L.A. Confi - Dental
FACES & PLACES: Celebrity dentists tell the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth about their famous clients When Johnny Depp landed the starring role in this fall's "The Astronaut's Wife", he headed straight to... the dentist's office. The film's producers, it turns out, weren't too crazy about Depp's nicotine-stained smile. Depp, of course, didn't go to just any dentist. He visited New York's Dr. Irwin Smigel, president of the 22-year-old American Society for Dental Aesthetics and, unofficially, dentist to the stars. In just one three-hour visit, Smigel brightened Depp's choppers by using laser whitening, a revolutionary bleaching technique that produces results lasting for at least five years. (home bleaching kits call for semiannual maintenance sessions.) And while the $2000 treatment can be somewhat painful, Depp took it like a man, sketching cigarettes on a pad during the procedure. Smigel, who has been practicing dentistry for more than 40 years, first came to prominence in 1974 when he introduced tooth bonding to the American public on the TV show "That's Incredible". (Americans may have had a looser opinion of "incredible" back then.) In tooth bonding, a mild acid solution is used to open the pores of the tooth, allowing a composite material to be bonded on the outside, covering imperfections in a way that looks natural. But Smigel, a charming, gray-haired man with a grandfatherly manner, didn't stop there. In the mid-80's, he helped invent veneers - thin, porcelain laminates that are fitted over a tooth and bonded with a resin adhesive. It is the procedure that has celebrities - including Elizabeth Taylor, Danny Aiello, Ivana Trump, Calvin Klein and Patrick Swayze - lining up in Smigel's Madison Avenue office. Using veneers, Smigel performs what he calls a "scalpel-free face lift" by building out the upper teeth by a fraction, which he says produces the illusion of higher cheekbones, lessens the appearance of vertical laugh lines and pushes out the upper lip, for that oh-so-sexy Hollywood pout. "People want teeth that create energy and life and dynamic smile," he says. "It's just sexier."