If acting is an art comparable to painting, then makeup artists apply those first magical coats that help actors compose a memorable portrait. And for heavier effects makeup, they are instrumental, as they provide actors with masks, helping them slip into character far more easily. How else could a young Linda Blair become possessed, or Mike Myers become Fat Bastard, or Nicole Kidman become Virginia Woolf? Actors who take on transformational roles must be fully committed and patient and might even be pleasantly surprised after several hours in the chair, as they need only look in the mirror to find their characters.
Monster Transformation
The films garnering 2004 Oscar nominations for Best Achievement in Makeup are The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The Academy neglected to include one of the most outstanding makeup jobs of 2003--Charlize Theron's dramatic transformation in Monster. What would this independent film have been without the craftsmanship and skillful eye of Toni G., the artist behind the amazing change that this former model and Best Actress nominee made, becoming Aileen Wuornos, the homeless prostitute and serial killer? Theron wore false teeth and brown contacts and shaved her eyebrows for the role. G.'s daily hour-long process with Theron entailed applying a sealer, a red wash, and latex to her eyelids to make them heavier, and she hand-painted highlights, shadows, freckles, and capillaries on the actor's face, ears, neck, arms, and hands.
G. allows that all the makeup in the world could not have produced such a phenomenal performance. "I feel that [makeup artists] have a few tools that we can offer to the actors that they can utilize in their performance, but it's not necessarily always going to work if their talent or their focus isn't there," she says. "Like Charlize, if she wasn't amazing, people would've just been like, 'God, she looks like shit,' but she was able to back that up with this genius performance. It's so rare to get goose bumps from somebody's performance at the end of a 15-hour day, but I looked forward to every take."
G. also worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Men in Black, but her first major effects feature was The Nutty Professor. She offers similar praise for Eddie Murphy, who played seven distinctive roles in that film. "Literally, you can put that makeup on anybody, but not everybody can work it like that," she says. "You forget that he's Eddie. He is a genius. It becomes more about the makeup than it does him, and I don't like when it becomes more about the makeup. While his makeup was being done, I would just be in awe of watching his mannerisms start to change. He would start talking in character and have us cracking up so hard on set. I completely forget that the Granny character was him."
Makeup artist and actor Barney Burman, son of veteran makeup artist Thomas Burman, understand what it if feels like to be on both sides of the camera. "I actually did a short film recently where Steve Prouty and I transformed me into Wilford Brimley, and once I was in this prosthetic makeup and fat suit, it took very little to get into that mode," he says. "It's just a matter of putting on the voice, and you sort of feel it. So I think when you're dealing with more extreme makeup, it kind of minimizes the work an actor has to do to just feel like they're not themselves." Burman also did makeup for Master and Commander, Apes, Grinch, and Men in Black II.
Not every transformation an actor endures is so obvious. In Seabiscuit, makeup artist Thomas Nellen subtly aged Jeff Bridges' character from his 20s to his 50s over the course of the film. "It involved slowly putting in gray hairs and very subtle lines," says Bridges. "It's like many things in this craft: You don't want it to be noticed that much. You don't want the audience to say, 'Oh, look at the makeup.' The difficulty is in making it subtle and of course keeping track of everything--how much gray hair was here or what line went where. It's all very challenging for these guys. But when you're all made up and you get in your costume and you look in the mirror, that's about half of your preparation for the day right there."
It's Alive!
Linda Blair once said of her experience after appearing in The Exorcist, "It was always very strange for me when I was young and would meet someone who genuinely seemed to be afraid of me. They couldn't separate me from the monster I became in a movie. You wouldn't believe how often people ask me to make my head spin around." Blair owes this notoriety to Dick Smith, whom masters such as Rick Baker and Stan Winston hold up as the very god of makeup. Smith held the brush for films such as The Exorcist, The Godfather, and Taxi Driver, and he won the Oscar for aging F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus. Now retired, Smith continues to share all of his makeup secrets with willing pupils through his own advanced professional makeup course (www.dicksmithmake-up.com).
Smith fondly describes the experience of watching a performer "wake up" to his makeup: "When you get to a certain point of putting on this three or four-hour makeup, it stops being just a lot of pale rubber pieces stuck on the face. Once you start getting the paint and the coloring on, it all blends in. You can't tell where the artificial stuff ends and the real skin begins. Then there's this moment--I call it the Dr. Frankenstein moment, because I find it the most fascinating and most exhilarating thrill for me as the artist, because I have created life. That is one of the great things to me about this profession. When that actor goes out onstage and performs and breathes the life into it by his acting--which of course is absolutely essential--they come back, they take the makeup off, they go home, and that character has not died. It has not disappeared. It is still so firm in your mind. It's like a person who has died and is just not around, but who has had a life."
Smith believes that there are two kinds of actors: those who have a certain personality that they use in every role and who don't want makeup, and those who love becoming someone else. "Laurence Oliver is a prime example," says Smith. "I had the pleasure of working [with him] two or three times, and in the early television days we did a production called The Moon and Sixpence, in which the character is like [Paul] Gauguin. He winds up in Tahiti or some place, and he dies of leprosy. So I had to create this leper makeup, and after I put it on, Olivier looked in the mirror and he turned to me and said, 'Dick, it does the acting for me.' Then there are some actors--Marlon Brando is the perfect example--who really don't want to sit in the makeup chair a long time, and then you have to adapt to that. The makeup for The Godfather only took me, like, an hour and 20 minutes, because it was very simplified. It wasn't all I wanted to do, but it was enough. It worked."
