Dyeing for Your Art: Difference between revisions

There are limitations to what can be done with stage makeup and padding. When performers make real changes to their physical appearance for a part, such that they look different in the mirror in the morning, that's commitment. That's '''Dyeing for Your Art'''.

 

 

Often overlaps with [[Oscar Bait]] nowadays. When the casting directors opt to have the actors focus on their performance instead of the character's appearance it's [[Ability Over Appearance]].

 

== Film ==

==== Hair change ====

* Bob Geldof actually shaved his own eyebrows off when playing Pink in the movie ''[[The Wall]]''.

* [[Charlize Theron]] died her hair black in order to play the title character in ''[[Aeon Flux]]''

* Gene Hackman was tricked into shaving his mustache to play [[Lex Luthor]] in ''[[Superman (film)|Superman]]''. Director Richard Donner had had a moustache shortly before he went to see Hackman about the part. Hackman didn't know he had shaved it off already, so Donner wore a false moustache that the makeup department made up for him. When he saw Gene, he told him that if he shaved off his moustache then he would shave off his own. So, Gene Hackman shaved off his moustache right in front of Donner and then said "Your turn" whereupon Donner pulled off his fake. Hackman was most displeased but, fortunately for Richard Donner, is quite undisposed to violence. On the other hand, Hackman flat out refused to shave his head to play the [[Bald of Evil|famously bald]] Luthor. Instead, he came up with the [[Running Gag]] of Luthor wearing a different wig in every scene (and wearing a bald wig when he's arrested).

* Gretchen Mol, a blonde, played the title role in ''[[The Notorious Bettie Page]]''. Page was a brunette. Whether Mol dyed her hair or wore a wig on her head is not known, but in a couple of brief nude scenes, the hair in her lower regions was definitely brunette. You may draw your own conclusions.

* [[Jennifer Connelly]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110908062937/http://justjared.buzznet.com/2009/11/13/jennifer-connelly-goes-blonde/ dyed her usually raven hair blonde] for the film ''Whats Wrong With Virginia''.

* Jerome "Curly" Howard of [[The Three Stooges]] shaved his head and his thick moustache specifically for his Stooge character when he joined the act.

* [[Johnny Depp]], in [[The Movie]] of ''[[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas]]'' cut his hair to resemble his character's male pattern baldness. For added authenticity, Hunter S. Thompson personally shaved Depp's head. With a [[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (film)|straight razor]]. [[Cloudcuckoolander|While wearing a miner's headlamp.]]

* Mikael Persbrandt, a swedish actor, has lost more than 30 pounds and buffed up noticeably for his role as the title character in Hamilton.

* [[Naomi Watts]], while she's naturally blonde, dyed her hair brunette for ''[[The Painted Veil]]''. And that's the least of it.

* [[Mel Gibson]] waxed part of his leg on camera for a shot in ''[[What Women Want]]''.

* Pete O'Hern grew a beard for the [[Peter Jackson]] film ''[[Bad Taste]]''. Unfortunately for him, the film's low budget caused it to be filmed over four years, requiring him to keep the beard the whole time.

* Rhiana Griffith shaved her head to play Jack in ''[[Pitch Black]]''

* [[Steve Carell]]'s body-waxing scene in ''[[The 40-Year-Old Virgin]]'' was authentic. The results of the waxing are relevant to later scenes in the movie, so Carell had to have kept his chest hair in that condition for a while.

* [[Steve Martin]] has been iconically silver-haired since the 1970s, but has dyed it darker for very few films including ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'' and ''[[Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid]].''

* [[Tom Cruise]] did it at least twice. He dyed his hair blond for ''[[Interview With a Vampire]]'' because [[Anne Rice]] (who wrote the novel) insisted that Lestat should be played by a blond actor. He also dyed his hair for the film ''[[Collateral]]''.

* [[Robin Williams]]:

* Yul Brynner shaved his head for ''The King and I'', and (like Telly Savalas) didn't grow it back.

