Hollywood isn’t to blame for pushing unrealistic beauty standards

US actor Ashton Kutcher has said he believes Hollywood is not pushing unreasonably high beauty standards, adding that wider society is to blame for the increasing desire to look perfect.

The 47-year-old is currently starring in science fiction show The Beauty, which sees a drug become available that can transform a person into the most attractive version of themselves.

Speaking to BBC News, Kutcher said he does not believe the film and TV industry is “imparting the need for aesthetic homogeny”.

“Entertainment is a reflection of society,” he said.

Across the different characters and actors in shows, some are “traditionally handsome” but others are just “really interesting”, he said.

“It doesn’t make them not beautiful, it just makes them break a mould,” he added.

Instead, Kutcher says the real driver in perfectionism is the “everyone being on camera all the time”.

Kutcher’s character in the science-fiction series is a tech billionaire responsible for bringing a beautifying injection into the world, which he has taken himself in an effort to look much younger.

He is then faced with the side effects of the drug, which include its ability to be sexually transmitted and cause those infected to burn from the inside.

Kutcher has recently acknowledged the parallels between The Beauty and 2024’s Oscar-nominated body horror film The Substance, which starred his ex-wife Demi Moore.

He says Moore, who won a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for the role, “killed it”.

“I’m so proud of her,” he said.

The Beauty, which was adapted from a comic book by American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy, is set in the modern day and includes storylines that address some of society’s current biggest talking points.

There is even a cameo from singer Meghan Trainor, who has spoken openly about her weight loss from the use of weight-loss drug Mounjaro, and appears on the show briefly playing a character obsessed with losing some pounds.

Kutcher said a lot of the conversations he had with Murphy whilst filming the show “centred on Mounjaro and Ozempic”.

He recalled they spoke about “people clamouring to get them and paying in order to get them and not necessarily because they had diabetes or hypertension”, and all the possible outcomes these drugs may have on society.

Kutcher, who has been married to actress Mila Kunis since 2015, also said “cosmetic enhancement is becoming socially accepted day by day”.

The latest figures for cosmetic surgery in the UK show 27,462 cosmetic procedures were performed in 2024 – up 5% from 2023.

More than 10,000 non-surgical procedures such as fillers and Botox were performed by members of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) in the same period.

“It used to be that if you got Botox, you would not tell anybody you got them but now people are like ‘let’s get a coffee and Botox,'” Kutcher reflected.

“Beauty is tethered to security, success and power, right? We now have influencers that are millionaires – you can have influence, you can have power by using your phone and expressing what you like and don’t like.”

His co-star Jeremy Pope, who is best known for starring in American drama Pose, said the show “asks the audience how much would you give or sacrifice to experience ultimate beauty or success”.

“It’s just a comment in where we are in the centre of our culture right now,” he added.

Several critics have drawn parallels between the events of the series and real life.

“The Beauty satirises our world of Instagram perfection, tweakments and weight-loss jabs, said the Telegraph’s Anita Singh in a four-star review. “It is a work of sci-fi, but only in the fine detail.”

Starring opposite Kutcher and Pope in the series is Rebecca Hall, who told the BBC the show draws comparisons to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a film adaptation of which she previously starred in.

“This show is bringing up the conversation that if you keep chasing some version of beauty that’s outside of yourself, you may never be satisfied and you might end up going crazy,” she said.

Hall’s character in the show is an FBI agent, tasked with uncovering why some of the most beautiful people around the world are dying gruesomely and randomly.

Paired up with a younger male FBI agent, played by X-Men star Evan Peters, her character faces an internal battle over whether she is attractive enough.

The 43-year-old said starring on the show has made her think about where society is heading.

“There’s this notion that there is a standard we should all go out and buy,” she said. “It’s madness because then we’ll all end up looking exactly the same and then we will immediately pivot to finding something else beautiful.”

The actress concluded that “what’s weird” about society right now is that “if you have enough money you can make yourself look pretty much like anything you want”.