Before They Had Stylists: A Look Back At Stars' First Time On A Red Carpet
Like the heady mix of pride and elation that fills you as you witness your own flesh-and-blood pulling themselves up by their lonesomes to take their first wobbly steps across the living room floor, witnessing some of your favorite stars' first times on the red carpet—as compiled in this Us Weekly gallery—is an experience worth savoring. Pictured above, writer's room taskmistress Katherine Heigl presents herself to the world at the 2000 premiere for The Beach in an ensemble that makes several endearing first-timer mistakes: 1. At this early point in your career, showing anything more than 3/4 inch of leg runs the risk of making you look trampy. 2. Flashbulbs' x-ray effect often reveal more about your foundation garments than you'd like to the world to know. Always match your bra to your dark-chocolate turtleneck, lest you want the world to mistakenly assume you're a Mormon. 3. The movie's about a tropical Eden in Thailand, not what happens when your trying-to-be-hip mom is convinced by a Barneys saleswoman that "Fall is all about the Annie Oakley look." Dress theme-appropriately.
More red carpet toddlers after the jump!
Gwyneth Paltrow attends the 1991 premiere of The Prince of Tides, a shooting star followed by a trail of cometary dust streaking the front of mom Blythe Danner's cocktail dress. While she would later adopt a more demure signature style, she has recently returned to the more daring, crotch-baring looks that defined her splashy arrival on the scene.
Julia Roberts and Jon Voight arrive at the 1985 Fool for Love premiere in New York, back when Julia was still flirting with a bad-girl image, and all the Parliament-huffing, older-man-bedding, and Siegfried and Roy Collection™ satin-shirt-wearing rebelliousness that implies.
Most powerful presence in the celebrity universe Oprah Winfrey had not yet refined her public persona when she attended an Oscars luncheon in 1986. After being quietly pulled aside by an Academy official and told the life-sized statuettes were not there for crotch-level mugging, she quickly absorbed the note and has since become associated with Academy Awards elegance and restraint the world over.
[Photo Credits: Wireimage]