* [[Zachary Quinto]] shaved off most of his normally formidable eyebrows to play the role of Spock in ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]''. Also, his Spock bowl-cut was real.

* ''[[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra]]'':

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' Prequels:

** [[Ray Park]] shaved his head to play Darth Maul in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]''.

* Having your hair cut off is one thing but Vanessa Hudgens took this a step further by chopping of her own hair herself for the film ''Gimme Shelter''.

* Taylor Kitsch cut off his shoulder length hair in order to play a US Naval officer in the upcoming ''Battleship.''

* [[Joseph Gordon-Levitt]] gave himself a buzz cut onscreen to play a cancer patient in ''[[50/50]]''.

* Works for horses, too. For ''[[The Black Stallion]],'' the production team needed a solid black Arabian stallion. Instead, they found Cass Ole, who had a star and socks. Therefore, out came the dye.

* One of the director/producers of ''[[Airplane!]]'' tells the story of being pretty much a punk kid at the time the movie was made, and hesitantly approaching Robert Stack and asking if just possibly the actor would be willing to die his hair for the movie. Stack laughed and made a comment to the effect "Don't worry about it, kid, when you bought me, you bought the package."

 

==== Weight change ====

* [[Aishwarya Rai]] had to gain weight for her role in ''Guru''. She then lost 22 pounds ''in three days'' for her role in ''[[Dhoom]] 2''.

* Benicio del Toro, for [[The Movie]] of ''[[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas]],'' gained enough weight to become practically unrecognizable.

* Bradley Cooper put on about 25 pounds so he could look like he could convincingly tackle and injure Vince Vaughn in ''[[Wedding Crashers]]''.

* [[Christian Bale]] already had to buff up a lot for his role in ''[[American Psycho]]''. A few years later he lost 63 pounds to appear in ''[[The Machinist]]'' (2004), making him unhealthily underweight. (He actually shot for the exact weight of the character in the script, even as the director and the producers told him he was skinny enough.) He then gained 40 pounds above his ''normal'' weight to play [[Batman]] in ''[[Batman Begins]]'' (2005). Then he lost 20 pounds of that. Later, he again became underweight to play an inmate in a [[Vietnam War]] prisoner camp in ''Rescue Dawn''. Then he bulked up again to play Batman for the second time in ''[[The Dark Knight]]''. Then he went skeletal again to play a crack addict in ''[[The Fighter]]'' (2010). Let's just say Bale's refined Dyeing for Your Art to an art form itself.

* [[Daniel Craig]] buffed up, gaining 20 lbs of muscle to play [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] in ''[[Casino Royale]]''. However, he did refuse to actually [[Dye For His Art]] for Bond. He wouldn't dye his blonde hair to fit better with earlier screen Bond's darker hair colors.

** [[Noomi Rapace]] (the actress who played Salander in the original Swedish films) deserves mention also. In addition to performing image alteration similar to Mara's,<ref>she trained relentlessly to become thin and wiry, dyed and chopped her hair, got pierced etc.</ref> Rapace took up smoking for real during filming <ref>smoking convincingly is actually quite difficult for non-smokers to emulate, and she wanted to get it perfect</ref> and took to dressing and acting "in-character" even when not on camera...to the point where family and friends began to worry as to her sanity. There's a very good reason she refused to do the role again for the American remake.

* Averted in ''[[Once Upon a Time in the West]]''. Henry Fonda, [[Cast Against Type]] as the [[Complete Monster]] Frank, initally wanted to drastically change his usual appearance by growing a beard and wearing brown contacts. Sergio Leone told him not to do it, as the shock of seeing Fonda as such a character was exactly why he hired him, and it would work best if he looked like he usually did.

* ''[[Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story]]'': To play [[Bruce Lee]], Jason Scott Lee (no relation) trained with Jerry Poteet, who was a student of the real Lee.

