by Bern Fletcher
There is an old French saying: “Il faut souffrir pour être belle,” which roughly means “beauty is pain.” We might all relate to this one way or the other, whether it’s the intense make-up sessions or the months of hitting the gym, but one specific job takes it to the extreme: acting.
Great actors strip themselves from their personalities, completely embrace the character, and drag us along on a ride for a few hours. At times, the physical transformation demanded to become the character is so radical you could immerse yourself in the movie and only realise who’s playing who when the end credits roll.
What’s even more surprising than finding who’s the man behind the mask, is the process of how the image of a face and a body we are so familiar with becomes unrecognisable. Extreme diets, heavy prosthetics, the best make-up artist in the world, and a lot of patience and discipline make up the recipes for the unforgettable roles in our list, some of which might surprise you.
Tilda Swinton – “Suspiria”
Typically, actors make incredible sacrifices to get into the psyche and body of one character. Now, imagine triple the sacrifice Tilda Swinton made to play not one but three roles in the 2018 Luca Guadagnino remake of the classic movie.
Swinton aged her appearance through prosthetics and makeup for all the roles, with each transformation more striking than the other. It is a horror triangle between an enigmatic choreographic; the only role when you can faintly recognise Swinton, an elderly male psychologist where there’s no trace of the actress left a disturbing tumour cover leader Helena Markos.
When asked why she took on the three roles, Swinton answered, “For the sheer sake of fun above all.” Guadagnino, on the other hand, rightly elevates her acting skills and dedication, saying in style, “Only Tilda could play ego, super-ego, and id.”
Demi Moore – “G.I. Jane”
Getting ripped to play a role is nothing new in acting; we see male superheroes in every Marvel movie pull it off. Demi Moore showed how you don’t have to be a strong, manly hero to transform into one. From the attractive and charming woman we all know her to be, Moore surprised everyone by becoming Lieutenant Jordan O’Neil, the first female Navy SEAL.
Not only did she look the part, but she lived it by training like a real soldier with celebrity-trained Gregoy Joujon-Rocher and an actual Navy SEAL instructor, Stephen Helvenston. Months of strict diet, martial arts, cardio, weightlifting, and all in-between, starting at 4:00 a.m. sharp, shaped her body, mind, and psyche to do justice to the character.
50 Cent – “All Things Fall Apart”
By now, it’s history that 50 Cent is impressive on stage and set. Success in the former is already engraved, but he proved to everyone he could go to extremes in the later playing role of a college football player battling cancer.
From a ripped rapper in real life, 50 lost 56 pounds in just nine weeks with liquid dieting and running on a treadmill for three hours every day; not the glorious transformation you’d expect, but a necessary one to portray the despair of Deon, who gave up his dream of playing in the NFL championship but still had the life force to fight imminent death and run full of hope towards the football field just as the screen fades into the credits.
Friedrich Gustav Maximilian Schreck – “Nosferatu”
Classics are often mentioned in every movie list but rarely does anyone go as far back as to make justice to the ‘real’ films that started it all.
“Nosferatu” was shot in the days when watching a movie meant living in the future and when no one had seen an actor transform into a monster. The extraordinary representation of the prince of the night made people in the early 19th century believe that Schreck must have been a real vampire. The actor had never worked on a film before, and stories say that no one saw him without the make-up and costume, a mysterious side to movies we miss in today’s modern world.
John Hurt – “Elephant Man”
Turning into a monstrous-looking character is nothing, and it wasn’t even when “Elephant Man” was shot in the ’80s. Yet, the transformation of John Hurt was so radical that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was forced to create the Best Makeup award.
John Merrick lived the life of a freak in real life, and make-up artist Christopher Tucker did the suffered life of this man justice by creating and applying an intricate arrangement of 15 prosthetics each time John Hurt went on set.
Steve Carell – “Foxcatcher”
Steve Carell is the man you want to see when your mood is at its worst. He’s a master of comedy, but this movie proved he can bring us down with the same charm of bursting us into tears.
The transformation from prosthetics was only part of why this role is on this list; physically, you could tell he was acting clearly, but mentally and spiritually, the acting was beyond just ‘acting.’ Carell put every inch of his experience into becoming the mercurial and unpredictable John du Point.
Brad Pitt – “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
He’s done it all, from being a WW2 soldier to planning casino heists while spy-pretend-playing on a live poker table, but this time, Brad Pitt and the crew pulled off the unthinkable in arguably the most unlikely journey ever caught on camera. And we’re not talking about Ocean’s Eleven here, oh no, although we would love to see a modern storyline reincarnation of a real money online casino cyber-heist. If you haven’t yet experienced it, Benjamin Button is the story of a man aged backwards, from an elderly child to an infantile adult.
Pulling this transformation required not only prosthetics, makeup, and the actor’s devotion but also the latest tech. Even though this list is not dedicated to CGI, when the intent is right, and the purpose is for one actor to play every stage of a character’s growth, it surely deserves a spot.
Dustin Hoffman – “Tootsie”
Hoffman’s role in Toostie is the prime example of the quote, “Beauty is pain.” The actor spent months transforming into the role of the man who had no option but to become the female soap opera star, Dorothy Michaels.
