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  • Movie makeup can do a lot more than just hide a few wrinkles and

  • make attractive actors look even better.

  • It has the power to bring imaginary characters to life.

  • These are the top ten makeup transformations of all time.

  • [MUSIC]

  • >> Wait.

  • [SOUND] >> Starting us off in number ten,

  • we're looking at the original X-men franchise.

  • Prosthetics master Gordon Smith orchestrate dozens of

  • Incredible mutant transformation for the film from Sabertooth, to Nightcrawler,

  • to Toad, to Senator Kelly.

  • But our number ten goes to his most impressive mutant of them all, Mystique.

  • Rebecca remains been up to 12 hours in the make up chair daily for

  • her role as Mystique.

  • And while her look is probably best known for how revealing it is,

  • she was actually covered by silicon prosthetics on almost two-thirds of her

  • body before being airbrushed from head to To toe.

  • And of course, we have to give an honorable mention to Frances Hannon's

  • take, on the look of Jennifer Lawrence, in X-Men: First Class and Days of

  • Future Past, where they've gone from an airbrush process, to a full bodysuit.

  • >> Five, four, three.

  • >> As long as there have been movies,

  • people have been using makeup to turn men into women.

  • Gender swapping has ranged from Charlie Chaplin, to Terry Jones,

  • to Robin Williams, to John Travolta.

  • And let's not forget the transformation of women into men, like Glenn Close and

  • Cate Blanchett.

  • But our number nine goes to perhaps the most classic gender swap of them all

  • from Tootsie.

  • Dustin Hoffman allegedly agreed to only take the role under the condition that

  • make up was good enough for him to pass as a woman on the streets of New York.

  • So makeup artist Allen Weisinger send out to transform him not into caricature but

  • into the real thing, and it was no easy feat.

  • In addition to conventional make up Weisinger stretched Hoffman's face taut,

  • shrunk his pores, and

  • provided him with longer, thinner teeth in order to sell the look and it worked.

  • Hoffman made a convincing woman, fooled his daughter at her elementary school and

  • even had a personal epiphany.

  • Bursting into tears when he looked at himself the way he looked at other women,

  • changing his outlook for good.

  • >> Molecular decimation, breakdown and reformation is inherently purging.

  • [SOUND] >> We couldn't talk make

  • up without looking at some of the horrifying monsters it's helped create.

  • And while David B Miller's Freddy Krueger comes first to mind, our number eight goes

  • to an even more impressive transformation, Chris Walas' Brundlefly from The Fly.

  • For Jeff Goldblum's gradual transformation, Cronenberg and

  • Walas started from the final, mutated form and worked backwards.

  • With seven different stages of genetic mutation Walas'

  • team didn't think it could be done in just three months.

  • But after tireless preparation, five hours in the makeup chair, and

  • up to five pounds of prosthetic appliances, the result speaks for itself.

  • >> Life.

  • Is full of surprises.

  • >> From the real life Rocky Dennis of Mask to the completely make believe sloth of

  • The Goonies, sometimes makeup is used for a more human kind of disfigurement.

  • But for our number seven, we got to give it to The Elephant Man.

  • Originally, the director David Lynch decided that he was going to design

  • the make up entirely himself.

  • However it didn't turn out so well, in fact it was a disaster.

  • In a week before shooting started a panic production finally brought

  • Christopher Tucker, an actual makeup artist on board.

  • And he certainly had his work cut out for.

  • His design included 15 different sections that he worked on with his team for

  • up to 49 hours at a time in preparation, and

  • in order to properly simulate the real life elephant man who died in 1890.

  • Tucker worked off not just a cast made of his head but his actual skeleton.

  • And when the Academy didn't honor him with a special award voters sent

  • in angry letters in protest, which prompted the Academy to

  • introduce the best makeup category the very next year.

  • That's right this is the movie that convinced the Academy to honor makeup.

  • >> It's moving.

  • It's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive.

  • He is alive.

  • >> Of course because the Academy Award for makeup didn't appear until 1981,

  • there were a lot of classic movie transformations that went unrecognized.

  • And while the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame were both

  • incredible early achievements in the art, there's nothing more iconic and

  • recognizable than the original Frankenstein's monster.

  • Jack Pierce is the man responsible for the trademark bolts and scars.

  • And remember that this was the early 1930s.

  • So he didn't have any sort of new fangled silicone or latex to work with.

  • Instead he spent four hours each day building up Boris Karloff's head with gum,

  • cotton and a syrupy surgical dressing glue called collodion.

  • And after adding 35 pounds of costume and makeup to Boris,

  • the final touch actually belong to the actor himself who gave himself

  • an eerie facial dent by removing his dental plate.

  • Delicious.

  • [SOUND] >> Take your stinking paws off me you

  • damn dirty ape.

  • >> Next up at number five, the apes in the original Planets of the Apes.

  • When John Chambers, who got his start doing facial reconstructions for

  • World War two veterans was first brought onto the project,

  • he spent hours and hours at the zoo studying the expressions of apes.

