Before and After

“I had been thinking it was time for a bit of a glamour backlash,” wrote Stefano Tonchi in his February editor’s letter. Enter artist and photographer Juergen Teller, whom Tonchi and Editor-at-Large Lynn Hirschberg tasked with capturing 33 of this year’s most celebrated actors in his signature raw and largely un-retouched style. “I will kidnap the actor or actress and go to an undisclosed location, where we will take pictures for a few hours without any editor, publicist, or hair and makeup artist on set,” Teller warned before the shoot. And that he did. Here, a side-by-side comparison of our featured celebrities as they looked when Teller snapped them and in their previous turns in the pages of W. Should Teller’s realism be the new normal? You be the judge.