25 actors who looked unrecognizable in their roles

"Saturday Night Live" alum Eddie Murphy is recognizable when he's playing 1988's "Coming to America's" protagonist, pampered African prince Akeem. However, Murphy also portrays three other roles with the help of "Thriller" makeup artist Rick Baker: wise-talking barber Clarence, Prince-esque rocker Randy Watson, and an elderly Jewish man named Saul, a character that director John Landis said was a subversion of Jewish performers like Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson performing in Blackface.

Academy Award-winning actor Cate Blanchett put her own spin on portraying an iconic rock-and-roller in the unconventional 2007 biopic "I'm Not There." One of six actors to portray Bob Dylan throughout his life, Blanchett played Jude Quinn, who was a personality of Dylan between 1965 and 1966. Donning a wig reminiscent of trademark tousled curls, the actor said a friend's advice to put a sock down her pants to play a man helped her get into character.

In "The Elephant Man," one of David Lynch's most memorable 1980s films, John Hurt portrayed a real-life figure forced into circus work due to facial deformities. To embody Joseph Merrick—a man forced into performing in a freak show who is now thought to have lived with a combination of Proteus syndrome and neurofibromatosis—Hurt literally donned a costume fashioned from the plaster cast of the "Elephant Man's" real-life body.

As a result of working with prosthetics so closely associated with the real man, producer Jonathan Sanger later told iNews that "we really felt a deep connection to the character, much more than you would normally do in making a movie."

To play welfare caseworker Ms. Weiss in the 2009 Oscar-nominated film "Precious," Mariah Carey went makeup-free, sported lank hair, wore rayon sweaters, and—most memorably—donned a faux sparse mustache applied to her upper lip.

"I had to lose all vanity," Carey told The Los Angeles Times. "I had to change my demeanor, my inside, layers of who I am, to become that woman."

Michael Fontaine, Naomi Donne, and Mike Marino received an Oscar nomination for achievement in makeup and hairstyling for their work transforming Colin Farrell into Gotham crime boss the Penguin for the 2022 movie "The Batman." To embody the role, Farrell went through a three-hour process involving silicone and a 10-pound suit designed to evoke old-school gangsters and the likeness of real-life penguins. Later, Farrell got back into costume to star in the critically acclaimed 2024 Max crime drama "The Penguin." He even won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film in January 2025.

Colin Farrell isn't the first actor to transform to play the notorious superhero villain Penguin. Inspired by "Batman Returns" director Tim Burton's penchant for Gothic visuals, Danny DeVito's Penguin sported an exaggerated nose (inspired by makeup effects artist Stan Winston's previous work on "The Wiz"), glued-down eyebrows, false teeth marred by red and green food coloring, and a greasy hairpiece. When the Penguin's flippers were exposed in the 1992 film, DeVito donned flesh-colored latex appendages.

Halle Berry plays a whopping six different characters in the Wachowskis' 2012 sci-fi epic "Cloud Atlas," from a white aristocratic woman in the '30s at a party to an elderly Korean doctor in 2144 and a futuristic human with wires poking through her hair and face in 2346.

The actor brought these characters to life with the help of hair and makeup artists Daniel Parker and Jeremy Woodhead, undergoing upwards of eight hours of makeup application to disappear into the roles. However, her casting as a Korean man has received pushback as an example of yellowface.

Gary Oldman is utterly unrecognizable as Mason Verger, the quadriplegic, facially disfigured nemesis of Hannibal Lector in Ridley Scott's 2001 film "Hannibal." It took five hours per day for makeup pro Greg Cannom and his team to transform the actor into Verger with recently invented translucent silicone, prosthetics, and makeup.

Frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Tilda Swinton became an old woman seeking first-class treatment in 2014's "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Mark Coulier used silicone rubber to turn Swinton into the 84-year-old Madam D, and Anderson himself chimed in during the process, requesting that Swinton's character sport more liver spots.

In the 2004 gender-swapping comedy "White Chicks," the Wayans donned foam latex, acrylic paint, wigs, and contact lenses to play FBI agents who transform from Black men into blonde, white women in order to investigate a case. The contacts were so painful, Shawn once said that "they should be the s*** that they use… to get information out of al-Qaeda." According to makeup specialist Greg Cannom, the process took up to seven hours per day.

In addition to being an Old Hollywood star, Lon Cheney was also a pioneer of early cinematic special effects makeup. In order to play the titular disfigured character at the center of 1925's "Phantom of the Opera," the actor raised the contours of his cheeks with cotton and collodion, flattened his ears to his head, and attached prongs to a pair of rotting, false teeth.

For his role in "Chapter 27," notorious method actor Jared Leto gained 67 pounds to better resemble killer Mark David Chapman's physique, and by the end of filming, was unable to walk to set on his own.

Although Leto later admitted doing so perhaps wasn't "the wisest choice," he told The Los Angeles Times that he chose to gain the weight for the 2007 film because "as I started to research, I realized that the physical representation of this guy had so much to do with who he was."

