updated: 18/09/2006
Over 7000 images of actresses whose looks have been transformed by prosthetic or other makeup effects taken from some 600 movies and TV shows. In most cases there are both before and after images and whereever possible I have included images of the makeup process.
As far as this site is concerned, it’s makeup if it’s painted onto or stuck on to an actress’s skin. You might find the occasional body-suit (eg fat makeups) or animatronic effect but they’re not the focus of the site. Having said that I’m well aware that some effects are achieved by a combination of makeup, body-suits, animatronics and CGI effects: so sometimes I’ll illustrate different aspects of how an effect or transformation was achieved. In the disguises section you’ll also find a whole sub-section devoted to the mask trick: an effect akin to conjuring which attempts to make you believe that you’ve seen a makeup effect where there (often) was none.
I’ve put a lot of thought into this: there is no single easy or fast option to trawl through a 120MB website (when I last counted, there were more than 1000 HTML files and more than 7000 images) I’ve come up with a number of options: take the route that works for you
If this is your first visit, take a quick dip by looking at my favourites. If you are a returning visitor, the images from the last couple of months are clickable from the listings in the updates page.
The actress index lists all the actresses featured and the movies from which the images are taken. To compliment there is a makeup artist index to enable you to find work by individual artists: but the credits are problematic and by no means all the makeups featured are listed..
Visit one of the sub-sections of the site to view a particular type of makeup (eg aliens in Sci-fi movies or young actresses made-up to look old) and browse the thumbnails to select individual movies.
A number of reasons. But mainly I am trying to provide the best use of browser space within the constraints of a typical 800x600 screen – yeah I know that most people have now moved on to 1024x768 or bigger but it doesn’t mean they want to use their browser full-screen. There’s not a lot of point having bigger (and slower) images if you can neither see at least the greater part of the image on screen nor print it on a normal printer.
The answer is that I’d probably love to. Barney Burman has criticised me for ignoring Kate Biscoe, Wes Woford and Steve Prouty among others. The difficulty is sometimes one of credit which is especially difficult on movies like The Grinch (I’ve got a set of female Whos but I don’t know which makeup artists worked on them). Sometimes it’s getting hold of images: if you’re a makeup artist who thinks your work from a movie or TV programme ought to be here and isn’t please email me. I’m really grateful for comments and offers of images from Barney Burman, Jamie Kelman, Dick Smith, Doug Morrow, Neill Gorton and DDT Efectos Especiales amongst others.
It could be one of three reasons. Firstly some things are very rarely shown (eg I hadn’t seen Homicidal in over 15 years before it was shown recently). Secondly, I may not be aware of it: email me and I’ll look out for it. Finally, I’ve got an enormous backlog of around 65,000 images from movies or TV programmes, where I have captured the raw images but have not yet processed the JPGs or cut the HTML (I have money to earn, kids to play with and a life beyond this website).
I try to but attribution is by no means easy. Steve Johnson once commented that if they remade The Exorcist today they’d probably get him to design Regan, Dick Smith to age Father Merrin and Stan Winston to do the spinning head gag: and those effects houses employee a floating pool of freelancers. On TV many credits are incomplete (eg when did you see Shermanlabs credited?). I tremble at putting a name against a particular makeup that I’ve featured.
The short answer is that they don’t interest me a whole lot. What I’m fascinated by is that movie magic whereby a makeup artist (yeah and the hairdresser and the costume dept) helps an actress transform herself into a very different character.
Well it’s been said that all makeups represent compromises between time, cost and quality and you can’t have it all: hence TV makeups have tended not to be as good as movie makeups because the time and cost pressures are greater.
But I think there are two other factors that have great potential to screw up a makeup. Firstly, the studio. the director or the star may have other ideas (eg the studio reportedly wanted Helena Bonham Carter to look more attractive in Planet of the Apes; the director rejected Dick Smith’s makeup for Karen Black in Burnt Offerings; and Lori Singer reportedly had problems with Carl Fullerton’s makeup for her in Warlock): not to mention decisions on lighting etc. Secondly, change: eg a makeup is designed and costed for a quick moving middle distance shot in a ill-lit room and the director says Hey that was great now let’s to a closeup and get some more light on her so we can see her expression: or like in Highlander the makeup is all designed, the moulds made etc and then a different actress shows up on set.
Probably yes. I have got a wants list but it’s only a fraction of what I’m
looking for. I’m really grateful for the contributions I’ve had from
friends all round the world. I’ll happily receive images or tapes (and
I will return the latter). If you do want to send me images, please
Most of the images on the site are my own captures or scans. The captures are mainly from first generation tapes of movies shown on various UK terrestrial or satellite channels or from free-to-air European satellite channels: some but not many come from retail or rental tapes. The scans come from a variety of movie/movie-making magazines that I have collected over the years: I find Cinefantastique, Cinefex, and Make-up Artist Magazine to be particularly fruitful sources.
