MovieChat Forums > Tenko (1981) Discussion > Actors in POW and concentration camp dra...

Actors in POW and concentration camp dramas always kook too well fed.


I realise that it is not very practical to starve actors on fewer than 1,000 calories a day for months on end while filming POW and concentration camp dramas, but could they not find extremely thin actors and enhance the skeletal look with make up? The young mother with the crying baby in the first series looks like a well-fed farm girl. I have not seen later episodes so the actors may slim down.

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Yes the mother with the baby seemed to get fatter as the series went on. Maybe it had to do with her fraternizing with the Japanese and she got extra rations.


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Actually, the women are extremely thin by the end of the series and many do look like concentration camp victims. The problem is that this was filmed in the 1980's before the heroin and anorexic look became chic and normal. Back then the average clothing size for women was between 8 and 12. Today women strive for size 0 to 6. Many actresses, the Olsen twins, Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, and others are skeletal.

The zeitgeist has changed radically. The actors in Tenko are horridly thin for the time, covered in sores, starved and ill. If you read the new book, Remembering Tenko, you will find out how much weight these women lost over the filming of the series.

Actually, there is an article dated November 16, 2012, in the Daily Mail by Richard Barber who interviewed Stephanie Beacham (Rose). Stephanie says that Tenko turned them all anorexic. She said she gained a bit of weight before filming began and then went on a diet. She was eating a couple of carrots and some cottage cheese a day. The actresses were weighed daily to be sure they were losing weight. She says she started putting food in her mouth, just to get the taste of it and then spit it out.

[url]www.dailymail.co.uk/email/article-2233412/Tenko-turned-anorexic-Thirty-years-stars-ground-breaking-women's-prison-camp-drama-reveal-toll-took-lives-screen./)html[url]


I am watching the series now. I just finished the first episode of series 3 and so this is fresh for me. They are quite skeletal.

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Ignorance is the enemy of civilization

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