Roberts dazzles but Posh's smile 'looks fake'

Published on Monday 25 August 2008 22:02

WHEN it comes to the category of most dazzling smile, Julia Roberts wins hands down.

The Hollywood actress came top in a survey that asked 3,000 people to vote on who has the most genuine smile.

Roberts held off her fellow Ocean's 11 co-star George Clooney, who came third, in a poll commissioned by the online bank Smile. The X Factor judge Simon Cowell came second.

The other best smiles were that of TV character Ugly Betty – played by America Ferrera – as well as the mysterious smile of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Victoria Beckham was voted as having the worst fake smile, beating the United States president, George Bush, to the top spot.

Pop star Britney Spears was recorded as having the third-worst forced smile.

The former prime minister Tony Blair managed to creep into the top five worst fake smiles, coming fourth ahead of Motown superstar Diana Ross.

Donna Dawson, a psychologist, said: "There are many different kinds of smiles.

"But the 'true', genuine, spontaneous smile is one where the mouth spreads in a relaxed way across the face and the eyes sparkle or soften, depending on the context and meaning of the smile. False smiles involve only the mouth.

"If you were to cover up the mouth of a 'false smile' in a photograph, you would see that the eyes appear to be dead and expressionless."

Paul Hemingway, the head of campaign marketing at Smile, said: "Smiling differs from person to person. It is interesting to see from our survey that two politicians figure in the worst fake smile category – the next question to ask is do people really trust them?

"It seems that we all believe the celebrity megawatt smile is much more trustworthy."