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Article
by Jody Duncan / Interview by Joe Fordham
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Among
those nominated for the best actress Academy Award this
year is Charlize Theron, whose chilling turn as serial killer
Aileen Wournos in Patty Jenkins' Monster has garnered
ecstatic critical reviews -- many of which note how thoroughly
Theron disappears in the role. Gone is the svelte, creamy-skinned,
blue-eyed beauty; in her place is a near-perfect re-creation
of Wournos, complete with ravaged hair and skin, crooked
teeth and dumpy body.
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Historically,
Oscar has honored beautiful women who have shed their vanity for
the sake of a juicy role. Elizabeth Taylor as the frumpy Martha
in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won the best actress
statuette, as did Hilary Swank playing the boyish, gender-confused
Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry, and The Hours'
Nicole Kidman, whose natural beauty was obscured by a prosthetic
nose. If Theron continues that trend with a win on Oscar night,
she is likely to acknowledge the contribution of Toni G, the makeup
artist responsible for her startling physical transformation.
Recommended
to Theron and Jenkins by Rick Baker's Cinovation Studio, Toni
G met with the actress and the director well before the start
of filming to devise an overall approach to the makeup assignment.
"When they first called me," Toni G recalled, "I
thought that Charlize Theron as Aileen Wournos was a bit of a
stretch. But when I met with Patty and Charlize, I realized that
it was definitely achievable. Charlize was so completely inspired,
she inspired me! I thought, 'Yes, this is possible.'"
At
that first meeting, Jenkins and Theron made it clear that they
wanted to pursue a non-prosthetic approach. "Prosthetics
weren't even considered," Toni G said, "mainly because
there wasn't the budget to do that. But I never thought prosthetics
were necessary, anyway." The plan was to have Theron gain
30 pounds -- which, in itself, would go a long way toward changing
her appearance -- and then implement the other changes through
straightforward makeup and hairstyling techniques. As a start,
Toni G researched a wealth of archival material on Wournos. "There
were so many great photographs of Aileen and so much video coverage,
it was a dream. I had a plethora of research material."
In
the days leading up to the shoot, Toni G applied test makeups
on friends in her garage, arriving at a final makeup that emphasized
Wournos' key characteristics. Among the most crucial were her
misshapen eyebrows and dry, over-bleached hair. Rather than wear
a wig, Theron gamely endured a day-long hair-frying and hair-thinning
session with hairstylist Katie Swanson. Her eyebrows also took
abuse. "Charlize's eyebrows needed to be completely changed
to frame her face differently," Toni G noted, "so I
took off all the outside part of her eyebrows, and also bleached
them. Eyebrows are an amazing representation of what people go
through in their lives. You can see an angry person, a happy person,
a gentle person, all through the eyebrows. Aileen's eyebrows had
a tendency to angle upward towards her forehead, which created
an angry expression." Contact lenses further altered the
actress' eyes, changing their color from blue to brown and giving
them a deeper, more haunted look.
Wournos'
crooked, stained and rotting teeth were another distinguishing
feature. Toni G covered Theron's straight, white teeth with prosthetic
dentures, which also served to push out her mouth slightly, making
it appear wider. Toni G hired Yoishi 'Art' Sakamoto, with whom
she had worked at Cinovation, to make the dentures. "Art
took a dental impression, and then came up with some prototype
dentures, painting on the discoloration and detail. We discussed
what needed to be changed, and went from there. It was important
that the dentures be thick enough to look realistic, but thin
enough not to impede Charlize's speech. We got a practice pair
out to her as soon as possible -- about a month before they started
shooting -- so she could get accustomed to speaking with them.
It takes time for a person to learn how to speak properly with
prosthetic dentures, so that they don't distract from the performance."
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Even
with the excess weight, damaged hair, crooked teeth and
bleached and over-tweezed eyebrows, Theron's beauty shone
through. "We had all those things together," Toni
G recalled, "but she still had this creamy, poreless,
gorgeous skin. With makeup, I had to create the years of
abuse to her skin -- all the freckles and capillaries and
sun damage -- either through hand-painting or working with
an airbrush." The makeup artist used an alcohol-based,
makeup-industry 'tattoo ink' to create layers of translucent
washes, building up the skin damage to suggest depth and
dimensionality. A sealant called 'Green Marble' was applied
to create additional texture, and was also used liberally
to prevent the makeup from running off in a scene in which
Wournos appears in the shower.
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With
practice, Toni G got the makeup application time down to
a single hour. "I remember the first day we did the
whole makeup on Charlize. It gave me goose bumps. She walked
out of the trailer, lit a cigarette -- and Charlize was
gone."
A
symbiotic fusion of Toni G's makeup and Charlize Theron's extraordinary
performance resulted in a stunning on-screen representation of
the troubled Aileen Wournos. "If Charlize had given a brilliant
performance, but still looked like Charlize," Toni G concluded,
"that would have been very distracting. But if not for her
brilliant performance, the teeth, the makeup, the hair -- none
of it would have worked."
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BAFTA:
Big winners at Sunday's British Academy of Film &
Television Arts awards show were The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King and Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World, each garnering four BAFTA
awards. ROTK won for best picture, adapted screenplay,
cinematography and visual effects. Master and Commander
won best director, sound, costume design and production
design. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the
Black Pearl won best makeup and hair. Click
here for the full list of winners.
