In the 1980's, Monster Makeup Made the Movie

An actor's face is his fortune. It's also the canvas on which special effects makeup artists can create an endless variety of aliens, ghouls, goblins, zombies and masked slashers for highly popular fantasy and horror films. Sitting between the men in the rubber suits of the 1950s and today's sophisticated and often complex, gut-wrenchingly realistic facial appliances, were the science and fantasy films of the 1980s. Simpler, perhaps, but at the time they were extremely effective. But, with makeup requirements extending far beyond eye shadow and Max Factor pancake, many actors found their artistic talents must also include superhuman endurance.

Actor Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), who played the elegant demon "Darkness" in director Ridley Scott's Legend, found that makeup can be a real pain in the neck. In addition to body appliances used to build up the muscles in his arms, chest and shoulders, Curry wore a huge structure, with three-foot fiberglass horns, supported by a hidden harness, on his head. Since the horns extended forward, Curry was constantly suffering from neck muscle strain.

Academy award winner Louis Gossett, Jr. (An Officer and a Gentleman) can sympathize after his role as the Drac in Enemy Mine. Gossett's makeup entailed far more than just fitting a mask into place and the application of some body paint. For the character which Gossett describes as "a combination of a lizard, a kangaroo, a bird, a dog and a little Stevie Wonder," the actor endured a laborious application of makeup each day. The facial makeup was extremely fragile, to allow for Gossett's full range of expressions, but the alien transformation didn't stop there. The physicality of the role also required Gossett to develop a whole new set of muscles in order to walk, sit, swim and even dance like a Drac. According to Gossett, "Marine training was a snap, compared to that."