Even His Agent Didn’t Recognize Him
Australian actor Eric Bana switched up his career by playing Nero in the 2009 movie Star Trek. Bana had to sit in a makeup chair for three hours. On his first day, he didn’t remember anything before lunch because of all the chemicals. When his agent arrived, he didn’t even recognize Bana.
Despite the challenges, Bana loved playing an unrecognizable character. “Those opportunities in Hollywood are so rare,” Bana told The Sydney Morning Herald. After the makeup, Bana couldn’t recognize his own facial expressions. He had to re-calibrate his acting to fit Nero’s costume.
Oscar-Nominated Makeup Will Transform A Person
When French-Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella played Jaylah in Star Trek Beyond, her fans didn’t recognize her. She spent four hours every day in a makeup chair with an Oscar-nominated team. Joel Harlow, the Academy Award-winning makeup artist, said that only Boutella’s nose, mouth, and chin were hers. The rest were prosthetics.
Despite the hours of painstaking application, Boutella loved the costume. She said that it allowed a meditation process to get her into character. “I like that second skin,” she told an interviewer with FilmIsNow. “It’s like, as soon as I had it on, you feel in character.”
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje In Thor: Dark World
Many fans will will know Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje from the show Lost, who was eventually taken out from the smoke monster. However, he played quite a different character of Algrim in Thor: Dark World who eventually turns into the monster Kurse.
Underneath all of his horns and bones as the character of Kurse, few people would have been able to know who he was if he hadn’t already appeared as Algrim, with his bleach wig and bright blue contact lenses.