  The formation, deformation, and break-up of liquid interfaces are ubiquitous
phenomena in nature. In the present article we discuss the deformation of a
liquid interface produced by optical radiation forces. Usually, the bending of
such an interface by the radiation pressure of a c.w. laser beam is weak.
However, the effect can be enhanced significantly if one works with a
near-critical phase-separated liquid mixture, whereby the surface tension
becomes weak. The bending may in this way become as large as several tenths of
micrometers, even with the use of only moderate laser power. This
near-criticality is a key element in our experimental investigations as
reviewed in the article. The effect is achieved by working with a micellar
phase of microemulsions, at room temperature. We give a brief survey of the
theory of electromagnetic forces on continuous matter, and survey earlier
experiments in this area, such as the Ashkin-Dziedzic optical radiation force
experiment on a water/air surface (1973), the Zhang-Chang experiment on the
laser-induced deformation of a micrometer-sized spherical water droplet (1988),
and the experiment of Sakai et al. measuring surface tensions of interfaces in
a non-contact manner (2001). Thereafter, we survey results we obtained in
recent years by performing experiments on near-critical interfaces, such as
interface bending in the linear regime, stationary large deformations of liquid
interfaces, asymmetric pressure effects on interfaces under intense
illumination, nonlinear deformations, and laser-sustained liquid columns.
