When people talk about actors undergoing physical transformations for a role, they often focus
on stars who put on a bunch of weight, or work out a ton.
But acting ain't just about the body.
In fact, an actor's most important feature is his or her face.
Ever since the dawn of cinema, movie stars have been using makeup to alter their appearance.
And with the help of a fake nose or an artificial forehead, an actor can transform into a completely
different being altogether.
Here are some of the most memorable examples.
Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer
In addition to having truckloads of talent, Tilda Swinton is something of a shape-shifter,
and for our money, her most radical facial transformation was for the Korean thriller
Snowpiercer.
The film sees the actress play the nefarious Minister Mason, a grotesque politician with
some of the ugliest teeth in cinema.
Originally, the part was written for a man, but director Bong Joon-Ho really wanted Swinton
to try the part on for size.
So with the help of makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead, Swinton created a uniquely ugly
character.
Really, the makeup seems so simple.
A pair of dentures.
A floppy wig.
A prosthetic nose.
But if the actress had gotten her way, Minister Mason would've looked even worse.
According to the director, Swinton originally wanted the slimy spokesperson to sport a pig's
nose.
But he explained that was just a bit "too much," even for Snowpiercer.
Halle Berry, Cloud Atlas
2012's Cloud Atlas is a wildly ambitious sci-fi flick of epic proportions from the acclaimed
directing team of Lana and Lilly Wachowski.
The film follows a select group of souls as they continually cross paths across time,
with various actors undergoing radical transformations, changing race and gender from scene to scene.
The decision was controversial, with critics arguing over whether the movie was racially
insensitive, or progressive.
But regardless of how you feel about the Wachowski's vision, you have to admire the dedication
of the actors, with Halle Berry absolutely disappearing into not one, but six different
roles.
Over the course of nearly three hours, Berry plays a grand total of six roles, each one
radically different from the last.
While she impresses with all of her performances, the two that truly stand out are a German-Jewish
woman and an ancient Korean man.
To play the German woman in 1936, Berry underwent eight hours of intensive work, which involved
everything from a prosthetic nose to skin lightening treatments.
But her most memorable appearance is definitely the ghoulish Korean doctor in 2144.
She sat in the makeup chair for six hours, and while she had a lot of fun with this transformation,
she told Entertainment Weekly that the teeth were "just horrific."
The cast of Foxcatcher
When Foxcatcher hit theaters in 2014, everybody noticed Steve Carell's schnoz.
The actor drew quite a bit of flack for his fake nose, but he really did look almost identical
to real-life murderer John du Pont.
And the nose is just the tip of the cosmetics iceberg when it comes to Foxcatcher.
Makeup artist Bill Corso also masked Carell's eyebrows with a prosthetic forehead, lightened
his skin tone, and even built him a fake lip.
To top everything off, Corso gave Carell a pair of dark contact lenses that really helped
him slip into the role of an obsessive multimillionaire.
But while Carell gets all the attention, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo also underwent some
pretty impressive facial transformations to look like genuine wrestlers.
Tatum was given fake cauliflower ears and a bridge to enlarge his nose, and his nostrils
and lips were widened with special prosthetics called plumpers.
Similarly, Ruffalo had prosthetics stuck behind his upper lip and underwent frequent haircuts
to capture wrestler Dave Schultz's balding hairline.
He also had little brackets placed in the back of his ears to make them stick out so
that he looked more like Tatum.
Gary Oldman, Hannibal
Hannibal Lecter is one of the most famous cinematic serial killers of all time, but
he isn't the only murderer stalking his franchise.
In the 2001 film Hannibal, the sinister Mason Verger is one of the few people who've survived
an encounter with the liver-eating psychiatrist.
Of course, he didn't escape from Lecter totally intact, as the sophisticated killer absolutely
demolished Verger's face.
So when it came time to put script to screen, makeup artist Greg Cannom needed to turn actor
Gary Oldman into a veritable monster.
Using a special translucent silicone, Cannom transformed Oldman into a lipless monster,
covered in scars and putrefied flesh.
The whole ghoulish process took around six hours, but perhaps the best touch came from
the mind of Oldman himself.
The actor wanted to give Verger an eye that was permanently opened, so Cannom put together
a setup involving a silk cloth, Velcro, and a little wire that prevented Oldman's eyelids
from shutting.
He also inserted a nasty looking contact lens and had someone stand by with eye drops to
keep the actor from losing his vision.
Yikes.
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
The story of a Victorian-era woman living as a man, 2011's Albert Nobbs was an incredibly
personal film for Glenn Close.
She'd first played the role back in 1982 in an off-Broadway show, and she'd wanted to
share the story on the silver screen for years.
To pull it off, she needed to disguise her face to inhabit her dream role, so she turned
to makeup expert Matthew Mungle for a helping hand.
Mungle wanted the makeup to be incredibly subtle.
He based the design largely off a photo that Close had found of a "manly woman from the
'30s."
Working with prosthetic pieces and dental plumpers, he kept things relatively simple,
which he claims is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
He told the Los Angeles Times,
"To put a nose on someone's face and blend it into their skin and make it look natural
is harder than wearing a whole mask."
So with just a few touches here and there, Close stepped out of the makeup chair a new
man.
In fact, when she finally looked in the mirror, she was so overwhelmed that she began crying.