Toothday
Bite down into a perfect set of stories all about teeth.
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Everyone acts with teeth, but few reallyteeth act.
Rather, by teeth acting, Im talking about actors who explicitly use their teeth to work the camera.
Teeth actors can be broken down into three buckets.
For them, teeth are central to the way they leave a lasting impression in your brain.
When Myerssqueezeshis face around them, its flavor for the punch line.
(Yeah, baby, yeah!)
His teeth can give you an iconic moment.
He can pull off prosthetics, but he doesnt need to rely on them.
And Carrey is capable of conjuring an entire sense of a character just using the insides of his mouth.
Carreys standard comedic persona has always been defined by its physical maximalism.
Onscreen, hes jittery and chaotic, like a Four Loko meltdown personified.
He pulls his cheeks.
He slaps one hand with the other.
He jumps and gobbles and yells YOU STUFFED HER LIKE A THANKSGIVING TURKEY!
He whips around and stretches out his limbs like a living, breathing Looney Tune.
Theres an animalistic quality to Carrey, an element most literalized by the titular fauna-loving protagonist in theAce Venturamovies.
Whats less obvious is how Carreys choppers are central to that maximalism.
They appear as a motif across Carreys quintessential characters.
When playing villains, Carreys teeth-forward style becomes an inversion of the Roberts-Washington school of megawatt smiles.
That animal quality comes into play again: What does a predator do when theyre trying to instill fear?
In Carreys case, he bares them all like theyre fangs.
But even through all those extravagant choices, Carreys teeth stick to your brain like the Cheshire cats smile.
They pack a punch even when it comes to villains whose faces are underscored by other centerpieces.
But once again, the look is accentuated with Carreys quiet flashes of icky yellow incisors.
Yes, hes riotous, but you might also sense an unmistakable darkness beneath the surface.
Teeth are naturally horrifying objects.
They are not exposed bone but close enough.
They exist to rip things to shreds.
They are uncanny when viewed isolated from the mouth.
Theyre the perfect symbols for the way Carreys comedy often feels like its tipping over the edge of violence.
(In the movie, Bruces excitement over his newfound gifts is punctuated by an upskirt gag.
But Carreys performances arent limited to maximalism.
When playing serious roles, he swerves from that raw physicality in search of naturalism.
He doesnt speak so much as mumble, a painfully shy man perpetually retreating into himself.
He hides his teeth as if hes ashamed of them.
But as Truman gradually learns the truth behind his reality, the brightness of his face dims.
His pearly whites start appearing infrequently until theyre flashed in their full glory one last time at the end.
Theres even a mythological quality to the way teeth link to his story.
One fun fact aboutDumb and Dumbers Lloyd Christmas is that his broken front tooth isnt actually fake.
De Niro gains weight.
I file my teeth off,he toldEntertainment Weeklyin 1994.
If thats not evidence of the greatest teeth actor who ever lived, I dont know what is.
