At the tender age of 5, Mike Marino first noticed “The Elephant Man” and his life modified ceaselessly. When David Lynch’s haunting and heartbreaking story of the disfigured John Merrick aired on HBO within the early Eighties, Marino discovered himself horrified however unable to look away, sparking a fascination with prosthetics that may finally result in him changing into considered one of Hollywood’s high make-up artists.
“I used to be so afraid of it, however I didn’t know the way lovely that story was and the way a lot it could depart an impression on my mind and my soul,” says Marino, 47, who earned back-to-back Oscar nominations in 2022 and 2023 for his make-up work on “Coming 2 America” and “The Batman,” the latter starring a totally remodeled Colin Farrell. “If it weren’t for that film, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.”
But for actor, TV presenter and incapacity rights advocate Adam Pearson, Lynch’s movie has taken on a extra painful function in his life. Growing up in England with neurofibromatosis sort 1, a uncommon genetic dysfunction that causes tumors to develop on the face, Pearson was typically teased by classmates who cruelly known as him “Elephant Man” and different names. Growing up, he noticed how motion pictures routinely depicted disfigured individuals as monsters, villains or victims, stripping them of their humanity. “There’s a component of laziness to it,” says Pearson, 39. “How will we present that this character is evil? Let’s give him a scar.”
Now, in a accident, Marino and Pearson’s lives have crossed paths on a really totally different undertaking: the darkly humorous and stunning psychological thriller “A Different Man.” Directed by Aaron Schimberg, A24’s movie stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, a shy, disfigured actor working in New York City who undergoes an experimental process to remodel his look, solely to lose the function he was born to play—himself—to a cheerful, outgoing man named Oswald with the identical facial deformity, performed by Pearson. Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person within the World”) co-stars as a playwright whose newest work brings Edward’s id disaster to a head.
Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan within the movie “A Different Man”.
(Matt Infante / A24)
“A Different Man,” which the Times known as “a self-deconstructive meta-pretzel of a darkish comedy” after its debut at this 12 months’s Sundance Film Festival, tackles complicated problems with id, magnificence and incapacity with a mixture of Charlie Kaufman-esque surrealism and David Cronenberg-esque physique horror. Along with Stan’s efficiency, Marino’s meticulously crafted prosthetics are instrumental in bringing Edward and his inside agonies to life, reflecting the deepest emotional anguish of a person making an attempt to flee his personal pores and skin.
“The movie portrays how the shell of who we’re should not dictate our spirit and our persona,” Marino says. “I feel it is a vital movie, identical to ‘The Elephant Man’ was.”
When Schimberg first wrote the script, impressed by his personal struggles with cleft palate and his expertise working with Pearson on his 2019 satire “Chained for Life,” he initially had no concept how he would truly pull off the movie’s arduous prosthetic work. “I used to be sort of blissfully ignorant,” Schimberg says. “Once Sebastian got here on board, we began placing the movie collectively in a short time. It wasn’t till a couple of month earlier than taking pictures that I spotted this film was going to utterly disintegrate if we didn’t get this proper. He was very particular.”
Signing on as an govt producer for the movie, Stan requested round for make-up artists within the New York space who might deal with such a tough job beneath such time strain. One reply at all times got here again: “Literally everybody, with out fail, was like, ‘You’ve obtained to get Marino,'” the actor recollects.
Pearson, left, Marino and Stan, photographed on the A24 places of work in New York City in September.
(Sean Dougherty / For the Times)
Although he was already busy with work on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Marino, who has finished his share of fantastical creatures, jumped on the problem of recreating a real-life disfigurement like Pearson’s. “I’m fascinated by individuals who have one thing improper with their pores and skin as a result of it is simply probably the most attention-grabbing, inventive, pure factor,” Marino says. “To me, there’s an unbelievable magnificence in Adam’s look. It wasn’t a scary face or a monstrous particular person. I do not love to do stuff like that that has no soul or goal.”
Marino’s ardour for make-up and prosthetics started at an early age, impressed by business legends like Dick Smith (“The Exorcist”) and Rick Baker (“An American Werewolf in London”). Growing up in New York City, Marino started honing his expertise as a preteen, working towards on his mates with latex, foam and varied chemical substances, destroying his bed room carpet within the course of, a lot to his mother and father’ chagrin. While nonetheless in highschool, he despatched his portfolio to Smith and acquired encouragement and recommendation over the cellphone from the make-up legend, who gained an Oscar in 1985 for “Amadeus” and earned an honorary Academy Award for his life’s work in 2012. “Once he acknowledged me, it was like, OK, that is critical. There was no stopping me.”