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Indy
4: With this quote from Frank Darabont, Ain't It Cool
News lays to rest any conjecture that Darabont is still
tinkering with the screenplay for the fourth Indiana Jones
adventure: "…after more than a year of working
closely with Steven Spielberg developing the story, I
had completed a screenplay that Steven loved and was hoping
to shoot in July of this year. However, George Lucas had
issues with the script and slammed on the brakes in order
to rework the material himself. There is talk of enlisting
another writer. Given that George is the producer, but
even more so because of their long and close friendship,
Steven is deferring to George in this situation. It is
now up to them to try to find a common ground regarding
the film. I wish them luck and hope their efforts result
in something they're both excited about shooting. What,
if anything, might remain of my work at the end of the
process is anybody's guess, assuming the film even gets
made at this point. As for me, I'm disappointed, but I'm
putting the experience behind me and moving on with my
life and my own projects."
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Disney:
Wall Street dropped a bomb last week with a report
that cable media conglomerate Comcast is attempting a
$66 billion hostile takeover of the Walt Disney Company,
potentially creating a new media monster on the scale
of Time Warner and the upcoming NBC Universal merger.
The Comcast offer was rejected yesterday by the Disney
board of directors, but analysts speculate that the battle
for Disney ownership has only just begun.
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Batman
5: Per a Variety story on Warner Brothers'
upcoming Batman film -- the fifth in the series
-- director Chris Nolan states that the film will be rooted
in the origins of the character of Bruce Wayne, who is
"driven by an incredible sense of rage" and
grounded in a hitherto unseen reality. Gotham City will
be represented by contemporary New York City, rather than
the art deco/disco fantasy envisaged by Tim Burton and
Joel Schumacher. Warner's publicity department promises
this will be a 'smart, cool and fresh' reimagining rather
than a remake.
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Terminator
4: The ArnoldFans.com reports that producer Mario
Kassar recently told The Movie Guide, a Lebanese
film magazine, that work will commence on a fourth Terminator
film once the screenplay is ready in eight to nine months.
Kassar hinted at the plot as follows: "The question
that has never been answered in all the Terminator
films is time travel. You can come from the future to
change the present. But we never see how they go back
to the future, which is a subject that can be explored.
I think you already know where T4 is going from
the ending of T3."
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Star
Wars: The official website, StarWars.com, has announced
that the original Star Wars trilogy will be released
as a four-disc DVD set on September 21. ABC News reports
that, despite the protests of an online
petition signed by more than 50,000 fans, the films
to appear on the DVD set will be the 1997 Special Editions.
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MirrorMask:
AICN posted an interview with British artist and comic
book author Dave McKean, regarding his long-in-the-works,
surreal-looking puppet film. Co-written with comic book
artist Neil Gaiman, the story is about a 15-year-old girl
in a family of circus entertainers who longs to run off
and join real life, then falls into a dream world populated
by strange creatures and a sick queen who can only be
healed with an enchanted MirrorMask. They reportedly have
a $5 million budget, are using greenscreen, 3D animation
and motion capture effects, are halfway through nine months
of postproduction, and are hoping for a fall release.
Per IMDb, this is a Jim Henson Production, to be distributed
by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment.
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Ender's
Game / Ender's Shadow: Variety reports that
Warner Brothers has commissioned screenwriters Dan Harris
and Michael Dougherty to adapt Orson Scott Card's Hugo-winning
science fiction novels Ender's Game and Ender's
Shadow for director Wolfgang Petersen. Ender's
Game -- about a boy genius in the future who is drafted
into a secret training program with a group of similarly
gifted youths, only to discover they have been conscripted
to save the world from alien invasion -- has been making
the rounds as a potential feature film since the early
1990s.
-
Battle
Angel Alita: Yahoo Movies has finally posted a page
about this project that many people have conjectured will
be James Cameron's next big film. Click
here to browse Greg Dean Schmitz's Battle Angel
page.
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Doh!
- The Movie: Variety announced that 20th Century
Fox has greenlit an as-yet-untitled animated feature film
based on its long-running and consistently brilliant TV
cartoon series The Simpsons. Series creators Matt
Groening and James L. Brooks are leading a writing troop,
which includes at least seven past and present members
of the series' writing gang. Brooks is quoted as promising
"a very good and interesting idea…different
from the show." No release date as yet.
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Top
Dog: Per a Variety story, Mission Entertainment
and producer Robert Lawrence are to produce a film about
a reluctant member of an elite canine squad that distinguishes
itself in combat. The dogs will apparently talk à
la Babe, voicing lines from a screenplay by Nat Mauldin.
The story is, however, described as a canine Private
Benjamin -- rather than a Saving Private Ryan.
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A
Scanner Darkly: Production Weeky reports that
director Richard Linklater will direct an adaptation of
Philip K. Dick's paranoid science fiction classic. Reports
elsewhere have indicated that this will be an animated
feature in the loosey-goosey style of Linklater's trippy
Waking Life.
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Starship
Troopers 2: Just when you thought it was safe to go
back to the abandoned alien planet outpost, a new R-rated
trailer has emerged here
for Phil Tippett's directorial debut film, Starship
Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. Although the trailer
is vague as to a date for the direct-to-video release,
CHUD.com estimates it will be out in 'a few months,' while
IMDb claims April 24 for a TV premiere.
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A
History of Violence: Variety reports that filmmaker
David Cronenberg will next direct an adaptation of this
Paradox Graphic Mystery comic book, published by Paradox
Press and DC Comics, who published The Road to Perdition.
Screenwriter Josh Olson has adapted A History of Violence,
which was written by Judge Dredd creator John Wagner.
The story is about an ordinary family, whose lives are
changed after the father receives attention for a seemingly
vigilante self-defense killing. The film will be a New
Line Cinema release.
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