Top 5 performances in Latex makeup.

[Lonemagpie]

1) Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar
=1) Hugo Weaving as V (which is through a stiff mask with no facial expression possible!)
3) Michael Wisher as Davros
4) Wayne Pygram as Scorpius
5) John Hurt as The Elephant Man

You can follow on from there...

 

[Gaith]

That Grig guy in The Last Starfighter put some pretty amazing expression through some very thick latex.

 

[FormerLurker]

No list like this is complete sans Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest

I'm not sure if he qualifies to be honest. At the risk of hair splitting; he's not acting through the latex, he just happens to have some in top of his head while acting like Alan Rickman. It's the same way you wouldn't necessarily think of Nana Visitor as acting through the make-up. The latex just so happens to be there.

Right. The point of the thread is to identify great examples of an actor's ability to act through a prosthetic or mask that covers most or all of the face. This usually requires a more subtle degree of body language control, expression through the eyes and verbal language, things like that. Brent Spiner and Leonard Nemoy wear makeup, for example, but the audience can still connect with their natural facial expressions.

snip

More subtle? According to interviews with both Maurice Evans and Roddy McDowall, they had to exaggerate their expressions under the makeup, just to make them show up at all. To mimic the subtle quirks and tics we humans are prone to all day long, they had to consciously perform the same tics, with gusto, or they wouldn't be seen through the makeup at all. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they had the same problem in the remake, even with the advances in makeup technology.

And Grig was played by Dan O'Herlihy, the 'old man' from Robocop that owned the company.

 

[Reverend]

^I think a lot of the new stuff these days is actually more of a silicon mix than latex and from what I gather (depending on how the appliance is built) acting through it is getting much much easier. But yes, in a lot of cases they're way over exaggerating under all that rubber but in order to deliver a good performance and imbue the latex/silicon with character the "over-acting" does have to be subtly modulated...even if that sounds like a contradiction in terms.

None of that was stipulated in the original post. Fair enough though, it's your thread, but what's the big deal? I mean, is it so refined a topic that my example can't be included also? Are we so rigid in our thinking?

As for Alan Rickman's performance as Alexander Dane, playing Dr. Lazarus, well, he wears the headpiece throughout the entire picture. Even when he's at home eating his noodles, he's wearing the headpiece! Surly fed up actor, tired of his nerdy fans, to sarcastic theater elitist, to mournful, revenge-promising friend ... he rant the gamut of emotions through that movie and made me laugh each time, and really sold his performance despite being stuck with a latex squid on his head for two hours.

But you see that's Alan Rickman turning in a typically brilliant Alan Rickman performance; he's not acting through the latex anymore than he would act through a hat or a scarf. The head piece acts more like a prop or an item of clothing in that it helps to define the look of character but it's not the same as wearing a full face mask.

There are defiantly grey areas though, depending on how extensive the appliances are. For example are actors playing Klingons acting through prosthetics? Most of the stuff is just nose and forehead appliances with some fake teeth and the majority of the face left free. Or what about the Centauri on B5? Granted most of them were only wearing wigs or in some cases had their own hair styled but Jurasik had a whole forehead and nose piece along with the fake teeth just like the Klingons. I think the example you gave as Lorne also falls into this grey area as after all, aside from the horns and the contacts it looks like it's mostly a paint job like say Chiana or Zhaan on Farscape.

...Which reminds me, I just thought of another one: -

Francesca Buller: Minister Ahkna, Raxil, ro-NA and M'Lee on Farscape.

She should get extra points I think for creating such radically different performances from these characters. So much so that when I looked her up I actionally had no idea she was Ahkna. I thought it was just the other three one-offs.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

My intent with the topic was to be performances in latex appliances that covered the head and/or body completely, but yes I didn't spell it out. However I think you can surmise that is what I ment, however I can't balk at anyone who doesn't. So if you want to included Leonard Nimoy or Alan Rickman or the like, go ahead.

 

[FormerLurker]

Reverend, have you ever seen a photo of the late Andy Hallett? The Lorne makeup wasn't just the horns and green makeup. It was a series of prosthetics, including a built up chin and jawline, a forehead piece, contacts, and a wig. Andy Hallett actually looked nothing like Lorne out of the makeup.

 

[Meredith]

Wayne Pygram, Scorpius, Farscape


but I think we can all agree that G'Kar is the clear winner

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOq0T980x8E[/yt]

 

[Kegg]

I'll give my nod to Wayne Pygram as Scorpius. One of the things that really makes his performance work is, well, it seems at cross purposes with his entire make-up: He's made up to look like a monstrous villain, one you'd expect to have an alien and probably rather deep voice (James Earl Jones levels, say); but instead we get a very restrained and rather higher pitched tone... and it works perfectly.

He's the gentleman in the black freak-suit. My very first thought when they finally gave him dialogue is there was no way this was going to work.