So how much input does an actor have on the final look of the character they're playing? It's not always just a decision among the makeup artist, the producer, and the director. Two makeup artists describe Gary Oldman as an actor who is very active in the final appearance of his characters. An actor who has an eye for the artistic will probably have some enlightening ideas about the look of his or her character. "Personally as a makeup artist, I appreciate [ideas from actors] because it can only make my work look better in the end," Burman says. "Although they may not see the tiny differences or tiny problems that a makeup artist's eye would see. An actor who's also artistically inclined in a visual way--if they're a painter or a photographer--usually [has] that sense about them."
The involvement of actors also depends on the point they're at in their careers and how passionately they feel about the projects and the characters. "The thing is, you don't suddenly thrust the actor into the chair and start piling stuff on him," Smith explains. "There are conferences; there are sketches being made; there are discussions with the director and so forth on how he sees it. There's a lot of preparation in the sense of the designing and dealing with the makeup. It will depend to a certain extent on the status of the actor. Obviously, you pay more attention to a big star and give him more consideration, so the person is forewarned." Smith added that the last steps involve makeup tests and screen tests so that everybody involved can make comments; then the makeup artist can make the necessary renovations. "Hell, on The Exorcist, we did three full screen tests on Max von Sydow to arrive at the Father Merrin old-age makeup," said Smith. "That was the most. [Exorcist director William] Friedkin was a fanatical perfectionist, and actually in the long run, I came to respect and appreciate it because it spurred me on to one of my best creations."
Pain in Paint
Many makeup artists end up feeling like the enemy when actors get antsy about being in a chair for hours at a time, and touch-ups can be quite distracting for actors while they're trying to build characters on-set. The makeup artist is usually the first person whom actors see in the morning during the crucial prep time before they have to go onstage or on-set.
Actor and makeup artist Mike Smithson was nominated for an Academy Award for creating the nauseatingly real Fat Bastard makeup for Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. He did Myers' makeup again for The Cat in the Hat, but the two body-costumed roles were like night and day for Myers. "The Cat in the Hat makeup was so much easier than what he went through for Fat Bastard," says Smithson. "[Fat Bastard] was a whole process for him, because he's wearing this gigantic suit. His hands, arms, and legs were just enormous. During the scenes where he's nude with Heather Graham, he was locked into that suit, and I don't want to get graphic or anything, but he made sacrifices. But I think through what he learned with Fat Bastard, when it came to wearing a fur suit for Cat in the Hat, he wanted to be comfortable and practical. The makeup was fairly simple, and he could pretty much get out of the suit whenever he needed to, which was really great for him because he was relaxed and he wasn't overheated."
Smithson has also worked on Apes, Grinch, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Alien: Resurrection, and Bicentennial Man. And having acted and done makeup, he understands how crucial the morning time is for the actor. "Some makeup artists have a really fine touch that can practically put an actor to sleep, and there are other makeup artists who may be new, and they're a little rough," says Smithson. "If you don't have a fine touch and a good bedside manner, you're just going to wear them down before they have to work. You also have to kind of gage with an actor--when it's time to go in and touch up and when it's time to leave them alone to prepare--because you can't be selfish with them. You can't consider them your piece of art. You have to give them time to prepare and not be in their face all the time, so that's something that you eventually learn with each actor. It's a different experience each time."
Makeup artists can have anything from a very tough to a very intimate relationship with the actors whom they paint. "Well, it's kind of a cliche to say that makeup artists are sort of the actors' therapists, but sometimes that's true," Burman says. "Sometimes the actor needs someone to connect with and often does that in the chair in the morning with the makeup artist. Other times, the actor doesn't want to talk. It all depends on the individual. Some actors want to spend very little time in the makeup chair and not say anything and just get out of there as fast as possible. Others seem to want to linger there and chat and feel pampered and taken care of."
For G., it's never been about trying to become a part of the actors' inner circle or their best friend. Indeed when she's on the set, she likes to become as invisible as possible to help the actor stay in the moment. "It's always really about trying to achieve the end results the best I can," she says. "My goal was to nail [the makeup on Theron] at the beginning of the day so the upkeep wasn't huge. When we were doing Monster, there were scenes where she's crying and hysterical, and she was so in that mode that there were certain times where I had to go, 'Well, I want to touch her makeup right now [because] it's starting to fall apart a bit, but unless it's vitally important, I really want to give her the space to stay in this without being in her face and pulling her back to the fact that she has makeup on.'"
Theron is one of those actors who get antsy after an hour in the makeup chair, but with Monster's small budget, the production literally and figuratively couldn't afford the time the makeup might have taken. "We had a 28-day schedule to shoot Monster, and so makeup couldn't cut into our schedule," Theron told BSW recently. "It just couldn't, and [Toni G.] completely understood that. She would kind of alter the time that she needed for the makeup so that it wasn't, like, a three-hour job every day. That's the tough job about being a makeup artist in the movie industry. I get restless. It affects me, and then I tend to carry that with me. It's a personal thing for me. I'm not patient enough. The [Attention Deficit Disorder] kicks in big time. My head's spinning, I'm thinking about what I'm about to do, and then I have to get out."
Toni G. credits Theron's professionalism and total commitment to the character to being the true time-saver. "[Theron] wasn't on the phone the whole time," she says. "She'd have her sides, and she'd read her sides, and she knew when it was best to read, and she seemed to pick up when she knew I needed her face at a certain angle, which expedited my job. I think it's important that [actors] understand that [although] it's really not that pleasurable for them to sit there and go through that .... if they feel like the final outcome can aid their performance and take them to a new level, then it's worth it. They have to really want it." BSW