These days, some of Hollywood's most elaborate movie roles can require mounds of makeup,
hours of prosthetics, and a little help from the power of CGI.
Underneath it all, however, there's usually still a real-life human being with a real-life,
often beautiful, human face.
Here are some movie aliens that are actually gorgeous in real life.
Zoe Saldana has undoubtedly made a lasting mark in the sci-fi universe, playing Neytiri
in 2009's Avatar and Gamora in both the Guardians of the Galaxy series and Avengers movies.
The blue-skinned alien in the former film was 70% CGI, with Saldana becoming almost
entirely unrecognizable in the role.
She later told STV:
"I thought [Director James Cameron] did a really good job of putting Neytiri together.
I thanked him for making her look hot.
I mean, Neytiri is very sexy and lean with a really cute bod.
I'm in pretty good shape, but I don't look that buff."
However, by the time she had made a name for herself as Gamora, being known only as an
intergalactic starlet might have been starting to get on Saldana's nerves.
She told The New Paper:
"I'm not a sci-fi sex symbol.
I don't know why I'm always in space, maybe being a space babe moves me.
As a woman, particularly a woman of color, the roles (set on Earth) are a little too
typical for me."
While elaborating on this sentiment to The Daily Telegraph's Stellar Magazine in 2017,
Saldana said:
"So I think science fiction has given me the ability as an artist to be colorblind, and
gender-blind, and to imagine and reinvent myself and be the chameleon actors are supposed
to be."
Eric Bana got the full Romulan transformation playing bad guy Nero in the 2009 reboot of
Star Trek.
Complete with facial tattoos and his species' signature ears, the Aussie actor actually
looked so different, his own agent didn't even recognize him on set.
Bana told The Sydney Morning Herald:
"It was amazing, the first time you put it on and you realize that you can't read facial
expressions […] Everything you've done before is in the bin because if you do that the audience
won't see your face move at all.
So you're sort of having to push through the prosthetics."
Clearly, Bana did a great job of it.
The film was met with critical acclaim, and years later, he's still delighted when fans
realize it's him under the mounds of makeup.
In 2013, he told HuffPost:
"I still get people today who just saw Star Trek and had no idea.
That's a huge kick.
No, I love that."
Flight of the Conchords alum Jemaine Clement got a menacing makeover for the third installment
of Men in Black in 2012, playing head-honcho bad guy Boris The Animal.
What made him so unrecognizable?
Well, maybe it was the fact that it looked like his goggles were embedded in his face.
Nevertheless, Boris was genuinely hideous, and as the actor recalled:
"I think the first day we put the makeup on it took eight hours."
Arguably the best thing about the villain was that he just looked so darn cool.
The special effects superstar behind the project, Rick Baker, spoke to Digital Trends about
making Boris come to life.
He explained:
"In the script I got originally he was a biker, but they described him as Dennis Hopper from
Easy Rider.
I said, 'You know what?
I think he should be intimidating […] He should be a bearded, dark-haired, badass f--king
biker from space.'"
Apparently, the costume was so outlandish, Clement himself lived quite the lonely life
when he wasn't decked out as Boris.
He said:
"When I would turn up for lunch without my makeup on, no-one would talk to me as they
didn't know who I was."
"Do you think he's listening?”
“Let’s test it.
‘Jemaine’s a good-looking guy, isn’t he?’”
“There he goes."
Algerian beauty Sofia Boutella was graced with an Oscar-nominated makeup team behind
her Star Trek Beyond character, Jaylah.
Playing a warrior decorated with black facial lines and a very heavily-defined forehead,
Boutella was practically unrecognizable to fans.
Joel Harlow, the Academy Award-winning makeup artist responsible for her look, dished to
Inverse about the painstakingly long four-hour process that brought Jaylah to life.
He said:
"It's deceptively elaborate with lots of intricate dissections.
The challenge was to strike a balance and blend it to where you don't know where the
prosthetics are […] The mouth, nose, and chin are Sofia; otherwise, everything else
is all a prosthetic."
The results made it nigh-on impossible to tell what part of her is real and what was
created by Harlow.
But how did Boutella feel about having to endure hours of makeup every day?
She told FilmIsNow:
"I've never done prosthetics before.
I like that second skin.
I like what it brought to me.
It's like, as soon as I had it on, you feel in character […] Once you put it on, boom,
I felt like Jaylah."
Roger Christian's 2000 box-office flop Battlefield Earth isn't exactly remembered for its quality,
so much as it is for what it did to poor John Travolta.
Adapted from the 1982 novel of the same name, Travolta plays Terl, an alien of the breed
Psychlos.
As The Telegraph noted at the time, the Grease star was:
"...decked out in bad teeth, metallic green eyes, flapping brows, nostril tubes, oversized
claws, lank dreadlocks hanging down the front, and half a Martha-and-the-Vandellas beehive
stuck on the back."
The script wasn't any better either, and in the end Battlefield Earth was nominated for
10 Razzies.
And the icing on the cake?
The flick went on to win Worst Picture of the Decade in 2010, forcing screenwriter J.D.
Shapiro to write a lengthy and apologetic letter to the New York Post in an attempt
to justify his work on the project.
Simon Pegg has made it very clear over the years that he's a die-hard Star Wars fan,
so it's no wonder he was so overjoyed after landing a small role in The Force Awakens.
