18 Celebs Major Transformations Vs. 18 Celebs Makeup/CGI Transformations
Have you ever watched a film or TV show and couldn't quite put your finger on what actor is staring you right in the face? Or maybe you’ve watched some things and thought, wow, that celeb looks almost unrecognizable in this flick?
Well, that makes two of us! I’ve definitely been caught out in the past when I should have recognized a little prosthetic touch up here and there, but I’ve also been completely mind blown by some of the incredible transformations undergone by celebs so that they can truly bring their character to life.
Now, I’ve rounded up some of my favorites for you! This list is by no means definitive, as Hollywood has thrown plenty of transformations our way, but let’s take a look at the 18 celebs who underwent major transformations for their roles, and 18 who had the pleasure of a makeup or CGI overhaul…
Major transformations ahead…
1.Christian Bale
When you think of method acting, Christian Bale will likely spring to your mind. Well, do you remember the time he went full go-hard-or-go-home for his role in The Machinist in 2004?
This is the most striking and scary transformation the actor has ever made, losing more than 60 pounds to portray an insomniac. In an interview with Men’s Journal, Bale expressed that his method was “smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey to lose weight”. Yikes, what a way to do it!
2.Kumail Nanjiani
Comedian and actor, Kumail Nanjiani, certainly stepped up and put the work in for his superhero role in The Eternals.
3.Brie Larson
Another superhero transformation is that of Brie Larson for her titular role in Captain Marvel.
Brie described to the LA Times how she went from “never particularly active” to undertaking nine months of hardcore workouts; “I completely turned my body around. I was just pure muscle by the end of all that. But I do think it’s important to say that it took a nutritionist, two different trainers, a paleo meal delivery service, a lot of mozzarella sticks, and a lot of sleep and water.” I love the fact that Brie put so much hard work in for the Marvel film and also gave credit to those who helped her transform!
4.Jake Gyllenhaal
Speaking of ripped, did you see Jake Gyllenhaal in Southpaw?
Speaking of ripped, did you see Jake Gyllenhaal in Southpaw? Well, the actor packed on the muscle to play Junior Middleweight Champion Billy “The Great” Hope in 2015. In conversation with E! Jake’s trainer for the film at the time, Terry Claybon, confirms that Jake went from a slight 147 pounds to a ripped 175 pounds and that was all thanks to 2,000 sit-ups a day, push-ups, dips, flipping 350 pounds tires, and running eight miles five days a week. I’m tired just reading that workout!
5.Matthew McConaughey
Okay, enough muscle for a second. Let’s talk about Matthew McConaughey’s dramatic weight loss for Dallas Buyers Club.
In 2013, the actor took on the role to portray the true story of Ron Woodroof, an AIDS patient diagnosed in the mid-1980s who worked the system to help AIDS patients get the medication they needed. In an interview with BBC, Matthew confessed to losing "3st 7lb (47lb; 21kg)" by chewing a lot of ice and meeting with a nutritionist so he could lose the weight within four months. Though he said he did it as healthily as possible, I’m guessing the actor won’t be in a rush to ever feel that slim again!
6.Jared Leto
So, this one was a tricky one to categorize because Jared Leto’s portrayal of an HIV-positive trans woman (also in Dallas Buyers Club) came to life through a combination of very real changes to Jared’s look and a little help of makeup.
After doing some digging, I’m going to give Jared a little more credit for the work he put in to transform into his character, Rayon. In conversation with Roger Ebert online, Leto talked about how he lost 30 pounds, waxed his body from head to toe (including waxing his eyebrows completely off) and even lived in character for 25 days throughout the shoot. I don’t know about you, but I thought the actor looked so different for the film that I nearly didn’t recognize him!
7.Chadwick Boseman
The late Chadwick Boseman put in an incredible amount of work in order to transform into superhero T’Challa for the 2018 Marvel film, Black Panther.
When you compare Chadwick’s first appearance as T’Challa two years prior in Captain America: Civil War, you’ll notice he was much more stocky, but for his pivotal role as a King in Black Panther, his physique was all the more defined. Chadwick’s trainer at the time, Addison Henderson, spoke with Esquire and detailed how he worked Boseman in the gym for three to four hours at times, doing crazy workouts that ranged from a mile run and stair climber as a warm-up, then onto the main upper-body workout which consisted of bench presses, reverse and incline presses, and then finishing with a lower-body workout which ranged from squatting to lunges. Boseman also trained in martial arts for the role so not only did he look the part, but it meant he could move more convincingly as Black Panther. The results were certainly noticeable, and what’s more inspiring is the knowledge we now have, whereby the actor was working his body so hard to achieve amazing results, even though he had been battling with colon cancer since 2016. What a phenomenal person!
