I love it when actors call their body their instrument. Their bodies do amazing things, and we get to watch. Steve Zahn as Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. in Happy, Texas, letting a realization gradually dawn. Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace in The Insider, giving it to us straight from the shoulder. Christine Baranski as the thespian in Bowfinger, raising her face skyward in earnest self-absorption. Actors do it with their bodies. They are their bodies.

Form and content means mind-body duality for those of us lucky enough to be raised Catholic, and therefore in touch with most of the major neuroses of the Western world. Mind = content = good, higher up. Body = form = bad, lower down. (Later in life we got access to some good prescription drugs, noticed that mind and body seemed to be the same, and wondered why we hadn't figured that out from drinking beer.) Mind-body duality doesn't work for even the most cerebral among us, let alone for actors. I repeat: Actors are their bodies, and thank heaven for it. Their form is their content.

So when Janeane Garofalo says she had breast-reduction surgery for professional reasons, the way that someone in another line of work would try for an A in a key course, or dress for success, or serve on a program committee, I buy it. Too bad audiences are not ready for a very short, funny woman with a large bosom, but it's not Janeane Garofalo's responsibility to buck every tide.

Facelifts, on the other hand, just break my heart. Right when the aging starts to get interesting--whammo! Epicanthic eyes. And not just bimbos, either. Susan Sarandon. Susan Sarandon! Were eyes ever more captivating than those glorious, googly, hyperthyroid high beams above her immortal smirk? And now we're never going to know how it came out. Damnation, if Katherine Hepburn could figure out how to use that awful palsy, couldn't Sarandon trust us enough to get older in plain view?

Judy Davis. Judy Davis! She's Australian--isn't that insurance against superficial American values? I never took Woody Allen's much-bruited misogyny seriously until I saw Celebrity. Not only does Judy Davis half choke herself fellating an enormous banana (yeah, Woody, you wish), but he also makes her jabber on about whether to get a facelift, when the one she already had in real life is so fresh it's still oozing.

I don't think I'm suffering from excess identification. It's true that I would be about ready for my second facelift, if I did facelifts instead of taking adult education courses and writing reviews for The Stranger. But getting old is challenging. It hurts some, and of course it will end badly. In the meantime, however, I could use some tips. I've learned so much from actors. My throaty chuckle? Bette Midler. My stunned disbelief? Jimmy Stewart (Whah?). And I've been doing Audrey Hepburn's black tights from Funny Face since I was a teenager. But Susan Sarandon won't be showing me how to crinkle up and grin around my eye bags. Judy Davis won't give me any idea how to work with the advancing dewlaps. No, not them. They'd rather go cardboard.

I know of two actors who work with surgically reconstructed faces--Jason Robards and Barbara Hershey--but both of them had no choice. They lost their original faces in automobile accidents. I can't detect the work on Hershey. Robards, old fox that he is, has learned to use his diminished facial mobility to his advantage. (Think about how he touches his tongue to his lips.) But can you imagine an actor voluntarily signing up for stiff features in perpetuity?

It's getting so that I'm afraid to look too hard at some actors. Why was Jessica Lange wearing all that goop on her face in Titus? Was it to hide the scars? (Why was I watching Titus in the first place? But that's another story.) Vanessa Redgrave has always been awfully drawn and deer-eyed, but hasn't she gotten more so lately? Genevieve Bujold doesn't seem to be able to blink anymore, except very slowly and deliberately. What's up?

The one that really got to me was all the way back in 1995, when I saw Casino for the first time. The reviews prepared me for Scorsese's falling off somewhat from Goodfellas. (He did.) I was prepared for Sharon Stone to be embarrassing. (She wasn't.) What I wasn't prepared for--how could I be?--was the brutal facelift on Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci, with his eyes strapped back around his ears! Say it ain't so, Joe.

Barley Blair is the pseudonym of a little old lady whose wrinkles are fetching.