Twitch-O-Meter: His Mother Would Not Recognize Him!

The make-up in David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” never got an Oscar, but only because the Academy didn’t have that category yet. This is the movie which caused them to reconsider that oversight.

Which is cool, because that means everyone who got a make-up Oscar owes this movie, and rightly so.

The amount of work necessary to make John Hurt look like the late John Merrick was gruesome. After the first day of shooting with John in full make-up, he told his wife “they’ve finally invented something that makes me dislike acting.”



Watch the “Æon Flux” trailer and look at the picture on the left. Both are supposedly Charlize Theron, but my first reaction was:

No.
Fucking.
Way…

Absolutely stellar work here. De-glamorizing a natural beauty believably, without any charm still peeking through, is a work of art in itself.


“Make up which makes your skin melt. Very dangerous. You go first!”

We all know and love John Rhys-Davies for (amongst other things) his role as Sullah in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. The man has a very distinctive face and the voice to fit it. Being a big fellow, making him play Gimli the dwarf in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is an inspired choice to say the least. Hardly spending any time on set with the other actors (stand-ins of a more realistic size were used for those occasions) John Rhys-Davies was filmed by himself after endless hours getting the special effects make-up done.
Unfortunately he turned out to be allergic to the aggressive glue used to fit some of the appliances, and this caused much grief. For one thing, after every day of wearing make-up he had to rest for three days to let the skin heal…


Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall played a large number of roles in “Coming to America”, some of which were easier to spot than others because of the make-up they wore.
But I was very surprised to find out that the old white man telling jokes and playing chess in the barbers’ shop was actually…

...Eddie Murphy!



If unrecognizability through make-up has a king, it must be Doug Jones…

Doug Jones has been made unrecognizable so often, I need to Google him up to see what he really looks like.
His resumee has many unforgettable characters on them, all of which require elaborate body-suits and facial make-up.
Abe Sapien from “Hellboy” is one such character, but in “Pan’s Labyrinth” he played both the scary thin blind man (with eyes in his hands) and the faun shown here.