Plain janes, ugly girls or just ordinary looking women; if I was cynical I might say that it seems that cosmetic surgery is so common today that most American actresses would need an extensive makeup session to play any of them.
Of course, the ugly girl has three stereotypical roles in the movies: the butt of cheap jokes, the loyal friend, or the heroine who is almost miraculously transformed into a beauty (often with disturbing side-effects). And, of course, the more beautiful the actress behind the makeup the more shocking the transformation: not to mention the greater the potential publicity mileage as we saw with Nicole Kidman’s nose for The Hours.
There are separate sub-sections covering fat makeups, grotesque characters and women disfigured by scars or illness.