I try not to use images from other Websites except for the before images which are often from one of the actress’s fan sites. I do not use any images from makeup artists’ websites or from how-to videos produced by makeup artists though I do use images generously supplied by some makeup artists (eg Neill Gorton, Charles Porlier & others).
I love movies and I got fascinated by how do they do that after seeing The List of Adrian Messenger and Kind Hearts and Coronets when I was a kid.
Sorry, I’m not the one to ask: I’m not a makeup artist. There’s a lot of makeup artist sites around now and some of them answer this question. Michael Key at Make-up Artist Magazine has the best standard answer that I’ve seen.
After being chosen as a Yahoo Pick in January 2003 daily page-views went up from about 6000 a day to a peak of 55,000 a day. In the last twelve months the site has had a million visits.
Sorry, I’m not a makeup artist and I can’t give you advice how to achieve a particular makeup effect well or safely.
I’m happy for anyone to download the images for their own use. I’m also happy if you want to repost some images (like fair use quotes in a review) elsewhere provided only that you cite the source and provide a link back to this site: though apart from posting a sample image I don’t see the point as they are already publicly available. I do think it is discourteous present images that someone else has laboured over as your own.
I want the site to be accessible so I try not to use browser specific code unless (like stylesheets) this is transparent to non-compliant browsers. Having said that the browser war is over (Netscape lost) so if it comes to a choice between doing something that works better in Internet Explorer or in Navigator I’d take the IE route (eg I used to use embedded stylesheets to maximise compatibilty with Netscape but it just got to be too much of a pain to manage so I’m moving to a single linked stylesheet).
The site should work with most recent versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer which account for 90% of visitors: it looks a bit odd in Netscape 6 but seems to work. It may or may not work with other or earlier browsers: I haven’t tested for things like Opera on Linux (Yeah, I know that it’s a great browser but it accounts for less than 1% of my visitors and this is a hobby and anyway if it’s as CSS1 compliant as it boasts then it will work.
As to screen resolution: it works with everything from 640x480 (full screen) up but it’s best viewed at 800x600 or higher.
A lot of the early images were captured using a $50 Hauppauge WinTV card but now I mostly use DVD captures using PowerRVD 7. I still have a Leadtek Winfast 2000 Expert PVR for occasional video captures. For scans I use an Epson 3490 scanner.
I mostly manage my images using Photo Mechanic but I also use Canto Cumulus. I process the images in Adobe Photoshop CS2, and save the images as JPGs using Boxsoft’s ProJPEG plugin. I aim to get 246x300 pixel images to about 7KB and the large 503x610 pixel images to around 25KB.
I started building this site on a 266MHz Pentium II with 128MB RAM and 20GB hard disk space: some five PCs later I’m now using an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with 2GB of RAM and 1400GB of hard disks and Windows XP Professional. My backup system is an Athlon 3200 with 1GB RAM. After reinstalling data from CDrs after a crash, I now backup to DVD-R.
In its original incarnation the site was built using SoftQuad’s HotMetal Pro5, but I now use Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 which is the best and what I use for my day-job of designing websites.
No it’s not an adult site. There’s no sex or violence so it should be suitable for anyone though there may be a few scary monsters in the undergrowth of the House of Horrors.
However, there is some nudity where this is essential to show the makeup. Mostly, but not always, this will be simulated rather than actual nudity (eg fake prosthetic breasts) but not always. There are a few, very few, makeups that can only be illustrated by full-frontal nudity, including actresses portraying pre-op MTF transsexuals. Wherever actual or simulated nudity occurs I will endeavour to ensure that on clicking on the link to that sub-section/page an advisory popup dialog will appear, giving you the option to cancel.
I can’t guarantee that the links are all child friendly.
This site is not sponsored by or connected with any of the makeup artists or actresses featured. I’m happy to know a few of the actresses and makeup artists featured here but I do not give out personal email addresses – if they want their email addresses to be publicly available then they will have published them on an official website (see the makeup artist listing for links to official websites where available).
Oh yes one other thing. I thought it was patently obvious that I am not Cynthia Koh, Jennifer Saunders, or anyone else featured here. But the slow stream of adoring, obsence and plain pathetic emails intended for various of the actresses seems to indicate that computer literacy is no guarantee of the existence of intelligence. In the faint hope that some these poor souls might actually read this: I am not the object of your obsession or admiration: I do not want a love letter from you: I will not forward it.