Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock in 'Hitchcock.'(Photo: Suzanne Tenner, Fox Searchlight)
Hold the foie gras. Transforming the slim Anthony Hopkins into the
great, and overweight "Hitch," as friends called the masterful director,
was no easy task.
"I think the biggest challenge was finding the
right combination of Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Hopkins," says Academy
Award-winning makeup artist Howard Berger. "We knew from the get-go, we
didn't want to completely cover and disguise Tony." Berger did six
makeup tests with Hopkins before shooting, experimenting with jowls,
dentures, lip pieces and "this piece that kind of softened his own
wrinkles at the ridge of his nose." As Hopkins became more comfortable
with the character, "slowly we started to strip things away."
The
end result, Berger says, is a "portrait" of Hitchcock on Hopkins. The
ultimate transformation took up to two hours a day, as Berger carefully
applied prosthetic jowl and neck pieces to Hopkins, who also donned a
lightweight paunchy bodysuit and brown contact lenses. To save time,
Hopkins shaved a patch of hair at the back of his head to replicate the
director's hair pattern.
On set, the extent to which Hopkins channeled Hitch in his crisp black suit was eerie to behold.
USA Today