Gray and cheeky is chic as Hollywood lets it all sag out

By Chris Hewitt
Knight Ridder News Service

Forget Paris Hilton. The most interesting naked people on-screen these days are savvier and more talented than Hilton.

Wrinklier, too.

Think of them as the naked and the two-thirds dead — actors over 50 who are baring all. It's one of the biggest recent trends in the movies, with five of 'em last month alone.

Sir John Gielgud was revealing his titled, nonagenarian privates as far back as 1991 in "Prospero's Books." But Kathy Bates' hot-tub scene in last year's "About Schmidt" seems to have kick-started the recent trend. Five former Oscar nominees (Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, William H. Macy, Danny DeVito and Helen Mirren) can be seen in their birthday suits in movies opening for the holidays, while hotties like Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst are keeping their clothes on.

What's up? Or, more accurately — since all these senior stripizens appear to have the surgically unaltered sags and puckers that God gave them — what's down?

Surprising nudity is always a good way to get publicity, for starters, but all this nekkidness appears to be part of the movies' path toward greater realism.

"Somebody my age has to be naked in a movie," Diane Keaton told the New York Times, her point being that just as young, buff people aren't the only people who take off their clothes in real life, they shouldn't be the only naked ones in the movies, either.

After all, many of us are naked when we walk to the shower (as Keaton is in the current "Something's Gotta Give"), when we submit to a physical (as James Garner, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones are in "Space Cowboys"), when we enjoy a relaxing soak (as Bates does in "Schmidt") or when we are really wolves who have only assumed human form on a temporary basis (as Danny DeVito is in "Big Fish," which has yet to open in Honolulu).

William H. Macy, who enacts unusually frank sex scenes in "The Cooler" (also not yet in Honolulu) lamented to People magazine that he wished Hollywood had asked him to drop trou when he was in his firm 20s.

But there may be less pressure on older actors to maintain hard pecs and cellulite-free butts. Younger actors can Pilates and Bikram themselves within an inch of their lives, so we expect a lot from J.Lo's breasts or Colin Farrell's butt. But Danny DeVito? The expectations are somewhat, um, lower.

"You don't care anymore. I don't feel the need to be buff, beautiful, fantastic. You become a human being, as opposed to an empty sexual person," says Mirren, who bares it all discreetly with other cast members in "Calendar Girls," a comedy based on the true story of proper Brits who raise money with a nudie calendar. "Calendar Girls" asserts that older women remain beautiful as they get wrinkled and puckered.

Young people aren't the only ones who are sexual or confident or comfortable in their own skins. Middle-aged people feel all the same things. In other words, "We're here. We're not Britney Spears. Get used to it."