I have been told, countless times, that I look like I belong in a different era. Perhaps it’s the way I dress—which bounces between a 1950s housewife and ‘70s gogo dancer—or my chin-skimming bob, when I set into Elizabeth Taylor-inspired curls weekly.

My partner has developed his own theory. “I think it’s all the buccal fat,” he mused from the dinner table one night. “You have it, and that’s not really the trend right now.”

While I’m shocked that he even knows the term—buccal fat refers to the pockets of fat every person has below their cheekbones—I’m doubly surprised when Manhattan-based board-certified dermatologist Dr. Shereene Idriss seems to agree with that assessment. Inside her millennial pink office overlooking Bryant Park, Dr. Idriss explains that the lack of buccal fat is actually a hallmark of what we would describe as a “modern face.” Over the last few years, the surgical removal of fat to hollow out the cheeks and effect a more angular silhouette has become one of the most-requested surgeries among Millennials. (The look is key to what the writer Jia Tolentino called “Instagram face,” characterized by Kardashian-esque “catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes...a small, neat nose and full, lush lips.”)

Fashion critic and Vogue contributor Lynn Yaeger knows what it’s like to look a little out of time; she likens her own signature beauty look, marked by cherry red hair, a pointed cupid’s bow, and baby bangs, to that of a “1920s broken doll.” “Historically, different kinds of faces and different body shapes come in and out of fashion,” she reflects over the phone. “It just depends on how your own look sort of coincides with the general aesthetic.”

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The harmony between my retro-ish features and fondness for vintage could be considered a lucky thing. For some modern actors cast in projects set in the past, having their face to match the era their film or series is set in can take a bit of doing—or un-doing. To play the 18th-century religious leader Ann Lee, for instance, Amanda Seyfried gave up Botox, her anti-aging intervention of choice, for an entire year, in addition to eschewing makeup on set. (Would the ecstatic founder of American Shakerism have had a perfectly smooth forehead or a smudgy lip? Doubtful.)

“For some roles it’s required that someone be totally natural—or at least convincingly so,” casting director Kahleen Crawford says. Some of the projects she has worked on include Apple TV+’s period piece The Buccaneers. “Even eyebrows are a question. Microblading, for example, can feel too much, depending on the skill of the person who has done the treatment.”

For actor Holliday Grainger, whose first major role was as the 15th-century Italian noblewoman Lucrezia Borgia in Showtime’s The Borgias, era-identification is just part of the game. During her audition, she says, showrunner Neil Jordan compared her pale skin, round eyes, and delicate features to “a Botticelli painting.” He was apparently onto something; she’s spent the majority of her career since starring in period pieces.

Profile portrait of a young woman, probably Simonetta, Profile portrait of a young woman, probably Simonetta, painting by Sandro Botticelli (1445 - 1510), one of the most important Italian painters and draftsmen of the early Renaissance, historical, digitally restored reproduction from an original. (Photo by: Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Bildagentur-online/Getty Images

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“Every decade has such a clear visual aesthetic when it comes to both trending features and the makeup used to highlight them,” makeup artist and beauty historian Erin Parsons says. She walks me through them all, from the small, sharply drawn cupid bow lips of the 1920s up to the paint-by-numbers-style contour of the 2010s—pointing out the references and revivals, too. “When you see thin brows and a high forehead, most people [think of] the ‘90s, but it’s also the ’30s.” (Where she describes her own look as a cross between the 1920s and ’90s—Parsons has a single kiss curl gelled onto her forehead—she takes one look at my makeup-less, heart-shaped face and places me in the 1940s: “Pure Rita Hayworth.”)

Next, I set a date with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Kathryn Calley Galitz to discuss classic portraiture. While we examine the high foreheads of 15th-century women (a beauty trend so desirable that women would pluck back their hairline) and the small, pretty noses of the neoclassical French princesses, I wonder how all of the subjects looked so dewy and rosy at a time when living conditions didn’t involve skincare or medical intervention. “Painters wanted to reflect their subjects in a flattering light, either to get more work or convey a message through their art,” Galitz explains, comparing the artists’ idealizing flourishes to a proto-Instagram filter. (Call it Ingres face.)

But actors live in the year 2025—even when they are playing somebody who lived hundreds of years ago—and the pressures to look youthful in high-def, on social media, and beyond are modern and have modern solutions. “Actors, particularly female ones, are caught between being expected for their face not to change as the years pass, but at the same time, deliver incredible performances that require a full range of emotions,” Crawford says. “We feel, and our muscles react—I want to see that on screen. When I see it, I feel it, and then I’m immersed in the performance.”