CMS Hangs With Hollywood at the Oscar Makeup and Hair Symposium

CMS Director Emeritus Leonard Engelman hosts a panel
of the 2013 Oscar nominees for Hair and Makeup.

Oscar® season came to an end last weekend with Les Miserables taking home the award for best makeup, but for the movie makeup fanatics at Cinema Makeup School, the excitement has yet to die down.

On Saturday, before the Oscar ceremony, nominees for “outstanding achievement in makeup and hairstyling” for the 85^th academy awards gathered at the Samuel Goldwyn theatre for the Academy’s Hair and Makeup Symposium. Tickets for the event sold out quickly, but many CMS-ers were in attendance alongside top industry professionals like Bill Corso, Steve LaPorte, Michele Burke, Yolanda Toussieng, Michael Westmore, Greg Cannom, Deborah LaMia Denaver and Trefor Proud.

After a slideshow of the nominated films, Leonard Engelman, Director Emeritus at CMS and Governor of the Makeup Artists and Hairstylists branch of the Academy, hosted a panel discussion with the nominated artists.

Said Leonard, ‘This is a wonderful time for these eight nominees to bask in their accomplishments and recognition.…Today is a celebration of winners. Every nominee who steps onstage is a winner.”

Nominees Hitchcock, Les Miserables and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey set a high bar for outstanding makeup transformations this year. At the symposium, the artists behind those transformations got the chance to share the stories behind their acclaimed work.

Howard Berger, Peter Montagna, and Martin Samuel of Hitchcock
at the panel discussion.

Howard Berger, Peter Montagna and Martin Samuel of KNB Effects wowed viewers by transforming the familiar face of actor Anthony Hopkins into the spitting image of legendary auteur Alfred Hitchcock. Using silicone appliances for the translucency and weight quality of the material, they went through six versions before they found the perfect look.

For Hitchcock, finding the right look was not as simple as creating a perfect likeness; the crew recalled an early version of the makeup that looked exactly like Hitchcock, but made Anthony Hopkins completely unrecognizable. To make the film work, the artists needed to find a middle ground between the face of a well-known character and the face of a well-known actor.

Hitchcock director Sacha Gevrasi explained, “We weren't really doing an impersonation; we were trying to do Tony's version of Hitch."

Leonard Engelman with a likeness of the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.
Leonard worked with the real Hitchcock on 1969's Topaz.

For The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, makeup artists Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane had their work cut out for them: turning 6-foot-tall, slim actors into convincing dwarves.

"We had to squash them and widen them," said Swords King "What we tried to do with the make-up was lose their necks. We tried to widen them with hair."

"We had to accentuate some of the features to create this illusion," continued Lane. "We enlarged their heads and widened their ear spans, broadened their foreheads and enlarged their noses to create this squat-ish look."

To achieve the look, the Hobbit team used silicone and foam prosthetic pieces and applied hair and lace pieces to the actors’ faces, hands and feet.

Leonard Engelmen with the soon-to-be-Oscar-winning artists behind
Les Miserables, Julie Dartnell and Lisa Westcott.

Lisa Westcott, who has been nominated twice before, and Julie Dartnell took home the Oscar on Sunday for their phenomenal work on Les Miserables. In the film, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) undergoes many transformations, all cleverly designed; from a weathered prisoner to the clean respectable mayor and finally an old man on his deathbed.

To make the normally strapping Jackman look the part of a ragged convict, Wescott and Darnel created special dentures and contact lenses that gave the appearance of rotted teeth and bloodshot eyes and gave the actor’s a roughly sheared haircut and simulated scarring on the scalp.

Anne Hathaway went through her own transformation for the blockbuster musical, having her beautiful hair chopped off as she becomes a shadow of herself. The seamless hair and makeup work certainly paid off for Hathaway, who won the Oscar for Best Actress. During her celebrated performance of “I Dreamed a Dream,” viewers with a keen eye for makeup will notice that her skin has been spattered to look sickly and the tooth palette treatment on her teeth where some were to appear yanked out.

The event concluded with a reception featuring a display of items from each movie, where the nominees signed programs for fans and supporters.

"It's just great seeing all these people that are really into the art of make-up," said Peter Montagna. "You don't realize that there are so many fans out there who love it. I know when I was starting out. I'd give anything to be at an event like this. To be on the other end of it is really exciting.”

-CMS