Who Did The Makeup For Batman

Matt Reeves never meant for Colin Farrell to look unrecognizable in "The Batman."

In the finished picture show, Farrell's appearance is utterly obliterated in the role of Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot, the scarred and dumpy mid-level Gotham City gangster with the (unwelcome) nickname of "the Penguin." But when the 55-year-old director — who co-wrote "The Batman" with Peter Craig — first approached Farrell for the role, he was focused on Farrell's ability to bring dust and sensitivity in the same performance.

"He could take that mix of being incredibly, incredibly scary and volatile, and then all of a sudden, you lot'd see this vulnerable side that actually made y'all feel for that guy," Reeves tells Variety. "And so I really wanted him to play the character."

When they met, yet, Reeves noticed that Farrell had recently gained weight for a different picture, which fit into his conception of the longstanding Batman villain every bit a mobster akin to John Cazale's Fredo in "The Godfather" films.

"I thought John Cazale has a kind of Penguin nose," Reeves says. "I thought, well, perchance at that place'due south something visually that nosotros do."

Reeves turned to prosthetic makeup creative person Michael Marino (recently Oscar-nominated for his makeup piece of work in "Coming 2 America") to design a await for Farrell's Penguin. Reeves cited Cazale, Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hoskins as potential inspirations. "I saw him as being well-nigh like a throwback Warner Bros. gangster," he says.

Simply then Farrell told Reeves that he didn't feel good for you carrying the extra weight and needed to lose it, which Reeves relayed to Marino. "So Mike factored that all in," Reeves says. "And one solar day he showed me this sculpture on a caput cast of Colin. It's the character you see [in the flick]. And I was like, Expect, what?"

Reeves laughs. "I could not believe what I was seeing," he says. He was securely impressed with Marino'due south work, but he had conceived his film as grounded in reality. "I said, 'We are dead in the water if I permit yous do this and anyone says, "Oh, I tin can see that that's makeup." That will ruin everything.'"

Lazy loaded image — Colin Farrell in "The Batman" Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Marino bodacious Reeves that not merely would Farrell have access to a total range of expression under the makeup, but the illusion would feel totally existent. "He said, 'Matt, I promise yous, when he walks on the set — not simply when you film information technology only when he walks on the fix — people will think, "Who is this guy?"'"

Still, Reeves was skeptical. He showed Farrell what Marino had washed. "Colin got actually excited," Reeves says. "And I was like, 'Okay, I guess we're doing this.' I couldn't believe we were taking that jump." Reeves was nonetheless prepared to strip away the makeup every bit Marino and Farrell did tests in New York, only the video he got back finally convinced him to stick with Marino's full blueprint.

"What it did to Colin was astonishing," he says. "I was like, Who is that guy? And Colin was then funny. He was already talking in the voice that he uses in the motion-picture show. It was non the intention to rent Colin so he could await like that. Information technology was ane of the things that the evolution of what we did took us to that."

Makeup artist Naomi Donne is no stranger to Marino's piece of work — the two have collaborated before — but this transformation too blew her away. "Mike went off and designed this character based on lots of unlike faces," she says. "I don't recall I've ever stood in front of someone in makeup similar that and forgotten information technology was makeup. I believed that makeup completely."

She adds their goal was non to brand any character comical, rather but emphasize that these were real people. "[Colin] went to Starbucks or something, and y'all wouldn't call back it was this human because the makeup is just incredible and his teeth were incredible. That was the difference between this and other 'Batman' movies. This looked real."

Thanks to the COVID safety protocols and the three hours it took each day to transform Farrell into Cobblepot, Reeves never saw Farrell out of makeup while making the movie. "On the last twenty-four hour period that Colin shot, I was really sad," he says. "Because, honestly, I got to know Colin a little flake during prep. Just the person I knew was Colin looked like Oz. Information technology's and so weird. I dearest Colin. Just that guy Oz, I know that guy. That was the guy I saw every day."

When it came to Batman himself, Reeves and Robert Pattinson modeled the crime-fighter's look on Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.

"There was the idea that he would be in his bat suit and painted his optics black to merge his look, just when he took it off, he never washed information technology off properly and it gave him this slightly haunted look," says Donne.

The smudged kohl pencil wait required a mix of products that would sustain Pattinson sweating in the adapt and performing in the rain. "We mixed pigments with various liquid products," Donne explains. "We painted eyeliner on a lot of different products, merely we had to take intendance of the peel effectually his eyes." Since she was applying products to concluding the long shoot days, getting the product off effectually his eyes was no easy task either.

Hairstylist Zoe Tahir worked on Pattinson's Bruce Wayne hair: that longish, side-parted look. "That's what she was creating, with hair that hung over his eyes and [him peering] out through it, this Kurt-inspired look," says Donne. "It was a risky thing to do for that character, but it went with the eye makeup, the persona we were trying to create and what Robert was trying to create with the character."