Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Don't worry, be pretty
By Shiroma Benaragama
Beauty is not just a pretty face. It is confidence, grace and poise. It is something that you can find in the sparkle of a beautiful, happy smile or even healthy eyes. It is the radiance of a glowing skin that comes from good health. As it is often said, 'health is wealth'. So what are you doing about it?

It's in the attitude
Beauty has no real age limits. You can find beauty in a newly born wrinkled skin, just as you can in an extremely old one. You do not need to grow into an old person. Happy, sparkling personalities are definitely more attractive and fun to be around.

So stop for a moment and take a deep look at your attitude. Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you feel alive to the world around you? Are you rigid or flexible? Are you young at heart? This is really important. A lack of enthusiasm will show in your eyes and in the droop of your mouth. And finally in your health. So get interested in life and the things that are happening around you. It will make you mentally healthy and physically fit as well as attractive.

Keep yourself fit
This does not mean that you have to go to the gym and do push ups or weights. If you do, that's good. But if you do not, then start on some simple routine, like walking, dancing, jogging, cycling, swimming or any game that you enjoy. The key word here is enjoyment. Your enthusiasm will show, especially when your self-esteem rises along with that glowing skin and firmer figure. Not to forget, good health.

You are what you eat
If you do not watch your waist, no one else will. So aim for a balanced diet: A diet that contains proteins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats and vitamins in the right proportion. Any dietician or doctor would be able to guide you. Do not take vitamin supplements without your doctor's advice or it could prove to be harmful. In any case a good, healthy diet eliminates the need for supplements.

Are you a 'feel good' person as opposed to a 'feel tired' person?
Fatigue is one of beauty's greatest enemies. That does not mean that you should rest all day. There are basically two kinds of fatigue. The first is the healthy one that you get after a good bout of exercise. This one makes you feel good. And the second one is the result of boredom and a lack of exercise, the onset of a physical illness or depression, which leads to further health problems.

So if you suffer from the second kind of fatigue, you should get yourself checked by a doctor. Maybe you are simply anaemic. This is a common problem with women who have a heavy menstrual flow. Fatigue could even be a result of bad working conditions. So make sure you get plenty of fresh air and adequate rest.

Very often beauty problems are actually underlying medical ones, so it is far better to check with a doctor than a beauty consultant. A bad spell can create havoc with your hair, teeth and of course your skin. So the right people to consult after a general practitioner would be a skin specialist or a dentist. First get your physical problems corrected and form a daily health regimen. Then go to the beauty parlour for a treat.

Meryl's choice
By Susan Granger
Meryl Streep loves learning, reading and singing, but the woman with more Oscar nominations than any other performer in history loathes cooking, self-doubt and guns in movies.

With her 13th Oscar nomination in 2003, Meryl Streep has won more Academy Award accolades than any other performer in Hollywood history, including Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson. She's won the Best Actress Oscar twice - for Kramer vs. Kramer (1980) and Sophie's Choice (1983). And she was recently given an honorary career achievement Cesar, France's version of the Oscar.

More than any other actress of this generation, she is able to disappear inside of her character, transforming herself physically to meet the demands of the role. A luminous blonde with flawless, pale, almost translucent skin, she possesses a fragile beauty that allows her to be, at times, earthy and plain, while at other times, radiant and glamorous.

Born on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey, the former Mary Louise Streep is the daughter of a retired pharmaceutical executive and a commercial artist. She became interested in acting while an undergraduate at Vassar College. After graduating in 1971, she enrolled at Yale Drama School for graduate study. Her first film was Julia (1977) and the next year she was nominated for her first Oscar for The Deer Hunter. Her subsequent films include Silkwood, Out of Africa, Ironweed, A Cry in the Dark, Postcards from the Edge, Bridges of Madison County, The River Wild, Death Becomes Her, Marvin's Room, Dancing at Lughnasa, One True Thing, Music of the Heart, AI: Artificial Intelligence.

Meryl Streep's two most recent films are Adaptation, the mind-bending comedy written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze, and the The Hours, the passionate drama adapted by David Hare from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, directed by Stephen Daldry. Her next film is Flora Plum, set for release in 20004.

LOVES:
1) Her husband, sculptor Donald Gummer, to whom she's been married since 1978: "I couldn't even dream of being a mother and making movies without Don. He's the lynchpin. I was never the kind of person who said, 'I'm going to be an actress - and if I meet somebody and have a family, great. I always, always, since I was a little girl, wanted to have kids and a family. I just had to wait 30 years to find somebody I liked enough."

2) Her family: "That means my children - Henry, Mary Willa, Grace and Louisa - plus my 93 year-old father (a recent widower). I do spend a lot of time caretaking, and I make all my decisions based on my family. There's no road map on how to raise a family. It's a negotiation."

3) Children: "Children keep you anchored to reality. You're on a movie set and everyone gets you coffee and asks what you need. And then I go home and I'm waiting on tables like I was in college."

4) Motherhood: "Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials."

5) Home: "Since 1985, we've lived on a secluded 89-acre plot in the hills of northwest Connecticut. It's a wonderful, family place. We have a dog, two cats and three fish. The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets but no one but me cleans the kitty litter."

6) Quality of life: "Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work."

7) Learning: "It is not asking too much to dedicate your life to learning. For what is life but one huge classroom in which we all are students?"

8) Reading: "Consider yourself very fortunate if your children read."

9) Education: "If I have any piece of advice to give, it's go to college if you can."

10) Expanding her children's vocabulary: "Children are forgetting the meanings of words because they don't use them. They know who the latest rock stars are, but they don't know where The Hague is, or that it's a city, or what makes it important."

11) Having more Oscar nominations than any actor in history: "It's inconceivable."

