Is your neck making you look old? Experts reveal the celebrities betrayed by ageing body part despite their youthful faces

Botox can smooth the crow’s feet screeching at the corners of the eyes. Filler can plump the lips and lift the cheeks, restoring a once-dewy visage. But there is one stubborn player that can betray even the most carefully constructed façade: the wretched neck.

For all the money, time and expertise lavished on preserving a youthful face, the neck remains the blind beauty spot notoriously difficult to disguise. 

And for some of the world’s most beautiful women, it can become the giveaway, revealing the passing years their immaculate faces have managed to conceal.

Because there is one truth glaring defiantly from every red-carpet photograph: even the most beautiful women can’t hide an ageing neck.

For decades, women have been told that ageing is a problem that can be controlled. And with a cavalcade of treatments now available, the signs of ageing can certainly be slowed, softened and, to an extent, disguised.

We have lasers to tackle pigmentation and chemical peels to improve texture and tone. But then there is the neck. It is rather like the embarrassing relative who turns up to the party without observing the dress code.

Just look at Monica Bellucci. At 62, the Italian actress has become the face of mature glamour. Her cascading dark hair, olive skin and voluptuous figure have seen her repeatedly hailed as one of the world’s most beautiful women.

Yet while her face may be the model of ageless beauty, her neck tells a rather different story. 

And Monica is not alone. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Elle Macpherson and Melanie Griffith are among a generation of women who may spend thousands on potions, treatments and procedures to maintain their youthful looks, only to find that the neck has other ideas.

Yes, it is the great leveller of female beauty and a rather inconvenient one for those in the public eye who spend their careers being photographed.

Take Texan model Jerry Hall, back in the spotlight at 70 thanks to her appearance on Celebrity Traitors. Once the epitome of American glamour, she is still turning heads. Yet even her pristine flaxen hair cannot distract entirely from the skin beneath her chin, which can reveal her age in a rather more unvarnished fashion.

The problem is partly anatomical. The skin on the neck is thinner than that on the face and, as we age, declining levels of collagen and elastin can contribute to sagging, fine lines and that telltale crepey texture. Years of sun exposure can compound the problem. Dr Arti Sing Advanced, Aesthetic Practitioner said: ‘The neck is one of the most honest areas of the body. 

It ages early and visibly, yet it is often overlooked in skincare and treatment. That’s why it so often reveals a person’s age, even when the face suggests otherwise.Neck skin is thinner than facial skin, with a less robust dermis and fewer oil glands, so it loses moisture faster and becomes crepey sooner. 

Beneath it, the platysma muscle can become more prominent with age, creating vertical bands. Many people stop their sunscreen at the jawline, leaving the neck and décolletage exposed to years of UV damage, which shows as pigmentation, and lost elasticity. Horizontal “tech neck” lines from looking down at phones are increasingly common too.’

Unlike the face, the neck is easily neglected when we begin our anti-ageing regimes.

We diligently apply expensive serums around our eyes. We massage moisturiser into our cheeks. We religiously slather SPF over our faces. But how many of us remember to migrate southwards? The result can be startling.

A woman can have an immaculate blow-dry, beautifully defined cheekbones and skin as smooth as a baby’s bottom, only for a flash of décolletage to reveal a crepey or sun-damaged neck.

Nowhere is this more exposed than beneath the unforgiving glare of red-carpet flashbulbs, which have a habit of showing every last bit of wear and tear.

There is also an uncomfortable double standard in the scrutiny placed on women.

A man with a craggy neck can be described as distinguished or rugged. A woman can suddenly become the subject of a beauty post-mortem. The implication seems to be that if her face still glows with youth, her neck has somehow let the side down.

That said, men do not entirely escape Father Time’s rough treatment. Rod Stewart and Harrison Ford are both examples of men whose instantly recognisable faces now sit above the inevitable signs of the sunken neck beneath the chin. Indeed Sab Khan at Avicenna Wellbeing said that the distinction between Rod’s Stewart’s face and neck are very conspicuous: ‘In Rod Stewart’s case, the signs are more pronounced, with his neck showing more obvious skin laxity, thinning and deeper creasing.

So here our expert, Mr Anil Joshi, president of the British Society of Facial Plastic Surgery, reviews those famous faces, blessed with beauty and now cursed with the wretched neck.

Dr Ross Parry, medical director of Cosmedics, meanwhile, believes there is less distinction between Rod Stewart’s face and neck than might initially appear. He adds:

‘Rod has visible facial lines around his eyes, forehead and cheeks, alongside folds beneath the chin and across the exposed part of his neck,’ he says. ‘His neck shows more folding, but his face also displays clear signs of maturity, so the contrast is less dramatic than the idea of a youthful face with an older neck might suggest.

‘My subjective impression would be seventies to early eighties for both his face and neck.’

Meanwhile Dr Dirk Kremer, a plastic surgeon specialising in face rejuvenation says that people considering facial surgery often neglect the neck, but ideally both should be treated together.

 ‘One of the mistakes I often see in facial rejuvenation is concentrating entirely on the face and forgetting the neck. If you make the face look considerably younger but leave an ageing neck untreated, you can actually make the contrast between the two more noticeable. For that reason, I generally assess the face and neck together. A facelift shouldn’t simply end at the jawline, the lower face, jawline and neck continue anatomically and aesthetically.’

Interestingly, you can sometimes rejuvenate the neck alone and leave the face untouched, particularly when someone has good facial volume and little jowling but early neck laxity or platysmal banding.’ Dr Kremer adds. ‘The reverse is much less commonly possible. Once somebody has enough ageing to require a facelift, there is usually some degree of ageing at the jawline and neck as well.

For that reason, I generally assess the face and neck together. A facelift shouldn’t simply end at the jawline, the lower face, jawline and neck continue anatomically and aesthetically.’

Perhaps this is why the neck is so revealing. It exposes the uncomfortable truth that looking older and looking less attractive are not necessarily the same thing.

And perhaps that is why Monica Bellucci’s neck is actually more interesting than a perfectly preserved one.

Her beauty has not vanished simply because she has aged. If anything, the contrast between the face millions have spent decades admiring and the natural signs of time beneath it reminds us that real beauty does not have an expiry date, even if the beauty industry would sometimes like to convince us otherwise.

The wretched neck, it seems, is simply refusing to lie.