  • And in order to capture the flexibility and movement of their faces,

  • he actually invented a new type of rubber foam for the film's appliance.

  • But that wasn't his only challenge.

  • He had to costume hundreds of different actors in multiple different species over

  • the course of the film.

  • So he hired up to 80 different makeup artists.

  • He actually used so many of Hollywood's makeup artists that there weren't enough

  • to go around for the other films shooting at the time.

  • Many of which were delayed by that fact.

  • Of course, we couldn't forget to mention the makeup from the 2001 remake.

  • Although the movie itself was take it or leave it, legendary makeup

  • artist Rick Baker brought the look of the apes into the 21st century.

  • Totally kicked ass on over 500 different apes.

  • >> How old are you?

  • Seven, but I look a lot older.

  • >> From Citizen Kane all the way to Benjamin Button with

  • loads of movies in between, makeup artist have time and time again needed to

  • age an actor up a couple of years or even a couple of hundred.

  • And it's always an incredible transformation to watch, but for

  • our number four we're looking at Don Corleone from The God Father.

  • >> I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse

  • >> Now this might come as a bit of

  • a surprise for those of you who hear Marlon Brando and

  • think Don Corleone, which probably speaks to how good the makeup was.

  • But he actually looked pretty different.

  • He was only 47 when he took on the role of the Don.

  • It was up to makeup pioneer Dick Smith to add a couple extra decades on top.

  • But Marlon Brando being Marlon Brando, he refused to wear prosthetics

  • because he didn't want to spend that much time in makeup every [INAUDIBLE] So

  • instead, Dick Smith just painted it all on.

  • As for his world famous joules, those aren't really the result of tissue paper.

  • Although, that is where the idea came from.

  • They're actually created by a special dental device, called a plumper.

  • The result is so seamless and so convincing,

  • that it has to be one of the top makeup transformations of all time.

  • [MUSIC]

  • >> All I wanted was a beer.

  • But the day I met Sylvia I spend most of the afternoon sit in the rain about to

  • kill myself so you can understand.

  • I was flexible.

  • >> Makeup can age, disfigure and gender swap actors but

  • it can also transform them in totally different people when a film calls for it.

  • >From Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood to Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose.

  • To another Bruce Willis in Looper.

  • But our number three belongs to the incredible transformation of

  • Charlize Theron into Aileen Wuornos for Monster.

  • Although Theron gaining 30 pounds for

  • the role certainly helped Tony G went to far greater lengths to transform her.

  • She fried in and thinned her hair.

  • Shaved and bleached her eye brows.

  • Air brushed her face with layers of tattoo ink and

  • Marble sealant in order to create the worn down look seen on screen

  • surprisingly the only prosthetic she used were dentures and eyelids.

  • The contrast is almost unbelievable from model to serial killer

  • from the makeup alone.

  • [MUSIC]

  • [MUSIC]

  • There is hardly a moment in makeup history so funny as when Tom Cruise showed up as

  • Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder dancing across the screen in a gold chain and

  • a fat suit.

  • But for our number two we think 21 Jumpstreet was Just a little better.

  • Now if you haven't seen the movie yet, and you definitely should,

  • you might wanna skip this bit because we're about to drop some major spoilers.

  • 21 Jump Street was the ultimate meta comedy, and

  • it constantly poked fun at itself for being just another Hollywood reboot.

  • But when the bearded biker DP pulled off his nose to reveal that he was,

  • in fact Johnny Depp.

  • It was impossible not to get caught up in the magic of the transformation, because

  • his disguise was so perfect, that he spent the entire movie hiding in plain sight.

  • >> Hola?

  • >> [INAUDIBLE] >> And finally at number one we have to

  • pay homage to the incredible magical creatures of Guillermo Del Toro.

  • >From the everything but his eyelids costume for

  • Hell Boy to the looking out his nostrils pale man from Pan's Labyrinth.

  • Guillermo Del Toro is a director known for bringing the fantastical to life.

  • And for our number one we have to pick his fawn from Pan's Labyrinth.

  • An achievement not just in makeup, but animatronics the ears and the eye lids

  • of the fawn mask were remote controlled while Doug Jones acted underneath.

  • And if you think that was heavy consider the ten pound horns he had to wear on top

  • of it all.

  • Of course the Faun's transformation didn't just stop at just face.

  • The latex foam suit continued all the way down to a pair of intricate legs that had

  • the actor standing on eight inch lifts,

  • while his real legs were digitally removed.

  • The result is a complete magical transformation and

  • just the kind of makeup that brings dreams, and nightmares to life.

  • So, what do you think?

  • Did you disagree with one of our choices?

  • Did we leave out one of your favorite makeup transformations of all time?

  • Let us know on the comments below and be sure to subscribe for

  • more CineFix movie lists.

  • [MUSIC]

Movie makeup can do a lot more than just hide a few wrinkles and

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