12) Fame: "Being famous gets you a really good table at a restaurant and access to a doctor."

13) Winning an Oscar: "It's incredible! No matter how much you try to imagine what it's like, it's just so incredibly thrilling."

14) Peace: "I'm wearing a specially designed peace pin inspired by Pablo Picasso's Dove of Peace. It's from a group called Global Vision for Peace and we hope it will send a message that many Americans want peace."

15) Working: "I'm always so enlivened by the prospect of working again - each time I get a new job I get excited."

16) Playing disagreeable women: "Those are my favourite characters."

17) Her energy-efficient car: "I have a Toyota Prius, which is a great, great car. I adore it. It goes 105 miles an hour."

18) Imagination: "When I was a child, I liked imagining what it would be like to be someone else."

19) Directing: "That's what I'd love to do in years to come, when my children are grown and gone, in the theatre especially."

20) Scrabble: "It's a great word game to play on the set. I like to make up words."

21) Her marriage recipe: "Goodwill and a willingness to bend."

LOATHES:

1) Talking about her fears: "K'ain Ayin Hara - that's my feeling about fears. It's Yiddish for 'it shouldn't happen' - if you voice your fears, they may come true. I'm superstitious enough to believe that."

2) Insecurity: "It's this crisis of confidence. You doubt your talent. You feel your invention flagged. You're boring. You're sh*t - and they're going to find out."

3) The deathly duo: "When you've had the kind of success I've had, it marries insecurity to expectation. So it's just a higher precipice, a bigger fall."

4) Self-doubt: "Like when I was offered the lead in Adaptation. I just was thrilled that they wanted me to do it, but I really had to convince myself that they wanted me. I mean, I couldn't imagine that they didn't want someone younger, prettier, sexier."

5) Typecasting: "Quite early in my career I became fascinated with manipulating my image, and how I looked, to serve a story."

6) Education via the media: "Don't let your kids yield to the temptation to allow TV and movies and video games to be their mentor and educator. Never!"

7) Destructive fantasies: "Hollywood feeds the myth that it's a good fantasy for a girl to grow up, stop eating and - at 25 - marry a 60 year-old and have a fabulous 10 years escorting him into his dotage."

8) America's film-exportation concept: "We seem to withhold our most interesting films. Instead, we export the crap. And then we wonder why everybody hates us and has a distorted picture of what Americans are."

9) The "perfectionist" label: "You can't be a perfectionist and the mother of four."

10) Breaking her own rules: "They're simple: one picture per annum, no location shooting, or theatre roles, during the school year - until my youngest child is off to college."

11) The business of movies: "I've distanced myself from it. I just don't understand the business. And I'm intimidated, I guess, by certain elements of it."

12) Comparing the characters she plays to herself: "I have yet to deconstruct any of my work to find the nasty little parallels. If I did, it would (express) something I don't want to articulate. I'm interested in flying, not thinking."

13) Personal publicity: "I don't think it helps the suspension of disbelief if everybody knows where you work out. There's so much promotion that undermines our work as actors. It's too bad."

14) Using her children for publicity purposes: "I think it's terrible to do that - as much as they might enjoy it. They're not photographed and they're not publicized by me, so they retain a certain integrity as citizens of this country that I don't enjoy. I can't sue anybody for what they say about me. But my children can, and that's the way it should be. They should have their own lives."

15) Working too much: "My rule has been one-film-a-year, but it never works out that they're released that way. I made 'Adaptation' and 'The Hours' so far apart, but we ended up having to reshoot two entirely new scenes a year after we'd finished principal photography - and after I'd finished shooting Adaptation. And that's because it was just such a difficult film to make. If you watch it, you can see it's almost like a collage. They filmed it as three distinct films, then cut it all up into ppieces and sort of fit it back together."

16) Fame: "The bad thing is having this huge, unwieldy reputation that's sort of like a big rear end: I sense that people are looking at it when I come into a room."

17) Competition for top awards: "I think if we could get the sports analogy out of the movies, we'd all be better off."

18) Watching herself on-screen: "It's an ordeal."

19) Cooking: "I'm a terrible cook."

20) Disney world: "Ugh! I hate it. Problem is: (Disney) own everything. They own Miramax. They own ABC, which did my TV movie, 'Do Not Harm', so, for a while, they owned me! I think I'm the only living person who doesn't love Disney world."

21) The PTA (Parent Teachers Association): "I hate the PTA and will not attend meetings. I get too emotional. I'm a wild card, and my friends go, 'Shhh, shhh'."

22) Soccer: "I'm a soccer mom. I drive the kids back and forth and watch the games but I don't know what's going on. They all run up the field, then back down the field. I don't know who is playing what. And what is offside?"

23) Being thwarted: "When we were making The Hours, my frustration was that they would never let me see the other parts - Nicole Kidman's and Julianne Moore's segments."

24) Favouritism: "When I worked with Woody Allen on Manhattan, I improvised a little. But Woody would say, 'No, don't do that...just say it the way I wrote it'. I later realized that Diane Keaton could say whatever she wanted."

25) Guns: "I am particularly against guns in movies. I refused to pose with a gun for The River Wild. The NRA couldn't pay these glamorous people (actors) to do an ad for them, but we do their flogging for them for 'free' in movie ads."

26) Glamorous events: "I do sort of get nauseous before any event where I have to look nice."

27) Late nights: "They throw me off-balance. I usually go to bed between 9:30 and 10 p.m."

28) "Double-thinking": "That's what I call agonizing about my decisions. I hate it."

29) Not doing more comedy: "That's not what the public wants from me - and you can't argue with them. That's their perception. So I have to keep on doing what I do."
- Asia Features

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