17 Actors Who Underwent Serious Physical Transformations With Makeup And Prosthetics

I'm a huge fan of practical effects. I mean, CGI artists do amazing work, but there's something so special about a movie or TV character whose transformation is wholly the work of talented makeup, hair, and SFX artists. However, while the makeup and prosthetics may look amazing onscreen, actors don't always have the best time wearing them IRL.

Here are 17 times actors underwent serious physical transformations for roles (and if they loved or hated them):

1. Margaret Qualley told the Sunday Times that, for The Substance, director Coralie Fargeat's “vision of Sue was '80s inspired, with butt and boobs, think Jessica Rabbit." The actor said, "Unfortunately, there is no magic boob potion, so we had to glue those on."

She continued, "Coralie found an incredible prosthetic team to endow me with the rack of a lifetime, just not my lifetime."

Here's Margaret in real life vs. in the movie:

2. To prepare to play Elphaba in Wicked, Cynthia Erivo went through "green tests." She told Vanity Fair that the best shade had highlighter yellow undertones because "on brown, it reads like skin."

She also shaved her head so they could paint her scalp green before applying one of Elphaba's four different wigs. She said, "I would love to do that again."

The final look, which also included colored contacts and lipstick, took "two hours and 45 minutes to three hours if it was just head, neck, hands, [but] if it was the whole body, that was, like, four hours."

Here's Cynthia in real life vs. in the movie:

3. Transforming Stellan Skarsgård into Baron Vladimir Harkonnen for Dune and Dune: Part Two took eight hours. He told Business Insider, "It was painful, but it was worth it."

The transformation included prosthetic cheeks, jowls, eyebrow cover, a bald cap, hands, feet and ankles, and a 20-pound foam body suit with a built-in hydration vest so he didn't get too hot.

His makeup took a five-member team four hours for scenes where Harokonnen was clothed, but six and half to seven hours for nude scenes.

Makeup artist Donald Mowat told The Wrap, "Stellan just loved being naked as the Baron. We all used to kill ourselves laughing when Stellan would ask for more nude scenes. He felt, quite correctly, that the Baron appeared more frightening and dangerous unclothed than cloaked in robes or armor. So he was always asking for more nudity."

Here's Stellan in real life vs. the movie:

4. When Stellan Skarsgård played Bootstrap Bill Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, he "was the only one on set with real prosthetics on."

He told Business Insider, "Everyone else on that ship showed up five minutes before we started shooting and had [motion-capture] dots put on their face, and away they went. I had been there for six hours. But the thing is, I like it. I like to see the artists paint, if that makes sense."

Here's Stellen in real life vs. the movie:

5. A penchant for prosthetics runs in the family. Stellan's son, Bill Skarsgård, enjoyed wearing them to play Pennywise in It and It Chapter Two, telling the New York Times, "I'm a pretty private person, so I don't mind not being recognized. It's nice to hide behind the makeup.”

To design Pennywise's makeup, practical effects artists Alec Gilles and Tom Woodruff Jr. started by sculpting clay onto a cast of Bill's head. Then, they molded rubber prosthetics that fit his face. Bill also wore fake teeth and contacts.

Here's Bill in real life vs. in the movie:

6. In 2014, Jim Carrey told The Graham Norton Show, "When I did [How the Grinch Stole Christmas]...literally the makeup was like being buried alive every day. The first day was 8.5 hours, and I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall."

He continued, "I told [director] Ron Howard I couldn't do the movie. Then [producer] Brian Grazer came in, being the fix-it man...and came up with a brilliant idea, which was to hire a gentleman who is trained to teach CIA operatives how to endure torture. And so, that's how I got through The Grinch."

Here's Jim in real life vs. the movie:

7. Describing her transformation into Griselda Blanco for Griselda, Sofía Vergara told CBS Sunday Mornings, "The [prosthetic] nose. The teeth were horrific. I had plastic from [my eyelids] to [above my hairline] because we needed to cover. My eyebrows are very thick, and I wanted me to disappear. And I think that was one of my features that is very strong."

Todd McIntosh, her makeup artist, told Variety that the entire process took about three hours — 90 minutes for makeup and prosthetics, and 90 minutes for body makeup, wig application, and wardrobe.

