14 Actors Who Lived a Real Nightmare When Bringing a Character To Life

Costume and makeup undoubtedly help bring characters to life in movies. And, of course, the actors are looking forward to the moment when they will be able to start immersing themselves in the role. However, this process is not always comfortable. When that happens, Hollywood stars are forced to spend weeks, or even months, wearing uncomfortable costumes and spending hours in the dressing room preparing their makeup.

We, from awesome.club, we did not imagine everything that these 14 actors went through just to deliver the best performance to the spectator. They deserve a standing ovation. Check out!

It wasn’t easy to transform the beautiful Angelina Jolie into the evil fairy Maleficent. The makeup team spent about two and a half hours working on her face, and according to the actress herself, she’s not the most patient person in the world. Jolie wore prosthetics on her nose, cheekbones and ears to achieve a spooky, slightly extraterrestrial look. In addition, she also wore fangs and special white lenses. You can watch an accelerated video of the process to transform Jolie into Maleficent at this link.

However, the biggest problem was caused by the huge horns. In an interview, Jolie said they were quite heavy, so her neck quickly felt uncomfortable. In addition, the actress wore a heel of just over 12 cm and constantly banged her horns on stage. Angelina also said that several times she almost fainted while recording. In the end, everything went well and the film was a success.

Saoirse Ronan wore a corset 12 hours a day and it greatly affected her appearance even after filming. After the end of the recordings, the actress spent almost a month for her body, in the shape of an “hourglass”, to return to normal without sharp curves. The actress added that the corset was terribly uncomfortable and pressed down to her bowels.

The actor doesn’t like to remember the makeup process to bring Lord Voldemort to life, nor the costume. Ralph Fiennes used to trip over it a lot, and he had to wear very uncomfortable women’s tights under his cloak, which constantly slipped down to his knees. According to the actor, due to this, he could not walk as gracefully as the character required. There came a point when Fiennes couldn’t take the situation any longer and asked the production to do something about it. The problem was quickly resolved: they cut off the tops of the tights and put on garters to secure them.

Tilda Swinton would spend five long hours with the makeup artists waiting patiently until they finished transforming her into the old Madam D.: “It was fascinating to watch the way these people work. I had a whole team take these pieces of something that looked like bacon and put them on my face, arms and earlobes.”

Makeup artists took the same amount of time to remove all of the actress’s makeup. Luckily, Tilda was only involved in two days of shooting. However, the result was amazing, isn’t it?

Brie Larson complained that her costume was extremely uncomfortable. And alone she could not put it on. So every time, two assistants came to help her and it took 30 minutes just to pull and fit the superhero costume on the actress. Under these circumstances, going to the bathroom was real torture: Brie had to be accompanied by five people.

The actor has dark brown eyes, so he had to wear blue lenses to play the famous elf archer Legolas. However, Bloom hated wearing contact lenses, as they irritated his eyes a lot and constantly fell out. When the actor returned to play the elf in the trilogy The Hobbit, Katy Perry’s husband adamantly refused to wear lenses again, so his eyes were simply colored with CGI effects.

Filming started at 7:00 am, but Helena Bonham Carter had to get up at 2:00—3:00 in the morning, as the actress’s make-up process took about four hours. “It was hard to bear and by the end of shooting my nerves were on edge,” shared the star about her experience.

And it was still quite difficult to eat and drink, Helena needed to use a makeup mirror to know exactly where her mouth was under the mask so as not to ruin the whole production. And to make matters worse, acting with the costume wasn’t easy either, as the dense makeup and rubber on her face hindered the actress’s facial expressions. And because of the huge monkey ears, she could barely hear her co-stars.

The team of makeup artists spent about an hour and a half to place the prosthesis on Christina Ricci’s nose. During all this time, the actress could not move her mouth and still had to press the prosthesis against her face. Only then did they fix their hair and do their makeup. It turned out pretty natural, don’t you think?

Oldman’s iconic transformation into the Prime Minister of Great Britain took nearly four hours. In addition to complex makeup, the actor also wore a special prosthesis that he wore like a Victorian corset. Gary Oldman thought he couldn’t handle such a heavy routine: he used all the equipment for about 18-20 hours a day, for 48 consecutive days. He was also afraid that his skin wouldn’t withstand whatever was being applied to it.

If you’re interested in learning more about how the production team worked on the Oscar-winning makeup, watch this video🇧🇷

It wasn’t the first time the actor wore uncomfortable costumes. During the recordings of Tron: The Legacy, Sheen had to wear a corset and huge heels. However, vampire lenses were much worse. Michael shared that they covered the entire surface of the eye as they were much larger than usual. So the process of putting them on was real torture. First, assistants lifted the artist’s upper eyelid and partially inserted the lens. Then the same was done with the lower eyelid. Finally, he still had to tinker to adjust the position of the lenses.

Sheen had to use eye drops daily and deal with a constant headache as his peripheral vision was compromised by the lenses.

Costumes don’t always bring only physical discomfort. Sometimes actors also suffer emotional trauma. For example, Paltrow experienced firsthand what overweight people feel, and she didn’t like it: “The first day I tried on the costume, I was at the Tribeca Grand Hotel and I walked into the lobby. It was very sad. It was so upsetting. People ignored me for being obese. For some reason, the clothes they make for overweight women are awful. I felt humiliated because people were really derogatory.”

As the events took place in the United States of the 1960s, the actress always wore a corset under her dresses. In one of the interviews, she told how it affected her: “The corset hurt me. In the series, we talk so fast, there’s almost no time to breathe. I guess I wasn’t breathing enough, so some of my ribs pulled together a little. And now I can’t take a deep breath.”

Transforming the brothers into twin sisters proved to be a daunting task, both for the makeup team and the actors themselves. At first, the whole process took seven hours a day, but the team managed to reduce it to five: “We did this for 60 days, it was exhausting. If we ate or drank anything, the makeup had to be touched up immediately. I couldn’t even take a nap between makeup application and filming.”

If you were a Hollywood star, would you agree to act with heavy makeup and uncomfortable costumes? Or would you prefer as much naturalness as possible? Tell us in the comments section.