The films nominated for Makeup & Hair this year were unusually linked by their biographical storytelling. Sewell drew on the mass of archive footage, from photographs to videos, to recreate Queen’s iconic 80s looks, whereas Stacey had to take a different approach to capture the looks of The Favourite’s 18th century women. In her role, the makeup was more about capturing the era than specific people: “For me it was lots of paintings, we looked at lots of paintings and visited the palaces, that kind of thing, to get an essence of that look. Yorgos [Lanthimos, director of The Favourite], didn’t want to stick to anything too rigidly, so, I mean I’ve said this so many times but I feel like we researched that period a lot to make you believe you’re in that world, but I could be a bit freer with that really.”
Cannom and Gallagher worked with prosthetics to transform Christian Bale into Vice President Dick Chaney. While they aimed to portray the real figure as closely as possible, they also had to accept that getting a 100% isn’t possible, and shouldn’t be expected. Cannom explains: “When you’re doing famous people, like Lois Burwell said when she was doing Lincoln ‘at some point you have to stop looking at the actual photographs and you’ve just got to use your imagination and get it close.’ Because you’ll never get it exact, you’ve just got to take a lot of licence in doing it right and getting it to where it works.”
Sewell echoes this, sharing how the actor’s portrayal of the real person will heighten the makeup: “It’s getting the essence, isn’t it. If you try to make someone look exactly the same: well you can’t… And then you’ve got to let your actors do the rest.”
