Okay, it was Faye Dunaway. But what had happened to her? She looked blurry, her cheekbones obliterated within a mask of smooth, shiny blandness, like a Topshop window dummy. True, she had a timeless quality, in that there was no way of telling her real age, but all the character from that fabulous face – soulful and wide-eyed in Bonnie and Clyde, enigmatic and brittle in Chinatown – had gone. I wouldn't dare suggest what, if anything, has happened to Miss Dunaway, but she sure does not look like your average 67-year-old. Nor does Sarah Brightman look like your average 48-year-old on her new album cover. Striking a Gothic pose, she displays the surreally porcelain and illuminated visage of a blemish-free 15-year-old, smirking for all the underworld as if she just drank the blood of 20 True Love Waits college girls. Meanwhile, 39-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones is almost unrecognisable (again) in her latest image for Elizabeth Arden, her handsome dark looks nowhere to be seen and in their place an identikit image of generic made-up radiance. I swear, every time I pass one of those posters, I think, ooh, she looks slightly like Catherine Zeta-Jones, before I remember that, durr, actually, it is. Why? We all know what she looks like, at premieres, vibrantly beautiful next to that scary ol' waxwork Michael Douglas. Why can't Catherine Zeta-Jones look like Catherine Zeta-Jones? It's been quite a week for disturbing images of beautiful people. Top prize must go to Mickey Rourke, who refused to give his age when he was interviewed about fame by Piers Morgan on TV, but confirmed he'd had work after mashing his face in the boxing ring. To be fair, he looks better now than he did a few years ago when he was a mess of swollen cheekbones and exploding lips, but only enough to make you yearn to know how those stunning features might have turned out if they had been left to age naturally. Age is no longer allowed to wither the beauty of youth, though there is much evidence, from Hollywood and among everyday acquaintance, to suggest that "work" does not enhance. Dumb, eh?

However, by far the most disturbing image of the week was of a young woman who is at the peak of her fame and beauty – and looking, sadly, all too recognisable in a paedophile-pleasing pose. Supermodel Lily Cole, 20, is pictured naked on the front cover of French Playboy, with little-girl pigtails and a pink teddy bear. Lily – now a Cambridge undergraduate – says it's art. Bless her white cotton socks (that's all she's wearing). Just goes to show that there is dumb – and then there is much, much dumber.