Elegant dress, shaved hands, fake teeth, and all the ingenuity of genius makeup artist Allen Weisigner transformed Hoffman for the role. Hours were spent every day for one year.
No one could ever recognise Hoffman, not even himself. Beyond the transformation on screen, the role stayed with him for life, describing how his entire perspective on women changed when he became one.
Jared Leto – “Mr. Nobody”
This is a man to never back down from a challenge. Of his many transformations, Jared Leto, with this one, leaves a mark as the most intensive is the quasi-immortal Nemo Nobody. In the age when the world has conquered mortality, he is the only man who is looking for the mortality everyone else wants to run from.
From day one of shooting, six and a half hours of makeup every day were needed, along with prosthetics and special effects, to turn Leto into Mr. Nobody as he grew into an old man embracing his death.
Donnie Wahlberg – “The Sixth Sense”
As Vincent Gray, Donnie Wahlberg went to the extreme. Not only did he embrace the suffering and struggles of the dark character he portrayed, but he quite literally “embodied” how the body keeps the score of those negative emotions.
Vincent Gray was a shell of a man, a lonely addict far from family and love. There was only one to become him: treat yourself like he would.
“I just wasn’t taking care of myself, and I was a loner… I definitely had to suffer in the only way I could,” said Wahlberg after losing 43 pounds in just five weeks. Everything for 10 minutes of the screen, all the pain of going to a dark place mentally and physically for those now timeless moments.
Eric Stoltz – “Mask”
An easy winner for the best makeup design award of 1985, “Mask” tells the real story of a teenage boy named Rocky Denni, whose face deformation prevents him from living an extraordinary life.
The beauty behind this transformation is its simplicity. Designer Michael Westmore used only three pieces of foam latex to transform Stoltz into the character; the rest is pure acting mastery and the legacy that’s still left today.
Christian Bale – “Vice”
A list of stunning actor transformations cannot be complete without mentioning Christian Bale at least once. Bale is the master of struggle, the man who won’t ever say no to the most extreme roles and does all it takes to pull us into the twisted and dark roles he masterfully portrays.
For ‘Vice,’ the actor accepts the challenge of becoming the 46th Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. The glory and struggle of Cheney’s life could not be represented without gaining 40 pounds before hitting the set and daily hours of extensive make-up and fitting prosthetics.
The most beautiful part of his transformation is how you can tell from Cheney’s eyes that Bale is in there. Even though the charming actor known for his action roles turned into an elderly bureaucrat, fans could still feel the hint of the actor’s unmistakable charisma. This proves that the best actors can transform beyond recognition and keep only their unique touch of humanity necessary to keep us glued to the screen.
Billy Crystal – “Wizard”
What makes Billy’s transformation impressive beyond the actors’ looks is his ability to improvise for hours and days in 13th-century jokes, wholly immersed in the character’s psyche. The impressive prosthetics and makeup might do the job for the unrecognisable looks, but the humour—that’s something only a master of comedy can pull off.
Billy Bob Thornton – “Sling Blade”
The only transformation in this list that surprisingly doesn’t require prosthetics to achieve a total transformation of the actor. “It Hurts,” said Billy Bob Thornton when asked how he did it, and that pain seems to fit the mentally challenged ruthless hitman the actor portrays.
When an actor’s transformations are discussed, voice acting is often left aside, yet Karl Childers would have no meaning without the slow-paced Southern dialect that sometimes barely makes sense. No actor could have pulled it off like Thorton, setting the bar astronomically high for the actors who followed his example.
Gary Oldman – “The Darkest Hour”
Gary Oldman is another name you knew you would find in the list that we could not omit. Even though many might say his representation of Count Dracula overshades Nosferatu, the way in which Oldman transformed into Winston Churchill left everyone baffled. No science fiction character or monster; it took ‘just’ an old politician.
The role he initially turned down because, in the actor’s words, he “had no resemblance to Winston Churchill” turned out to be exactly as challenging as Oldman predicted. Three hours of daily make-up and prosthetic work were not easy on the actor’s body, but that struggle is precisely what makes Gary Oldman the man of many faces.
The Dark Side of Actor Transformation
It’s easy to be impressed with the result of a transformation, but how about the consequence? Getting ripped from extensive exercise is undoubtedly positive. Still, hours of non-sensical forced training in a short period of time and crazy amounts of muscle gain do not always prove to be positive in the long run. Even worse, losing an insane amount of weight and dwelling in the mind of a psychotic and dark character is not something that leaves no trace in the body and psyche.
As we’ve said, the body keeps the score, and sadly, the mind does, too. It’s enough to remind us of Heath Ledger and how his role as Joker, in his words not long before his suicide, was “physically and mentally draining.”
The Hollywood Secret Weapons
A transformation is not a one-person job, not unless you’re Billy Bob Thorton. We’d like to dedicate this final section to all the personal trainers, makeup artists, prosthetic designers, and unsung heroes behind the set who rarely get the credit they need but without whom this list and the spectacular movies would never exist.
