Memo to wannabe starlets: Barbie is out, the Girl Next Door is in.
In an age of extreme plastic-surgery makeovers, a la "The Hills" star Heidi Montag, casting agents and directors are telling actresses to stay away from the scalpel.
Montag debuted her new body in January after having 10 procedures in one day. After the big reveal, even folks who had never heard of the show or its star knew the name of the girl who, at just 23, had her chin chiseled, her legs lipo'd and her boobs inflated to massive proportions.
Now, only a few months later, there's a backlash brewing in Hollywood against stars who barely look like themselves, and whom insiders fear may have trouble looking like someone else, if they hire them for a role.
Recently, the casting team for the next installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise announced that actresses with fake breasts need not apply to be extras.
And casting directors at the Fox television network are looking toward Australia and Britain in an effort to find actresses with a more natural look.
"I think everyone either looks like a drag queen or a stripper," Marcia Shulman, who oversees casting for Fox's scripted shows, recently told the New York Times.
Another insider told HollywoodLife.com that plastic surgery is turning actresses into an army of uniformity.
"All the women look the same: the little noses, the big eyes, the lipo-sucked bodies, the huge breasts. Everyone is looking the same," said casting director and independent producer Lauren Lloyd.
Of Montag and her hopes of kick-starting an acting career beyond "The Hills," Lloyd said: "Heidi's implants won't help her become an actress -- you still have to have talent and drive."
Addicted to Fame
A number of female celebrities have been accused of going too far with plastic surgery, or even of being addicted to cosmetic enhancements.
Actresses such as Melanie Griffith, Meg Ryan and Joan Rivers -- the poster woman for plastic surgery -- have all been criticized for their dramatically altered looks. Even Nicole Kidman, barely into her forties, is mocked for a face that seems like it has been frozen by too many Botox injections.
While these women likely feel pressure to look youthful in an industry that can be cruel to women over 30, experts suggest women like Montag get surgery as a way to gain fame without a discernable talent.
William Lee, the executive editor at HollywoodLife.com, said as much as Montag appears addicted to plastic surgery (she says she wants to have another breast enhancement operation to take them to a size "H" for Heidi), she also "clearly has a very virulent addiction to fame."
"What is troubling for younger women is that this says that in order to become famous or to propagate your fame, that somehow plastic surgery -- if you don't have other talents like a singing career or perhaps an acting career -- this is one way that you can actually become famous," Lee told CTV's Canada AM this week. "And as a result I think a lot of young women may try and take this route and it's tremendously troubling."
Brazilian plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Rey agrees. According to Rey, a little bit of plastic surgery can give a woman self-confidence and "totally change her life."
However, he calls 10 operations by age 23 "insane" and condemned the message Montag is sending to young women: that plastic surgery is a normal part of coming of age.
"That it's prom, high school graduation, plastic surgery, college, like it's a right of passage, like it's normal for everyone to have plastic surgery," Rey said in an interview with Canada AM from Sao Paolo. "Plastic surgery wasn't designed for that….it's to improve people's self-confidence, not to be abused for fame, for self-aggrandizement."