After present process an experimental therapy to alter his face, Edward, performed by Sebastian Stan, adopts an alter ego named Guy.
(A24)
After chopping his enamel on “Saturday Night Live” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Marino made his function movie debut with the 2007 psychological thriller “Anamorph” and rapidly turned identified for his versatility, seamlessly transitioning from fantasy creatures to extra delicate, lifelike purposes. His work on Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” amplified the movie’s psychological horror, whereas in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” he enhanced the movie’s digital de-aging of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino with fastidiously crafted prosthetics.
Outside of movie, Marino created the Weeknd’s plastic surgery-gone-wrong search for the singer’s “Save Your Tears” video. “They’re all issues that must be solved,” Marino says. “There’s no playbook.”
Diving into “A Different Man,” Marino used pictures and 3D scans of Pearson’s face, which has undergone about 40 surgical procedures over time, as the idea for a multi-piece silicone prosthetic that may match Stan’s options. “There was no strategy to utterly replicate Adam’s precise proportions,” he says. “I needed to make some aesthetic decisions.”
While the make-up in “The Elephant Man” benefited from that movie’s grainy black-and-white images, the prosthetics in “A Different Man” needed to stand up to extra unsparing scrutiny. To check his Edward face, Stan walked from Marino’s make-up chair to the set by way of New York City streets and crowds of strangers, giving him uncanny perception into how individuals deal with those that look totally different.
“I went to my outdated bar and the identical bartender who had served me for years couldn’t establish me,” Stan recollects. “I might truly really feel individuals’s reactions in actual time. There had been individuals who couldn’t even have a look at me, different individuals had been gazing me, and generally you’d have a much bigger response, like, ‘Oh s—, it’s the Elephant Man!’ Like Adam says, you’re feeling such as you’re public property.”
Pearson, who shares his character’s sunny sociability, inspired Stan to consider it the best way he does about his personal expertise as a film star. “I used to be like, ‘You don’t know the extent of invasion I get with individuals pointing and staring and taking photos, however you perceive a really comparable factor from this angle, so lean into that so much,’” he says. “‘And if it makes you uncomfortable, lean into it extra.’”
While sporting the prosthetics, Stan might solely see out of 1 eye and had restricted listening to in a single ear, challenges that additional outlined his efficiency as a person who has realized to shrink back from potential threats and insults. “Edward is a personality who has needed to endure plenty of emotional abuse and doubtless some bodily abuse, so he’s in all probability at all times a bit of bit on his left foot in case one thing occurs,” Stan says.
As Edward’s face modified following the unconventional therapy, Marino created further prosthetics to indicate the transition, together with an “extraordinarily mushy, mushy model” that, in a single significantly Cronenbergian scene, Stan managed to piece collectively.
Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot in “The Batman”, a piece for which Marino was nominated for an Oscar.
(Photo by Warner Bros.)
Marino’s expertise for reworking stars is on full show in Farrell’s hulking, thuggish look as The Penguin in 2022’s “The Batman” and its new HBO spinoff collection. “When Colin noticed the sculpture I did, the concepts simply began to blow up,” Marino says. “After I did a make-up check, it was magic: He might discuss, he might stroll, and he was already himself.”
Marino, who’s getting ready to make his directorial debut primarily based on a script he wrote and set within the Eighties (“It’s not intentionally effects-heavy,” he hints), has misplaced none of his fascination with the transformative energy of latex and silicone since his days as a youngster obsessively flipping by way of problems with Cinefex journal. “If you consider Michelangelo exhibiting magnificence 500 years in the past in portray and sculpture, I’m nonetheless exhibiting that magnificence on this new hyperrealistic means, in silicone,” says Marino, who has named his make-up results studio Prosthetic Renaissance. “It’s a extremely distinctive artwork. It’s like transferring sculptures and work all collectively.”
As for Pearson, if he had been supplied an experimental therapy to alter his face, like in “A Different Man,” he says he would not take it. Despite the challenges it introduced him, Pearson believes his face has formed the life he leads immediately.
“I joke with my mates that my incapacity is a big burden to my horrible persona,” she laughs. “Everyone thinks it’s exhausting to go from non-disabled to disabled, however I feel it could be even tougher to go the opposite means. The journey we stroll and the struggles we face make us who we’re and they’re inseparable from one another.”
