Maya Hawke recalls being told she “looked prettier” with her mouth closed

There is scarcely a woman in Hollywood working today who is prettier than Maya Hawke. (Sorry, my girlcrush is showing.) I mean, she’s up against some pretty stiff competition, but look at her! I don’t know what any of us were expecting from the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, but there you go. Categorically, undoubtedly, indisputably good-looking.

And someone still felt the need to criticize her looks! What are us mere mortals to do?

Hawke revealed a uncomfortable incident from her past while on the Happy Sad Confused podcast yesterday. Asked what the worst note she’d ever received from a director was, Hawke replied with a story that will, sadly, most likely ring a bell for a lot of women in the acting industry.

“A director told me — actually, I think it was a producer, but they were in cahoots — told me I looked prettier with my mouth closed and that I should close my mouth after I speak more often,” she said. She didn’t name the producer, or reveal if they were a man or a woman.

She went on, “I do often let my mouth hang open depending on what character I’m playing, because I feel like jaw tension and mouth tension is so important to express what kind of person you are.” She was acting – she wasn’t trying to be “pretty”.

“I was really upset about being told that I should close my mouth more to look prettier, because I was playing a character that was distinctly unselfconscious,” she said. “That was a trait of the character — that they didn’t care about looking pretty and they were unselfconscious — and so it was clearly just a desire of the aesthetic of the thing, and I was annoyed about it.”

A story that is sadly not rare

Obviously, she had every right to be. Interviewer Josh Horowitz asked if she spoke up at the time, and she responded, “I mean, you’ve talked to me for 30 minutes. What do you think?” So Hawke can take care of herself — but those sorts of comments on a person’s looks can be extremely difficult for newcomers in Hollywood to overcome.

Hawke isn’t the only actress who’s had to deal with higher-ups valuing looks above acting. Jessica Alba told a similar story in 2010, although the interview only gained traction in later years when people wondered why she’d left the entertainment industry. She revealed that a director’s obsession with “prettiness” made her wonder if acting was really for her.

“I remember when I was dying in Silver Surfer,” she said, referring to the second Fantastic Four film. “The director [Tim Story] was like, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica.’… And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don’t want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, ‘F**k it. I don’t care about this business anymore.’”

Luckily, Maya Hawke never reached that point. But her words are a sobering reminder of what women have to go up against in Hollywood.