He said, "She was extremely dedicated. Everything about this character that Sofía created, from her walk to what kind of bra she wore, she was involved in. She would study every night."

Here's Sofía in real life vs. the movie:

8. In the design of Colin Farrell's makeup in The Batman, Mike Marino went for a more realistic The Penguin than previous onscreen iterations. Mike told the LA Times, "I put in subliminal shapes that resembled the eyebrows of a penguin, the beak of a bird. Little details, like his scarred side on the bottom of one nostril is, the exact shape of a bird’s mouth. So it’s really like a beak. His nose actually is a bird beak. I found some reference photographs of some birds that were grizzled and older and have been through the wringer. I utilized the chipping of the beaks with his skin."

He continued, "So I put all these subliminal things inside while trying to maintain a realistic character. And when Colin saw himself in the mirror, he immediately said, 'OK, now I know who this guy is. I know how to speak; I know how to walk.'"

In total, Colin's makeup weighed about five pounds. They got the application process down from three hours to one and a half.

Here's Colin in real life vs. in the movie:

9. To play Tammy Faye Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Jessica Chastain spent up to seven and a half hours getting her makeup done. It was the most prosthetics she's worn for a role. She told the LA Times, "I got to set, and I was so panicky. I started to have hot flashes because it's so heavy and hot. I was afraid. It was like going on a long-distance flight every day. Because if it takes seven and a half hours to put on, it's going to take at least two hours to get off. It was concerning to me. I was worried about my circulation."

She continued, "By the time I got on set that first day that was seven and a half hours, I was like, 'I have no energy left.' And she’s supposed to show up with so much energy. That was the '90s look — the very end."

Here's Jessica in real life vs. in the movie:

10. Describing the process of becoming Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder, Christian Bale told The Hollywood Reporter, "We got it down to three and half hours, but usually, it was, like, starting at four hours. Transformation — sitting there, casually building Gorr with my wonderful collaborators, the makeup artists who absolutely created Gorr just as much as I did. And the fun times we had, and the weird music we would listen to to get into the Gorr headspace..."

However, there was one part of the transformation that really bothered him: Gorr's long nails.

He told Deadline, "It rendered me completely incapable of everything. I was pathetic. I found myself thinking things like, 'I don't think I can walk because I've got long nails.' It affected my brain. I was like, 'I can't eat; I've got long nails.' I was trying to type. I couldn't do anything."

Here's Christian in real life vs. the movie:

11. In Suspiria, Tilda Swinton played multiple roles, most notably the role-within-a-role of the fictional actor Lutz Ebersdorf as Dr. Josef Klemperer. Makeup designer Mark Coulier told Deadline, "For that, we had to get away from Tilda's feminine features — she's got a long, slender neck, and a very feminine jawline, and high cheekbones, and we had to thicken up the jaw quite a lot, and the neck, to get her into those male, heavy-set proportions. She's completely covered, her entire head, in several sections. We had a tubular neck that was pulled over, made out of silicone, and separate cheeks, a chin, top lip, nose, forehead, ears, back of head, hand prosthetics, fingernails. We had a wig on there. So, it was a full deal — bits of body padding — and we painted it up."

He continued, "We had a few reference characters — Germanic looking, 80-year-old male reference — which all worked really well. Josh Weston sculpted the makeup, and Anna Kiesser did all the paintwork on the pieces."

To bring so many different characters to life, Tilda endured a lot of time in the makeup chair.

Mark said, "Tilda's a real trooper. The difficult thing for her was that she's playing these three characters, so once she's not playing Madam Blanc, she's playing Lutz Ebersdorf or Markos. They're all tough. Even getting Madame Blanc ready was not super easy; she still sat there for a couple of hours, getting that on, and then the Klemperer makeup took about four hours initially. We got it down to about two and a half, but it was four for quite a while. We did her about 15, 16 times as Lutz, and then the Markos character, we did five or six times, and that was a big, long makeup, probably more like five and a half, six hours to get all that because she's completely encased in it. That's not a comfortable thing to wear, so I think if you'd done any one of those makeups for somebody unfamiliar, it'd be quite tough. But Tilda never complained once, and she's fun as well. It's nice when you're doing all those makeups to have someone fun in the chair, who's very animated and interesting and interested."

