'The Twilight Zone' Has Model Under Wraps

[Brett Ferino]

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - On a personal note, I caught the "Eye of the Beholder" episode of "The Twilight Zone" in reruns when I was about eight, and it creeped me out so thoroughly that I didn't watch the show again for years.

I'm willing to bet that wasn't a unique experience.

Nevertheless, UPN's new version of the classic series is remaking this 1960 episode, penned by series creator and host Rod Serling, which originally starred Donna Douglas ("The Beverly Hillbillies").

Airing April 30 at 8 p.m. ET, "Eye of the Beholder" stars model-turned-actress Molly Sims, host of MTV's "House of Style," as Janet, a young woman willing to undergo great pain and suffering to measure up to her society's ideal of beauty.

"Out of any episode I could have done," says Sims, "it was awesome. It scared me shooting it. It was so great to be able to play something that Donna Douglas played."

"The mask, as much as it was hard on me because I had to wear it for three days straight, it was great because it gave so much to the character. This is the 11th and final surgery that she was supposed to have. She wanted to look like everybody else."

Janet is going under the knife of a plastic surgeon (Reggie Hayes, "Girlfriends") in a last-ditch attempt to conform. Failure means social disgrace and banishment.

Asked what the story said to her, as a model, Sims says, "That beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's not about what you look like, it's about how people perceive you and how you think of yourself."

While few would dispute Sims' beauty, she points out that all looks are not in fashion at all times. "I can remember when I first started modeling, the big thing was Gothic. You wanted to be weird; you wanted to be strange; you wanted to be not beautiful. Here's this classic kind of girl trying to look weird. It didn't happen."

"I tried to be really skinny. I dressed in black. I dyed my hair three shades darker, trying to be something I wasn't, because that's what society thought was cool at the moment."

"So it was great to shoot something that didn't have anything to do with what I looked like."

In fact, Sims spends most of the episode swathed in bandages that completely hide her face. "You don't think of it as so out there right now," she says, "but for that time period, to not show the face, to spend 20 minutes only really seeing a girl in a bandage, it was very risky."

"We had a medical person in there to help me put the mask on. It was like a balaclava. Then I had an eye mask that you would buy at a beauty store, with a papier-mâché mask, then I was wrapped."

"For three days, as cumbersome as it was and as pain in the ass as it was, it was great, because you realize, 'Oh my God, this is what it's like when somebody goes through this.' I couldn't see for hours at a time. When I'm walking to the window, I don't know where I'm going."

More so than in Serling's day, "Eye of the Beholder" is also a commentary on the use of plastic surgery to achieve a certain look or stave off aging.

"Everybody's trying to look like everybody else," Sims says. "I have to say, lately, some people have gotten out of control. And they're beautiful. They don't need to do anything, but they think they need to do something."

"Listen, I'm not against it. If I hadn't worn braces for two years, I would never have smiled. If it makes someone feel better about themselves, go for it. But it reaches a certain point where it doesn't even look like lips anymore."

"What so many girls now strive to be is only what they think they want to be because that's what society calls for."