* The whole cast of ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'' had to suffer with long shooting schedules and the hot lights required for early Technicolor. But three in particularly were fit most for the trope due to heavy make-up: Margaret Hamilton (could not eat and remained on a liquid diet, the copper-based Wicked Witch make-up got burned by malfunctioning pyrotechnics), Bert Lahr (had the liquid diet before he decided to get his make-up redone everyday, the Cowardly Lion suit made of real lion skin made him sweat profusely) and Jack Haley (the Tin Man suit was so stiff that he had to lean against a board to rest; the make-up needed some changes as it previously caused [[The Other Marty|the actor Haley replaced]] to get hospitalized).

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* Bryan Cranston shaved his own head on camera for ''[[Breaking Bad]]'', though the scene was cut out.

* ''[[Castle]]'' has an in-universe example with Natalie Rhodes. In order to be closer to Beckett's style (since Nikki Heat was based on her), she dyed her hair from blonde to brunette.

* In ''[[Sherlock]]'', both [[Benedict Cumberbatch]] (as Sherlock Holmes) and [[Mark Gatiss]] (as Mycroft Holmes) dye their hair black. They're both naturally ginger.

* In the Granada ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' series, David Burke, the first Dr. Watson, dyed his grey hair and mustache auburn to make himself look much younger.

 

==== Weight change/Other ====

* Kiefer Sutherland got a real tattoo for ''[[24]]''. In one season, Jack Bauer gets a gang tattoo. In order to avoid hours of makeup every time, Sutherland just got the real thing done.

* [[Margaret Cho]], shooting her short-lived sitcom ''[[All American Girl]]'', was forced to lose weight [[Hollywood Pudgy|to]] play [[Reality Is Unrealistic|herself.]] She lost 30 pounds in three weeks and her kidneys collapsed as a result.

* Tim McInnerny, in the fourth series of ''[[Blackadder]]'', gave his character Darling an eye twitch that became a real tic over the repeated takes. He didn't lose it until months after the series ended.

* Tom Fontana, series creator of the prison drama ''[[Oz]]'', volunteered to be the man receiving an upper-arm tattoo of the show's logo. He even asked for the tattooing to be re-shot so as to get it perfect, but the tattoo artist refused, claiming if he applied the needle any longer, Fontana might die.

** In the same series, Edward James Olmos wore blue contact lenses and Jamie Bamber dyed his dark blond hair brown, so that they would look more like father and son.

** Jamie Bamber dyes his hair brown for many of his roles.

 

== Music ==

* Gerard Way of [[My Chemical Romance]] bleached his hair white to portray a dying cancer patient in the black parade era. This temporarily made him a [[White-Haired Pretty Boy]]

* Vocal fold operation is quite common for professional cante flamenco singers.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

* Roxxi Laveaux in TNA dyed her hair various colours to fit with her Voodoo Queen gimmick. The dye ended up stripping her hair which led to another example of the trope - where she infamously had her head shaved at the 2008 ''Sacrifice'' PPV.

 

* [[Tim Curry]] dyed his hair blonde during the stage production of ''[[Rocky Horror Picture Show|The Rocky Horror Show]]''.

* Megan Hilty dyed her hair brown near the end of her Broadway run as Glinda in ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'', and kept it through her run as Mary in [[The Musical]] of ''Vanities'', but wore blonde wigs for both characters.

 

== Theme Parks ==

* At Halloween Horror Nights 2010, all of the actors in the Havoc: Dogs of War house were required to shave their heads to more accurately play genetically-altered supersoliders, including the girls. This has led to some surprisingly good reviews of the house so far, despite being predicted as this year's flop, as the cast arguably consists of the most dedicated performers in the whole event. Some of them have gone ''slightly'' nuts in their performances and risked damaging sets.

 

 

* Jermaine of ''[[Awkward]]'' got his buzzed mohawk look to look authentically douchey. He had to keep it that way for two months.

 

== Western Animation ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Trivia Trope]]

[[Category:Just for Pun]]

[[Category:Characters and Casting]]

[[Category:Personal Appearance Tropes]]