Actors Who Underwent Intense Facial Transformations For A Role

When people talk about amazing actors, they focus on stars who undergo incredible physical transformations, like Christian Bale becoming a skeleton for The Machinist or Chris Pratt turning into a Greek god for Guardians of the Galaxy. But acting ain't just about the body. In fact, an actor's most important feature is his or her face. Ever since the days of silent 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.

Who's the greatest actress working today? Some might say Meryl Streep, while others might claim Julianne Moore. But if you were to go with Tilda Swinton, well, we certainly wouldn't argue with you. In addition to having truckloads of talent, the Brit is something of a shape-shifter, going from frazzled housewife (We Need to Talk about Kevin) to gorgeous blonde (Trainwreck) to old crone (The Grand Budapest Hotel). However, for our money, Swinton's most radical facial transformation was for the Korean thriller Snowpiercer.

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, the film sees Swinton 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 Bong really wanted Swinton to try the part on for size. More than willing to take a stab at the role, Swinton immediately began preparing for the part, even going so far as to watch videos of el-Qaddafi, Mussolini, and Margaret Thatcher to help her get into the groove. But she also spent quite a bit of time on her face, and with the help of makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead, Swinton created a uniquely ugly character (one that gave Charlize Theron a run for her money).

Really, the makeup seems so simple. A pair of dentures. A floppy wig. A prosthetic nose. But if you watch the video above, you'll see how Swinton changes from her sophisticated self to a nightmare clown in just a matter of seconds. In fact, if the actress had gotten her way, Minister Mason would've looked even worse. According to Bong Joon-ho, Swinton originally wanted the slimy spokesperson to sport a pig's nose, but as the director explained, that was just a bit "too much," even for Snowpiercer.

Back in the early '70s, Marlon Brando was considered box office poison. So when Francis Ford Coppola wanted to cast the Oscar-winner as Don Vito Corleone, the executives at Paramount would only agree if Brando passed a screen test. Obviously, Brando won them over with his audition, largely thanks to his mastery of disguise. Right from the very beginning, the actor was willing to vanish behind the makeup, and in his screen test, Brando actually darkened his blond hair with shoe polish and stuffed his cheeks with rolled-up tissues to capture the Don's iconic look.

Of course, when it came time to make the actual film, Kleenexes weren't going to cut it, so Coppola hired Dick Smith, a man who was eventually nicknamed the "Godfather of Makeup." Smith would build a pretty incredible resume, with titles like The Exorcist and Little Big Man. However, he really made his mark working with Brando. In order to achieve Don Corleone's signature look, the makeup artist used a liquid latex compound known in the business as "old age stipple." After applying this stuff to Brando's face, Smith would stretch it out and let it dry, giving the actor a face full of lines. "With the latex applied," Smith explained, "the skin can't return to its original shape, so it buckles and forms wrinkles of varying thickness, depending on the amount of latex." But the piece de resistance came when Smith teamed up with dentist Henry Dwork to create a prosthetic to give the Don his trademark hound dog appearance.

According to Harlan Lebo's The Godfather Legacy, Smith used metal bands to hook "flesh-colored blobs of acrylic" to Brando's teeth, giving him a drooping lip and sagging jowls. And while that sounds slightly uncomfortable, we can't argue with the results. In less than two hours, Brando would transform from a handsome star into a tired old gangster, ready to make offers and decapitate horses.

Want a good cry? Then check out Mask, one of the most famous tearjerkers of all time. This 1985 drama tells the story of Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis, a 16-year-old who suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a disease where calcium builds up in the skull and disfigures your facial features. So when it came time to cast the part of the deceased teenager, the filmmakers went with Eric Stoltz (the actor who wasn't Marty McFly), who underwent one dramatic makeover.

The man in charge of this facial renovation was Michael Westmore (Rocky, Star Trek: The Next Generation). While preparing for the job, the Stanford University School of Medicine actually offered to loan the makeup man Rocky's skull (which had been donated by the teen's mom), but he decided to work off photos of the boy's face. And after going through eight versions of the makeup, Westmore finally got it right, although it was a pretty tricky task. For example, Westmore had hoped the filmmakers would hire an actor with eyes set wide apart, as there was a 3 ½ inch gap between Rocky's pupils. But as Stoltz's peepers were incredibly close together, Stoltz had to fashion a bridge that gave the illusion of a 1 ½ inch gap.

As for the face itself, Westmore created Rocky's visage with three pieces of foam latex, and in total, it took nearly four hours to apply the get-up each day. And with a set of dentures to complete the look, Stoltz took things even further by going method, insisting everyone call him "Rocky" all the time. But hey, all their intense work paid off in 1986, when Mask nabbed the Oscar for Best Makeup.

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 really, if you want realism, Carell looks almost identical to murderer John du Pont. Of course, 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 Carell a fake lip. To top everything off, Corso gave The Office star a pair of dark contact lenses that really helped Carell 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. Makeup artist Dennis Liddiard wanted to morph pretty boy Tatum into a genuine-looking wrestler, so he needed to "flatten out" his face and "spread out" his nose. So in addition to giving Tatum fake cauliflower ears and a bridge to enlarge his nose, Liddiard widened the actor's nostrils and lips with special prosthetics called plumpers, giving him the look of a worn out and worn down Olympian.

Similarly, Mark Ruffalo had prosthetics stuck behind his upper lip and underwent frequent haircuts to capture wrestler Dave Schultz's balding hairline. Corso also explained to Vanity Fair that, "We put little brackets in the back of his ears to make his ears stick out so he looked more like Channing." It was incredibly subtle work, but these slight changes turned the good-looking actors into real-world athletes, wrestlers who'd spent most of their careers grappling with opponents and face-planting onto mats.

The story of a Victorian-era woman living as a man, 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. Eventually, Close used her own money to finance the project and finally stepped back into Albert's shoes. However, the process was a bit more complicated than simply donning a 19th-century suit. Similar to the title character, Close needed to disguise her face to inhabit her dream role, so she turned to makeup expert Matthew Mungle for a helping hand.

As Mungle himself put it, he 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," and he began planning how he'd alter the actress's nose, earlobes, and mouth. Working with prosthetic pieces and dental plumpers, Mungle kept things relatively simple, which he claims is a lot more difficult than it sounds. "It's harder to do makeup like we did on Albert Nobbs," he told the L.A. Times, "than to try and cover the actor's whole face. 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."

And with just a few touches here and there—coupled with a wig—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. As Close described the experience of seeing Albert's face, "It was like—there she is."