To play the role of junk trader Unkar Plutt, the normally-slender Pegg was remarkably transformed
into the portly-looking character thanks to a combination of makeup, prosthetics, a suit,
and digital effects.
In an interview with Nerdist, Star Wars creature shop head Neal Scanlan said:
"I think they did a little bit of CG enhancement on the inside of the mouth […] Stretch the
eyes and stretch the mouth, and gave it that sort of twist to make it feel like it couldn't
just be a person in a suit."
Despite getting some help from CGI, however, the suit was actually a bit of a debacle.
"And I had these big, rubber, like silicon gauntlets on each of my fingers.
And when I took them off, I could pour the sweat out."
Idris Elba joined the Star Trek crew for 2016's Star Trek Beyond, playing an entirely new
villain for the franchise: Krall.
Since Krall's species is so elaborate-looking, Elba had to endure countless hours in makeup.
He told Entertainment Weekly:
"Typically, my day would start at 4:15 in the morning.
I'd be in the chair until around 7:30, shoot about 8:30 […] then wake up in the morning
and do the whole thing again.
I'm claustrophobic by the way; I don't like rubber masks on my face."
Although Sofia Boutella's character, Jaylah, also required extensive makeup, it was Krall's
design that took the most work in total.
Head makeup artist Joel Harlow explained to Inverse how the context of the story helped
shape what the monster looked like.
He said:
"A lot of the alien characters we designed for Beyond were aquatic in nature […] lots
of fins.
There were also lizard elements in Krall too — gila monsters, specifically."
Just like that, the incredibly handsome hunk that many had been petitioning to become the
new James Bond was made completely unrecognizable, thanks to the power of Hollywood and some
wicked makeup artistry.
Karen Gillan's flowing red locks were nowhere in sight for her turn as the blue-in-the-face,
part-robot villain Nebula both in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers franchises.
So popular was her small role in the first Guardians flick that by the time 2019's Avengers:
Endgame came around, she was pretty much front and center, rubbing shoulders with Robert
Downey Jr.'s own Tony Stark and Chris Hemsworth's Thor.
The actress told The Daily Beast:
"I feel so lucky that this small character that I played in the first Guardians film
got to evolve and develop so much.
I'm extremely grateful, is the main word."
That said, Gillan admitted the costume was hard to wear.
In an interview with Variety, she said:
"It's just a feeling of claustrophobia because I'm completely enclosed.
It's a second skin that's glued to me, it's not painted […] It's all over, and so I
can't really move my face very much, you know?
It's a weird sensation, and it's one that isn't the nicest of sensations but it does
look really cool and does help with the character."
Quite endearingly, Gillan never thought she would play a superhero movie villain, quipping
to Variety:
"I'm from the top of Scotland in the middle of nowhere.
Those are movies from a magical land called Hollywood that doesn't actually exist."
Brian Prince was totally transformed as the Predator in 2018's fourth installment of the
classic sci-fi franchise, The Predator.
Speaking about his part in the movie, he told Den of Geek:
"I got really lucky.
I was originally an art student in Atlanta, I draw comics and do illustrations and stuff.
I was in Seattle, Washington, in a parkour gym — I've done parkour for nine years."
However, Prince wasn't a total newcomer to Hollywood, having previously used his athletic
abilities to snag roles as a stunt extra on The Walking Dead, Captain America: Civil War,
and Black Panther.
After showcasing his abilities in a video to the film's producers, the buff parkour
vet got a call from The Predator's stunt coordinator.
Prince later explained:
"This creature's a lot more mobile.
In the other films, they'd move, for sure, but a lot of the times, in the first one,
there wasn't a lot of agile movement.
So with this one, for me, they're throwing me through things."
Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi did far more than just transform the franchise
from a heavy-handed cosmic drama into an 80s-inspired quirky comedy — he also lent his voice to
for the character of Korg.
Speaking to reporters at Disney studios, the Kiwi-born director dished that he originally
wanted Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for the role of the hulking beast.
However, in The Rock's own words, "there wasn't enough chicken and salmon in New Zealand"
to sustain both him and Chris Hemsworth.
So the task of playing Korg fell on Waititi himself.
As it turns out, Korg quickly became a fan-favorite in the already incredibly well-received flick
– due in part to his unique accent.
“Piss off, ghost!
He’s freakin’ gone.”
Fans have clearly greeted the soft-spoken rock alien with open arms.
He had a pretty meaty scene in Avengers: Endgame, and we'lll surely be looking out for him again
in 2021's fourth Thor installment, Thor: Love and Thunder.
Pom Klementieff joined the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy for the series' sequel as the
insect-like Mantis, a humanoid alien that sports some crazy anime-looking eyes and antennae
on her head.
The actress later told Metro:
"The artists were amazing.
I had to wear prosthetics at the beginning of my forehead and the rest was CGI, so it
was not hours in makeup."
Although the film received relatively warm reviews, original comic writer and co-creator
of the character, Steve Englehart, wasn't too impressed with its take on Mantis.
He told Polygon:
"Well, I was not happy with Mantis' portrayal.
That character has nothing to do with Mantis."
It turns out that Klementieff didn't even read the comics before filming — because
director James Gunn told her not to.
She revealed to ScreenRant:
"I wanted to and I asked James if I should and he said, 'No, you don't need to.
Because I knew his version was so different from the pictures and drawings that I saw."
Considering she reprised her role in the Avengers franchise and will also star in the third
installment of Guardians, it's probably fair to say that the actress has done just fine
in the role.
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