wehadfacesthen: Ingrid Bergman, 1952“I made my own image because I refused to change my name o
wehadfacesthen: Ingrid Bergman, 1952“I made my own image because I refused to change my name or my hair. They wanted to change me completely when I first came over because that was the standard thing to do. They took stars from Hungary, Germany, France, and tried to change them – to make them more beautiful to American eyes, I suppose. But then they became just like all the other American stars that were there. Lots of publicity stills in bathing suits and hats and all that.“Well, ….when I came over, they started in on me: ‘The name’s impossible to pronounce,’ ‘The name’s German and there’s a war on,’ ‘You’re teeth, eyebrows and hair are wrong.’ But I said I wouldn’t change anything. I told them they had got me over here because they’d seen a picture called Intermezzo and I was here to do a remake, and I was staying how I was because that’s the way you liked me in the picture. Then they started on the publicity. But I didn’t want any of it – I wanted the public to discover me. I didn’t want to be pushed down their throats, because I’ve seen that: ‘MARVELOUS STAR FROM HOLLAND, A GREAT ACTRESS’ and then out she comes and just does what everyone else is doing.“Well, Selznick listened and said it was a great idea. He said he’d work on the idea of a natural girl from whose head not a hair had been removed. He told makeup he’d kill anyone who touched my eyebrows. He did tests in color with no makeup on at all. However, my face was too red in the heat of the lamps, so I had to have a little makeup on. So I became the ‘natural’ star. And it was just at the right time because everything had become very artificial and all hair-dos.” -- source link