8.Michael Fassbender
Up next on my list is Michael Fassbender’s drastic weight loss for the 2008 film Hunger.
In the movie, Fassbender portrays Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, Bobby Sands, which tells the true story of how he led the second IRA hunger strike in 1981. According to The Guardian, in preparation for the role, Fassbender shed 35 pounds (16 kilograms), with his lowest weight reaching a mere 127 pounds (58 kilograms), which was apparently the last recorded weight of the real Bobby Sands before his death by starvation. In the interview, Fassbender claims he had 10 weeks to lose the final weight and part of his method was eating a “very small tin of sardines every evening.” The result? A shockingly gaunt-looking Fassbender.
9.Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank portrayed a boxer in Million Dollar Baby in 2004, and the slender actor moulded her body to match the role.
In conversation with Movie Web, Swank discussed how she not only had to learn how to box but she had to get her body to look like that of someone who has probably spent her whole life training, in a grand total of 90 days! “My training was two and a half hours of boxing and approximately an hour and a half to two hours lifting weights every day, six days a week…I gained 19 pounds of muscle. I started at 110 and went to 129. And in order to do that, I had to eat 210 grams of protein a day. Now, your body can only assimilate so much protein, so I had to eat every hour and a half. So with a meal, I would drink my egg whites because I could never eat eight to 12 egg whites in a sitting.” Hats off to Swank for the effort because she lost me at drinking egg whites, yuk!
10.Chris Hemsworth
There seems to be a running theme here of stars losing weight to wholeheartedly tell a story, and things were no different for Chris Hemsworth when he filmed In the Heart of the Sea in 2015.
Just tried a new diet/training program called "Lost At Sea". Wouldn't recommend it.. #IntheHeartoftheSea
11.Joaquin Phoenix
When taking on the iconic role of Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ morbid Joker in 2019, Joaquin Phoenix agreed to lose 52 pounds, making him look frighteningly vulnerable.
Phoenix spoke to People about the experience and said he struggled mentally and developed a disorder, but he was surprised to find that he felt more fluidity physically and how that lent itself to some of the physical movements that started to emerge as an important part of the character. Surprisingly, Phoenix actually wanted to gain weight for the role as he was concerned about the time span, but the director convinced him otherwise!
12.50 Cent
Rapper turned actor, 50 Cent, shocked fans in 2011 with his emaciated physique for the film All Things Fall Apart.
50 cent portrayed a football player who falls ill from a genetic disease, with inspiration for the story coming from the rapper’s experience with losing a childhood friend to cancer. 50 cent explained to The Huffington Post that he had so much muscle on him that it was hard to lose definition even as he got lighter and slimmer, stating “I started running to suppress my appetite. Towards the end, it was really difficult. It was like, if I don't get close enough to what my best friend looked like to me at that point before he passed, then I'm not doing the story any justice." The rapper dropped from 214 pounds to 160 pounds in just nine weeks, after living off of a liquid diet and running on a treadmill for three hours a day.
13.Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy is no stranger to mixing up his look for his many different film roles.
One of the most memorable is his transition into Britain’s most violent criminal and bare-knuckle boxer, Charles Bronson, for the 2008 biopic Bronson. Interestingly, Hardy told Ask Men that he had no official regime to mirror Bronson’s shape; undertaking very “non-specific exercises such as press-ups, push-ups, abs work, and resistance training”, and he had to put on seven pounds a week for five weeks by eating chicken and rice, pizza, Häagen-Dazs and Coca-Cola. I mean five weeks of eating Häagen-Dazs doesn’t sound that bad…
14.Jonah Hill
21 Jump Street star Jonah Hill intentionally gained weight to portray his version of real-life arms dealer, Efraim Diveroli, in the 2016 film War Dogs.
Though it’s not confirmed, it’s estimated that Hill put on 40 pounds for the film, and when filming wrapped up, Hill enlisted the help of Channing Tatum to slim down again. When talking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Hill said he called Tatum and asked “if I eat less and go to a trainer, will I get in good shape?” to which he received a laugh-out-loud response from his costar. What’s even funnier is that Hill also accidentally sent his food diary to singer and rapper, Drake, instead of his new nutritionist.