Here's Tilda in real life vs. in the movie:

12. To transform Oscar Isaac into Apocalypse for X-Men: Apocalypse, makeup artist Brian Snipe applied six thin silicone prosthetics. Over the course of filming, they were able to get the process down from four hours to one.

Oscar found playing Apocalypse  "excruciating." In 2018, he told GQ, "I didn't know when I said yes that that was what was going to be happening. That I was going to be encased in glue, latex, and a 40-pound suit—that I had to wear a cooling mechanism at all times. I couldn't move my head, ever.

"I couldn't move my head. And I had to sit on a specially designed saddle because that's the only thing I could really sit on, and I would be rolled into a cooling tent in between takes. And so I just wouldn't ever talk to anybody, and I was just gonna be sitting, and I couldn't really move, and like, sweating inside the mask and the helmet. And then getting it off was the worst part because they just had to kind of scrape it off for hours and hours," he said.

Here's Oscar in real life vs. the movie:

13. To play Virginia Wolf in The Hours, Nicole Kidman spent three hours in the makeup chair. The most important aspect was her prosthetic nose, which enabled her to walk around unnoticed.

She told SF Gate, "I did enjoy being anonymous. It was fun to be able to go out of my trailer and not have anyone know me."

Here's Nicole in real life vs. in the movie:

14. After wearing facial prosthetics to play an aged-up Hermione Granger at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Emma Watson told Jo Blo, "Prosthetics are horrible. I'm never… I'm going to avoid doing a movie with prosthetics, like my life depends on it."

"I'm glad I had like a taste of that experience, enough to know it's miserable. [laughs] It was obvious for me," she said.

Here's Emma in real life vs. in the movie:

15. For Guardians of the Galaxy, Dave Bautista's transformation into Drax the Destroyer took five makeup artists, five hours, and 18 prosthetics. He was also painted and given dentures and colored contacts to wear.

His costar Chris Pratt told BuzzFeed, "Bautista had to stand like this with his arms out rested on posts...stands that had tennis balls on them. He had to stand for hours like that every single day. Never complained about it."

Here's Dave in real life vs. in the movie:

16. Describing his three-hour-long transformation into Vision for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Paul Bettany told Business Insider, "The makeup on my face, which, you know, they’re huge prosthetic pieces that go from below my eyebrows all the way down to the mid-shoulder blade. And same thing around my neck. The only part of your skin of your entire body that’s open to the air is a sort of…part of your face the size of maybe your hand."

Once the makeup was fully done, he couldn't hear very well. He said, "You can imagine it’s quite isolating, and you have a cooling mechanism, which is a suit beneath it that pumps a sort of ice-cold water around you like racing car drivers use, and there’s a lot of sitting down, reading, and just trying to focus on how very fortunate you are."

However, he kept a good perspective. He said, "Mainly, the pain in the ass was the prosthetics and stuff that, you know, is as uncomfortable as getting paid a lot of money to be uncomfortable is, which is not really that uncomfortable."

Here's Paul in real life vs. in the movie:

17. And finally, while filming X-Men, Rebecca Romjin spent eight to nine hours a day getting into costume as Mystique (though the process took less time on subsequent films). She told Entertainment Weekly, "There are four women who do it, and having them in my personal space for that many hours a day is crazy-making. You can go from being perfectly happy and having a nice time to just being, like, evil bitch woman: 'If one more person stares at me, I’m gonna pull my eyes out!'"

She also didn't feel entirely comfortable about the costume's lack of actual clothes.

She said, "I’ve been in denial about the nudity: 'No, no, I’m VERY covered up.' I kept checking with the rest of the cast, 'You guys, I’m totally covered up, right?' And they’d tell me, 'No, Rebecca, you’re naked.' I’m hoping by X3 they can do it digitally. Maybe I won’t even have to show up. 

One time, [director] Bryan [Singer] opened the tent where I was literally bent over a chair getting my crack touched up. And I was like, 'Don’t come in here, Bryan! You don’t need to see this.' And he said, 'You really need some white wine.' And he brought me some."

Here's Rebecca in real life vs. in the movie:

Which actor had the best makeup transformation you've seen onscreen? Let us know in the comments!