulfill her investment, I suppose. She had an interesting dialog with herself going on about her perception that he was being desexualized by his progressive media developments.
I don’t want to write a 7,000 word comment here, and i don’t disagree with you that it’s important because it’s what we see. However, that doesn’t really explain all of it to me. For instance, last year when he started appearing at SD and people started saying, wow, he’s thin, there were people who were truly offended by that statement, how dare people say that. There’s a level on which fans see his body as theirs and so when his body is criticized, their identity is somehow at stake. That’s what interests me. I think he’s attractive and I’m interested in how he looks, and I take pleasure from it. But if someone said, essentially, he’s not that good looking, it wouldn’t touch me in that particular way. So I’m asking not, what are the structural or media factors that make his appearance important, but rather, what is the specific personal issue that makes his appearance a matter worth fighting over?
Hmm. When I was growing up I crushed on men in their early 40s. Since I was emotionally estranged from my father, maybe it was a father complex? Then as I got older I thought that men in their mid to late 30s were also acceptable because they had the best of both worlds, the height of youthfulness and the beginning of maturity. So my particular issue probably goes back to my childhood.
I’ve never felt the urge to fight over a negative comment about RA’s appearance. I do recall when I was younger bristling over somebody saying my dog wasn’t that cute. Love my dog, love me?
Your dog wasn’t that cute? 🙂
This would bear further discussion I think, the question of “daddy issues” and fandom (I certainly had some when I was a teen, absolutely). Based on things people were saying at my blog today, the age question seems crucial — there may be multiple aspects of the whole “age / don’t age” question at work.
I liked either nose. And strangely from some angles in recent pix, he still looks (to me) to have a slight bump there–or an ever so slight width along the length of his nose. Ha! Here’s a dyptych by Cyn Dainty of a 2016 pix of RA:
https://gratianads90.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/raportrait-2016-richardarmitage-diptych-ofnewpix_oct1616bycyn.jpg
And it’s entirely his choice whether or not to have his nose or any other part of him freshened. He works in a field where youth is everything.
But for my money, he “loses” 10 yrs of age in his appearance by shaving his beard to stubble or none at all, eating that extra burger so his skin fills out a bit, and smiling! 😉
Hmm, maybe the bump isn’t as noticeable with the uplifted tip? Must reexamine, for science, of course. 🙂
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I was happy when he changed his nose. I thought gravity was making the tip dip into Basil Rathbone territory. Or Fagin in “Oliver”. I prefer him to be a leading man, rather than a character actor. That way he is on screen longer and hopefully more often.
Oh, the good old nose topic. I fell in love with his looks from N&S and kind of regretted that he changed it. To me, that sinister edge to his appearance has always been attractive. I don’t think it would have necessarily limited him to “always the villain” but certainly he might not have been right for any role in which there was no edginess to the character, which isn’t a bad thing in my book. He’ll never be a Chris Pratt, with or without the new nose. However, having seen him in person well after the nose, I have to admit he’s still devastatingly attractive and pretty damn appealing no matter how his nose may have changed. It was good, subtle work on the part of the surgeon for sure. =)
Oh yes, he’s a very good looking man with or without the nose job. I do think he wanted to take advantage of a different variety of roles, although he doesn’t appear to have gotten any roles needing more generic features since the nose job anyway.