15.Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman took on the challenge of embodying the role of a ballerina for the psychological thriller, Black Swan, and it sounds like the actor threw herself into the transformation.
In an interview with US Weekly, she spoke about how extreme the physicality of it all was, as a year before shooting, she had to undergo extreme ballet, cross-training, and swimming. Portman shed 20 pounds off her already petite frame and trained for a challenging five-to-eight hours a day to get the results required to portray her character.
16.Michael B. Jordan
Actor Michael B. Jordan got ripped for his debut in the Rocky franchise, with the 2015 release of Creed.
According to Men’s Journal, Jordan indulged in a hefty workout routine with his trainer, Corey Calliet, which saw him undertake 45 to 60 minutes of cardio daily, along with 3 hours of boxing, and ab workouts every other day. The newfound regime also extended to his diet, whereby Jordan would eat 6 meals a day. The end-product? “I felt muscles I never knew I had,” Jordan says.
17.Rooney Mara
Another one of my favorite transformations is how Rooney Mara looked almost unrecognizable when she stepped into the shoes of Lisbeth Salander for the remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Mara sported an intense and edgy new look for the character, and according to Allure, she even went as far as to get her eyebrows, lip, nose, and right nipple pierced for the film, as opposed to opting for fake ones! The actor also dyed and shaved her own hair to fit the part, as well as bleaching her own eyebrows. When you think of Mara in A Social Network in comparison to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the difference is pretty astounding!
18.Will Smith
In the last of our major transformations round up, we have Will Smith who took on the challenge of portraying legendary boxer Muhammed Ali in the 2001 film Ali.
After refusing to star in the film for eight years, Smith told ABC that once he accepted the part, he trained his body and rehearsed his voice for a total of two years in preparation. In a 2019 Red Table Talk interview, Smith reflected on how he weighed 223 pounds for the role, and after doing my research, it looked like a lot of work went behind that amount of muscle gain! In an interview with Esquire, celebrity trainer, Darrell Foster, explains how he helped Smith get into shape by training for six days a week, all day long. Foster adds that the workouts consisted of three-to-five miles of running, boxing training, and weight training. It’s no wonder Smith was able to look the part!
Makeup/CGI wonders ahead…
19.Colin Farrell
Now, let’s move on to some pretty impressive makeup and CGI transformations! Kicking this off is Colin Farrell in The Batman, as he absolutely nailed his depiction of The Penguin.
If you’ve read the comics, you’ll know that the character is defined as being on the short side, sporting a pretty grotesque appearance and a large, pointy nose. In a video clip of Farrell transitioning into the The Penguin, he says that it usually took three to four hours for a team of artists to mold prosthetics to his face and neck.
Colin Farrell's transformation into Penguin for #TheBatman
20.Kim Eui-sung
When it comes to makeup transformations, we can’t forget about all of those zombie efforts! One of the most standout moments can be found in the South-Korean action horror film Train to Busan.
The movie is full of some pretty awesome zombie displays, but when I first watched Kim Eui-sung (who played an arrogant and disagreeable businessman) change from a normal human into a terrifying and dead-behind-the-eyes zombie, I was very impressed. After being bitten by a zombie, the actor clearly had an excellent team of special makeup artists by his side, as his reanimation comes to life through red-scaly skin and veins that look like they are going to burst, glassed over and dull eyes, blue lips, and an overall frightening appearance. If zombies were real and I saw Kim Eui-sung coming my way dressed up like this, I’d run a mile!
21.Lily James
You guessed it, I wasn’t about to leave Lily James off of this list. When I first saw the teaser images of the Pam & Tommy series, I had to blink twice because I almost believed that James was the real Pamela Anderson.
As Harpers Bazaar confirmed, to become the blonde bombshell, James had a team of artists that dressed her in a lot of different creations, including four custom lace front wigs (each a blend of three to four different blondes to achieve Pam’s platinum color), a forehead appliance to widen the distance between James’s brows and hairline, gel-filled silicone breast appliances (which move like real skin, by the way), and the actor even wore acrylic teeth dentures. Apparently, the team went through around 45 to 50 breast prosthetics during shooting, and James’s eyebrows were plucked down to get the thin and lacy look of the '90s! Even now, I’m still amazed at the efforts and lengths the crew went to to ensure James was a mirror image of Anderson, and with just how realistic the actor looked in the part.
22.Charlize Theron
Another actor that dabbled in portraying a real life person is Charlize Theron. In Bombshell, Theron took on the portrayal of former Fox news anchor, Megyn Kelly.
