The rise of the ‘copy-paste face’ and why celebrities look the same

The pressure to stay ‘forever 35’ has reignited a debate about Botox, beauty and what we now consider normal ageing

As an actor, you never know how your latest role will be received. But even someone as experienced as Claire Danes may have been caught off guard by the reaction to hers.

Danes, 46, who first found fame as a teenager, is currently wowing audiences in Netflix’s The Beast In Me, playing a reclusive author devastated by the death of her son. Yet it is not only her acting that has drawn attention, but the expressiveness of her remarkably mobile face.

Clearly, it should not be remarkable that an actor’s face is mobile. Nature intended us to scowl, sneer, grimace, glower and frown. It is why we were given 43 facial muscles, each crucial to communication. So why is the internet awash with memes of Danes’s face contorted into a series of furrow-browed agonies? The answer is simple: because so few actors of her age are able to emote at all. They may have won the battle to look youthful. But in the process, they have lost the ability to move their faces.

In 2025, the pressure to look perfectly “forever 35”, as the internet has dubbed it, has become so acute that actors’ faces are not only increasingly frozen, but increasingly indistinguishable. “Whenever I’m in a newsagent looking at magazines, I can’t tell which celebrities are which any more,” says one female friend. “Yes, they all have smoky eyes and exaggerated lip liner, but it’s not just the make-up. It’s as if their features have been magnified, then shifted into the centre of their faces.”

Welcome to the era of the “copy-and-paste face”, a beautiful but bland new beauty frontier, largely distinguished by its lack of distinction. Into this luminously button-nosed, full-lipped, wide-eyed club of contentment fall women such as Lindsay Lohan, 39, whose transformation has enthralled the internet – not least because she attributes her smooth, tight visage to nothing more invasive than “ice-cold water and lemon juice”.

“Lindsay Lohan became a particular focal point because of the contrast with earlier periods of her life, prompting widespread discussion,” notes aesthetic practitioner Dr Jonny Betteridge of London clinic JB Aesthetics. Rather than being driven by a single individual, he cites Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, Christina Aguilera and Lohan as women who share a similarly refined aesthetic that has prompted comparison. “What stands out is not just individual women appearing refreshed, but a recognisable pattern emerging across red carpets, interviews and press tours. Faces from very different industries have begun to share a similar balance, surface quality and overall presentation, suggesting a broader cultural shift rather than coincidence. The result is a face that photographs consistently well across lighting and angles.”

Which is presumably the point.

Given that a single unflattering image can go viral in seconds, it is little wonder A-listers want to look their very best. And now they can, thanks to an increasingly sophisticated, eye-wateringly expensive cocktail of treatments. “Aesthetic medicine has evolved towards multimodal treatment plans rather than single interventions,” notes Dr Betteridge. “Achieving this look often involves a combination of prescription skincare, Botox, injectable treatments, lasers and energy-based devices, and in some cases, surgery.”

While we might recognise a copy-and-paste face when we see one, most of us would struggle to describe it. “To me, the generic face is almost childlike in proportion – youthful and soft,” says aesthetic practitioner and Age Well podcast host Dr Sophie Shotter. “It usually features a smooth, high forehead, lifted brows, large, open eyes, a small, refined nose, full lips with particular emphasis on the upper lip, rounded cheeks with forward projection, and a softly defined jaw with minimal angularity. Skin texture is often unnaturally smooth, with asymmetry and markers of age erased. The face reads as immediately attractive and emotionally legible, but also curiously interchangeable.”

So are we now in an era in which women arrive at clinics clutching photographs of their favourite celebrities, much as they once brought pictures of “The Rachel” to their hairdresser? “Patients sometimes bring images of public figures, but rarely with the expectation of copying a face exactly,” says Betteridge. “My role is to redirect that conversation towards what suits their own facial structure and goals. Faces are not interchangeable, and attempting replication is neither realistic nor appropriate.”

Happily, not every actor aspires to a copy-and-paste face, with British performers in particular seeming keen to buck the trend.

Emma Thompson, Helen Mirren and Olivia Colman are beloved for what one aesthetic surgeon calls their “face acting” (it is surely a sign of the times that this subcategory of thespianism should even exist). Speaking on the podcast How To Fail, Ruth Wilson has said she avoids cosmetic work in order to retain the ability to move her face, while Kate Winslet recently described the homogeneity of women’s faces as “terrifying”, adding that her own face “hasn’t got anything in it”. “Some are making choices to be themselves, others do everything they can not to be themselves,” she said.

Women should age however they choose, whether by dint of Letybo or lemon juice. But where celebrities lead, the rest of us tend to follow. According to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), the number of people opting for facelift procedures in the UK surged by 97 per cent in 2022 and rose by a further eight per cent in 2024. The broader UK aesthetics industry, which includes Botox, is projected to exceed £3.6bn by the end of 2025.