Aging and Character
In my last two posts, I looked at what I am comfortable to call masterpieces of extreme aging. In these prosthetic makeups, the actor/character is transformed into a recognizable version of himself, fifty years or so into the future. The magic of aging can, however, be used differently, when a young or middle-aged actor is changed into a elder character, but one that fits hardly at all with his normal appearance. This can be done to create historical characters or fictional ones. In this post, I share four examples of prosthetic makeup used for these purposes. Before doing so, let me put on my philosophical hat alongside the fan-of-makeup one. This will annoy those of you who are sensibly here for the examples and not the windiness/wordiness of theory. But it's on my mind that, so far, I have tried to draw the most dubious of lines between outstandingly professional and competent makeups on the one hand and, on the other hand, those that have a kind o...