Twenty-Five Years of Loving Toni Collette

On Accepting Ourselves, and Finding Our Place in the World

(Hello! Before you start reading, check out my last post, which is an offering for a journaling group. Lots of people have joined and I’d love to have you!)

I was a teenager when I first saw Muriel’s Wedding. I worked at a video store, and found a lot of wonderful independent films that way, but I fully identified with Muriel (ne’ Mariel) and her struggle to find her place in the world. A family joke, a socially awkward striver, a young woman living in a fantasy world; Muriel is constantly dismissed, insulted, and undermined, yet she longs for the acceptance of the people who treat her the worst.

I hated that Toni Collette had to gain weight for the role— I wanted the actress who played Muriel to be an actual fat person, but of course fat actors were rare in the nineties (and, frankly, are still too rare). For Muriel to find herself, she had to meet Rhonda, a former classmate who had the guts to stand up to the “popular girls,” whose approval Muriel is still desperately seeking. Muriel has crashed the girls’ vacation, and her self-esteem is at an historic low, but Rhonda convinces her to dress up as ABBA and sing Waterloo on stage, resulting in this iconic scene.

Rachel Griffiths and Toni Collette and Rhonda and Muriel in Muriel’s Wedding.

I’d been fat too, and a striver. My weight fluctuated because of my eating disorder. I always longed to be recognized and sought external sources of approval, not having learned as a child and teenager how to generate my own self-love. Muriel came from a family that despised not only her but their entire unit and each individual. Throughout the course of the film she takes an epic journey that results in her finally standing up for herself.

Muriel’s Wedding is now a cult classic, which Collette herself was surprised to learn.

It was through this film that I, and many others, discovered Toni Collette. Collette, like Muriel, grew up in a working-class family (her father was a truck driver) outside of Sydney. Most people discovered Collette after her starring role in The Sixth Sense, where she sported a flawless American accent and was nominated for an Academy Award (best supporting actress), but between MW and TSS Collette starred in lots of indies, including Così (with Rachel Griffiths) and the indie film Clockwatchers (alongside Lisa Kudrow and Parker Posey). I loved all these films (also available at the video store for free employee rental); The Sixth Sense was less remarkable to me, though I appreciate it now that I’ve studied film. Collette feared that TSS would be “too Hollywood,” and that’s what I love about her. That’s what’s made her career, for me; the discernment, the willingness to turn something down if it doesn’t feel right.

In Her Shoes is another beautiful Collette film involving poetry and illiteracy. It’s a complex film that was dismissed as a chick flick, in my opinion. Then there’s Little Miss Sunshine, The United States of Tara, About a Boy, a ton of Broadway shows, and, most recently, Hereditary, which Collette said was the most difficult role of her career. (As a lifelong horror fan, I can say it’s a very good, and very terrifying, movie).

So, why am I writing a newsletter about Toni Collette? Because today’s newsletter is about acceptance. If Collette had lamented her kind of beauty (which is such a beautiful kind of beauty, but not mainstream) and felt sorry for herself, she may not have been so confident in being ugly for her roles. One of my favorite things about Collette’s face is the way it’s changed over the years— since finding her in MW, all the way to Hereditary, Collette’s versatile face and acting style has allowed her to slip into characters and roles other actors may not have been able to disappear into. This is also a criticism of the beauty standards that all of us face, whether we are externally defined as traditionally beautiful or “unique” (as Collette herself has been described), we can decide to let other people’s definitions of us, or our perceptions of other people’s perceptions (ahem, our projections), hinder or help us. But many traditionally beautiful actors cling to their youth, seeking botox and surgery, until their faces are frozen into masks that hold them in place. There’s no disappearing. No transforming. (I am thinking of Nicole Kidman, an incredibly talented actor whose face now makes me desperately sad).

My face is changing now, too. I look into the mirror and see the face of my mother, who died by suicide nearly eleven years ago, at fifty one years of age. It’s a strange and unsettling sensation, especially because my mother was obsessed with her femininity, and I identify as non-binary.

I remember, years ago, a woman in her fifties telling me she “didn’t recognize her face,” when she looked in the mirror. I can now relate to that in a sense, but I want to interrupt this not recognizing, because knowing my face intimately is the same as knowing my body intimately, the same as accepting my full self instead of denying it.

I’ve made it a goal this week to look in mirrors more. To appreciate the way the skin on my neck is no longer taut, the way my mid-brow worry line appears every morning upon waking up, the way my skin has accrued sun spots, and changed in tone.

We, especially those of us who present as or move through the world in a female body (whether that’s self or externally defined), are taught to fear these changes. My impulse is to avoid the mirror, out of shame. But I think of the people I know who are older than me, and the beauty of their faces, their bodies— how they have gained complexity and character rather than, as our culture would have us believe, lost beauty.

As much as I can define my gender identity for myself while acknowledging that I will be misgendered, I can also embrace the way my physical appearance is changing while understand that many people in our society may see me as less attractive or less worthy of being seen because of my age. Ageism is real.

My mom chose to end her life because she thought of herself as too old, when she was fifty-two. Her entire identity hinged on the way she was perceived by others, especially men. I was raised and neglected by her, and through years of television and pop culture consumption, kept myself alive by believing that I would somehow “make it.” I’d be discovered, and someone would tell me I was worthy. I would be loved by the public. It’s taken me a very long time to understand that giving myself love, giving myself praise and acknowledging my inherent beauty, light, and strengths, frees me from what killed my mother— the belief that my value comes from the outside, rather than by my own self-definition.

After my mother’s death, I promised that I would live a life of brutal honesty in a way that she couldn’t. And I have, although of course I get lost in delusion every once in a while, too. I also promised myself that I wouldn’t fall prey to superficiality; defining my worth by my appearance and what I own. That has been challenging, especially because I live within a culture that holds appearance and wealth as the ultimate goal. More and more, I’ve been embracing minimalism.

There is society, and there is me. There is society, and there is you.

The more I can see my own light, my own worth, my own intelligence, and the more I can trust myself, the more I can support others and myself in rejecting the societal expectations that cause us to reject ourselves.

As a child, I lived a life mostly alone. I created a fantasy world where I was discovered. I imagined walking down the sidewalk and being seen. And for a while, that was true. I was seen. I was wanted, in certain ways. But it wasn’t me people wanted. It was my appearance. My shell. Their projections of who I was.

And as I move into my forties I know my work rests in seeing myself through my own eyes, and allowing myself to inhabit my life in the present, not in the future. I don’t need a fantasy to reach for. I don’t need to be extraordinary.

This is enough.