According to VFX supervisor Steven Begg, turning Benicio del Toro into the titular werewolf at the center of the 2010 film "The Wolfman" required a combination of CGI and practical effects makeup designed by Rick Baker and David Elsey. Although Begg maintains that the full werewolf look was "90 percent costume prosthetics," some wide shots required the VFX team to "replace human legs with dog legs."

British actor Helena Bonham Carter went through a four-hour process to be turned into a talking chimpanzee for the 2001 movie "Planet of the Apes." She once called the experience of applying fake teeth, fake ears, and rubber furry hands "cumbersome and crippling," but later admitted that these physical acting limitations helped her learn to use her voice alone to the "greatest extent possible" to convey her character's emotions.

In order to play the titular character's wife in the 1999 cult-favorite comedy "Being John Malkovich," Cameron Diaz donned a frizzy brown wig and brown contacts so convincing that some crew members didn't recognize her on set. She later received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the beloved Spike Jonze film.

To turn Al Pacino into the eponymous gangster of the live-action "Dick Tracy" film, makeup artists Doug Drexler and John Caglione first made an impression of the actor's face, before smearing gelatinous dental alginate on the molds to create a "life mask" capturing every detail of his face. Then, they created foam rubber prosthetics to give him a bowlike upper lip, long nose, and cleft chin. Caglione told Pop Geeks that although they designed molds for hundreds of prosthetics for the 1990 film, Pacino was the only actor who wanted to be involved in creating his character's look.

Billy Crystal briefly appears in 1987's "The Princess Bride" as old healer Miracle Max, who helps the story's heroes when the swashbuckling Westley (Cary Elwes) is on the edge of death. The actor worked with makeup artist Peter Montagna—who he'd previously collaborated with on "Saturday Night Live"—to create the character, using reference photos of both his own grandmother and New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel.

Even if you catch Glenn Close's blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo as the pirate Gutless in "Hook," you probably won't realize it's her without learning this piece of trivia beforehand. In the 1991 Steven Spielberg family film, the actor sports a thoroughly convincing beard as the character, who Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman) sends to the dreaded "boo box" for his lack of faith in the villain.

Eric Stoltz had his breakout role in "Mask" playing real-life California teen Rocky Dennis, who had facial deformities caused by craniodiaphyseal dysplasia. In order to create the effect on Stoltz's face for the 1985 coming-of-age film, makeup designer Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis created a "mask" made up of three pieces of foam latex, which he then combined with fake dentures and makeup on the actor. "Mask" went on to win the 1986 Oscar for Best Makeup Design.

Because "Harry Potter" child actors like Daniel Radcliffe were only allowed to film for a set amount of hours each day, makeup artist Mark Coulier and his team had to cut Ralph Fiennes' Voldemort transformation process down to two hours per day. To create the effect, Coulier used eyebrow blockers on Fiennes' face, created spidery veins with temporary tattoos, and applied fake nails and teeth. However, the villain's iconic snakelike nose had to be digitally rendered later by the special effects team.

No stranger to shape-shifting for performances, Christian Bale gained 40 pounds and donned a few prosthetics to play Dick Cheney in Adam McKay's 2018 political dramedy "Vice." As for the technique he used? The actor told Variety, "I'm just eating a lot of pies."

In "Star Trek Beyond," Idris Elba plays a warlord named Krall, who starts off as a human before attempting to drain alien prisoners' genetic material to extend his life. The process doesn't work as intended, and Krall eventually becomes a mutated alien creature. This necessitated a number of different prosthetics and makeup looks drawn from aliens, which were inspired by deep sea life and lizards. According to makeup team Joel Harlow and Richard Alonzo, applying his character's look took two hours each day.

To become Virginia Woolf in 2002's "The Hours," Nicole Kidman spent three hours each day in the makeup chair, much of which was dedicated to applying a large prosthetic nose reminiscent of the real-life author's.

"I did enjoy being anonymous," the actor told the SFGATE in 2002. "It was fun to be able to go out of my trailer and not have anyone know me."

Rooney Mara sported tattoos and piercings to portray the lead character in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." To become antisocial hacker Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's 2011 film, Mara also worked out constantly and stuck to a strict diet. However, she told Entertainment Weekly that the most difficult part of the transformation for her was bleaching her eyebrows.

Michael Keaton's turn as the mischievous spirit Beetlejuice is one of his most memorable roles, and Academy Award-winning makeup artist Ve Neill played a large role in designing his unforgettable look in the original 1988 movie. As she told Yahoo News, Neill glued prosthetic swollen lips to Keaton's nose to create a makeshift broken nose, painted his skin with an "almost white" shade of yellow, and dyed his character's wig lime green. To top it off, she added crushed moss-like green foam from model kits to Beetlejuice's hair so he would look "like he crawled out from underneath a rock." Neill, Steve LaPorte, and Robert Short won the Oscar for Best Makeup at the 61st Oscars. 

In 2024, Keaton returned to the makeup chair for the long-awaited sequel "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." Though technology has advanced in the nearly four decades since the first film came out, 85% to 90% of the hair and makeup department's work was digitally untouched in the sequel's final version. The biggest challenge, they said, was ensuring Beetlejuice hadn't aged; the team managed to get the transformation down to 35 minutes.