Actors Who Were Brought Back From The Dead With CGI

Hollywood has been using all manner of movie-making illusions to resurrect deceased actors for almost as long as cinema has existed. As early as 1939, director Ed Wood wrote an entire film around unrelated footage that deceased "Dracula" star Bela Lugosi shot before his death ("Plan 9 From Outer Space," often called the world's "worst movie ever"). Cut together into an entirely different story, Wood accomplished the trickery with footage of non-actor Tom Mason, who covered his face with a cape so audiences might be convinced it was Lugosi's character. No actual special effects were used, but it was an early case of a director using clever tricks to create a new role for a dead star to add a big name to his fledgling picture.

Since then, advanced techniques have offered new, more convincing ways for studios and directors to bring back actors who've left us. Whether it's to complete a performance of an actor who died during filming, pay homage to a revered legend, or shamelessly cash in on an actor's fame, modern computer-generated special effects have given rise to some exciting — and troubling — instances of actors coming back long after they've shuffled off the mortal coil. Check out our list of actors who were brought back from the dead with CGI.

From Marilyn Monroe in "Something's Got to Give" to Heath Ledger in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," the tragic death of a film star during a movie's production is sadly not new to Hollywood. In Monroe's case, the studio opted to abandon the film entirely, while "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" found a way to add other actors to the film to fill in the gaps so that director Terry Gilliam could avoid replacing the actor with special effects. That movie's fantasy premise lent itself to that route, but not all films have that option. 

When Paul Walker died in a car crash before being able to complete his part in "Fast & Furious 7," Universal Studios chose the CGI route in order to finish the film and round out the story of scrupulous FBI agent turned nefarious car thief Brian O'Connor. Unfortunately, much of Walker's role was incomplete, so the film had to be heavily rewritten to work around scenes that could no longer be filmed with Walker gone. To create newly written scenes that tied up the story for his character, Walker's real-life brother stood in for the actor. Advanced digital trickery was then used to recreate Paul Walker's face over his brother's body performance, as a way of giving the actor — and his character — a fitting sendoff in a touching tribute.

In the original "Star Wars," George Lucas cast mostly unknowns, with just two exceptions: acclaimed actors Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing. The latter was best known for playing Baron Frankenstein and Dr. Van Helsing in nearly a dozen different films across two series from Hammer Horror Productions. Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin in the first "Star Wars" film, died in 1994 at the age of 81, leaving behind one of the most prolific careers in horror at the time.

Death didn't spell the end of his time playing Tarkin. In 2016, director Gareth Edwards resurrected the long-dead star for one more performance in the role. Together with the motion capture performance and voice of "Harry Potter" actor Guy Henry – and plenty of CGI — the character of Grand Moff Tarkin was brought back in a story set just prior to "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope." Critical and fan reaction was split. Some called it thrilling, while others were unconvinced by the "uncanny valley" effect, and felt that bringing Cushing back was both unnecessary and disrespectful. Disney seemingly had no regrets. With other upcoming "Star Wars" movies and shows set in the franchise's past, there may be more opportunities to see beloved lost stars from the original films digitally resurrected.

In one of the earliest examples of resurrecting dead celebrities to shill for commercial products, Coca-Cola brought back Louis Armstrong, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney to help Elton John promote Diet Coke. In the 1991 commercial, Elton John is seen crooning the Diet Coke jingle in a fashionable nightclub, while patrons mingle and dance. Wouldn't you know it, but two of the patrons are actors Bogart and Cagney, while horn player and jazz icon Armstrong backed up John on piano. All three were long dead when the commercial first aired. To achieve the commercial's gimmick, special effects were required.

Black-and-white footage of the actors was colorized and digitally composited into the scene. Cagney is even shown interacting with a modern actor at a table. The effect is pretty convincing. Though licensing deals with the studios that held the rights to the original footage and with the stars' heirs allowed the use of the actors' likenesses in the spot, many were still bothered by the groundbreaking commercial. Keith LaQua, who was then executive director of the Artists Rights Foundation, told the L.A. Times that the commercial was "an Orwellian picture of what can happen is here, now." Little did he know what the future had in store...

Galaxy Chocolate began airing a 60-second TV commercial spot in the UK in March of 2014. In the ad, a young female passenger on a broken-down bus is coaxed out and into the car of an attractive passerby. The two ride off together. What made the commercial noteworthy was that the passenger was none other than Hollywood starlet and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn, who died more than 20 years before it aired. To raise Hepburn from the dead, Galaxy didn't have to use any sort of witchcraft — just state-of-the-art computer-generated effects from Mike McGee, co-founder and creative director at Framestore, who wrote about the experience in a blog for The Guardian.

"We ended up completely recreating Audrey's face in computer graphics (CG) – a feat never before achieved at such close-up scale. If this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is. Replicating a photorealistic 100% CG human that stands up to close inspection is the mecca of visual effects (VFX). So this project was an industry first and took us to the edge of what's possible," McGee wrote. Though the ad was a stunning use of CGI, others were unimpressed both by the quality of the FX and the use of Hepburn, calling the ad "insulting" for turning "one of the classiest and most charming film icons of all time ... into a glassy-eyed, chocolate-loving robot."

"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was a groundbreaking film that combined live-action imagery with entirely CGI sets and environments. Directed by Kevin Conran and starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie, the film was an homage to classic serials of the 1930s. It followed a noirish sci-fi superhero adventurer who must stop a nefarious supervillain from destroying the world.

In the film's climactic moments, Jude Law's Sky Captain makes it to the lair of Dr. Totenkopf, the mad scientist hell-bent on annihilating mankind. But what he finds is a living computer program in the form of a hologram of Totenkopf's face, since the real Totenkopf has been dead for some time. To fill the holographic role, Conran enlisted the help of CGI once again to cast one of the greatest actors of all time, Laurence Olivier, who had been dead for 15 years when the film was produced. According to the director, archival footage of the actor from a variety of sources was used to create the performance, and new dialog was recorded by another actor, with CGI altering Olivier's lip movements to match it. The effect wasn't entirely realistic, but given the nature of the character as a sinister computer program and hologram, it didn't need to be. 

"Hawaii Five-0" was a smash hit and a mainstay of prime-time television for 12 seasons, airing in parts of three decades. Starring actor Jack Lord, the CBS police procedural followed the adventures of Hawaii detective Steve McGarrett and his special unit. Rebooted in 2010, an entirely new series starring Alex O'Loughlin as McGarrett proved almost as successful as the original, running for 10 seasons. It even featured crossovers with two other reboots, "Magnum P.I." and "MacGyver."

It was in the show's seventh season that a totally unexpected crossover occurred. Actor Jack Lord — who died in 1998 — appeared in an episode of the rebooted series alongside Alex O'Loughlin. After receiving permission from the actor's estate, producers used cutting-edge CGI to recreate a 3D model of Lord based on his appearance in the final season of the original "Hawaii Five-0." By mixing CG, a body double, and voice work from actor Cam Clarke, the original McGarrett was able to share the screen with his modern counterpart (though the character was not intended to be Lord's original McGarrett). FX supervisor Adam Avitabile noted the uphill battle of creating such a complex effect on a TV budget, telling "Entertainment Weekly" that it was "a challenging endeavor, to say the least. This kind of thing is rarely attempted on network television." Avitabile added, "Our incredibly talented team of artists worked tirelessly to bring drama and emotion to such a fun and unique project."