Best facelift for thin male face?

Thank you for providing such a clear and self-aware description — this kind of detail helps significantly when evaluating facial aging and treatment goals.
What you're demonstrating by gently lifting near your temples is essentially the effect of a temporal (or temple) lift, which targets the upper lateral face and can create visible improvement in the midface, particularly around the nasolabial and oral commissure area.
You also mentioned seeing improvement when lying down, which suggests volume descent and projection loss in the cheek area, possibly due to underdeveloped or flattened zygomatic bones. This is common in naturally thin patients and can exaggerate facial hollowness or contour changes over time.
While mini or limited-scope lifts may sound appealing, they often don’t provide enough structural support in patients with significant skin laxity — which, as you noted, tends to be more prominent in leaner faces. For those looking for long-term, meaningful improvement and who are ready for a more involved surgery, a deep plane facelift may offer a much more effective and natural repositioning of tissue.
On the other hand, if you're looking to stay in a less invasive category, combining your surgery with a temple lift with volume restoration (fat grafting or implant to the cheek) might help refine the area of concern without going into deeper layers of dissection.
It all comes down to your goals, your timeline, and how much downtime you're willing to accept. Either path can be designed to look modest and natural — the key is matching the right technique to your unique anatomy and expectations.
Wishing you clarity and great care as you move forward.

Only on the basis of in person or teleconference consultation it would be possible to give you good advice regarding facial surgery. Good luck.

You are young at 45-years-old. Women do better with facelift as they can wear make-up to cover up the incisions. Males, of course, do not do that. You mentioned repeatedly the corners of the mouth. I recommend an eccentric lip lift. This does 4 things: shortens the distance between the upper lip and nose, increases the mucosa of the upper lip, increases the incisor show and pulls up the corners. This procedure takes 1 hour to perform under local anesthesia and costs $4,000.

Best Wishes,

Gary Horndeski, M.D.