How did they do it, I hear you ask? Insider broke down the various different tools that prosthetic makeup artist, Kazu Hiro, took; “Hiro did a 3D body scan and life cast…Then he made a mould of each life cast and created the skin-like prostheses based off of those moulds. The prostheses were made with medical-grade silicone and attached to the actors' faces with strong medical glue. These prostheses had to be applied to Theron every day, a process that usually took close to three hours.”
According to the article, not only did Theron wear prosthetic pieces (eyelid, nose, jaw, and chin pieces) and colored contact lenses, but makeup products were also used to alter the way her face looked. Theron was dressed in fake eyelashes, and heavy anchor-style makeup to complete the look. It’ll come as no surprise that after hours of filming, Theron’s makeup might start to look worse for wear, but you won’t see this in the film thanks to technology! Hiro explains that “when the makeup did start to fall apart on set, the film would later touch up the makeup digitally. That way they wouldn’t have to apply makeup all over again.” I have to say, the team did a pretty awesome job of molding the actor to look like her counterpart.
23.Idris Elba
Believe it or not, that’s Idris Elba fully morphed into a creepy alien monster for Star Trek Beyond, and that’s all thanks to the special makeup and prosthetic efforts of Joel Harlow.
When speaking to Inverse about the process, Harlow explains that Elba’s character, Krall, had to be an “amalgam of a human and any number of species, [and] by extension, a lot of the alien characters were designed as aquatic in nature…lots of fins [and] there were lizard elements in Krall too — Gila monsters, specifically.”What’s even more brilliant is how the team combined the use of makeup and light effects to breathe even more life into the character’s demeanor. According to Vanity Fair, the team used light effects to show Krall’s transformation every time he took another character’s energy, by embedding tracing lights and fibre optics into the character’s head. Mission: serve up a villainous alien? Complete.
24.Zoe Saldana
When it comes to CGI displays, there’s no taking away from the fact that James Cameron did it big with the release of Avatar in 2009. In fact, he did it so big, that when you see Zoe Saldaña as the princess Neytiri, she’s all avatar.
The whole of Avatar’s footage is built from around 70% CGI, as The Guardian explains. This meant that the cast, including Saldana, “donned motion-capture suits — essentially, leotards covered in sensors that feed the movements of the body back to a bank of computers — and acted out their scenes on a performance capture stage six times bigger than anything used in Hollywood before.” According to the article, Cameron even developed a filming rig that was more advanced than anything before (at that time), and the setup consisted of multiple stereoscopic cameras that each used a pair of lenses built to mimic human eyes. Whilst we’ve since seen Saldana in special makeup for her Marvel roles, there’s no denying that seeing her come to life as a bigger and bluer CGI being, is all the more mesmerizing on the big screen.
25.Lupita Nyong'o
When watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you may have recognized the voice of actor Lupita Nyong’o before realizing the alien creature was played by her.
For the role, Nyong’o brought her character to the galaxy through motion capture. In an interview with IGN, the actor expressed that she wanted to take on the role and felt liberated by the filming technique, which allowed her to play a character that wasn't limited by her physical circumstances.
The character certainly had no resemblance to the actor so it’s pretty cool to have another well-done motion capture performance on the ever-growing list. It was also great to see the talent and work that goes into creating such a transformation!
26.Gary Oldman
I’ve got to put this one into perspective for you. I was the grand old age of nine years old when the disfigured face of Gary Oldman’s character in Hannibal actually left me scarred for life.
Okay slight exaggeration, but this is one gruesome makeover that has forever stuck with me! In 2001, Oldman turned into one of the worst villains, Mason Verger, and donned the face to match the personality. The Guardian spoke to the cast and crew who explained that a translucent silicone was used to make Oldman look disfigured, with makeup artist Greg Cannon and his associate, Wesley Wofford, stating that they knew they could get away with more with Oldman as opposed to another actor, because one of the first things Oldman said was, “Can we stretch my eye open? No lips, no cheeks, no eyelids.” Shout out to the makeup team for creating something that will forever haunt me in my sleep.
27.Margot Robbie
The beautiful Margot Robbie looks far from her true self in the 2018 biopic, Mary Queen of Scots.
Refinery 29 talks us through the process and explains that the transformation involved a frizzy red wig, chalk-white skin, red lipstick, and blush, plus clusters of facial scars and boils across her cheeks and chin. It took the makeup artist nearly three hours each day to prep Robbie for the camera, but one distinct feature that was left out was the rotting teeth, luckily for Robbie!
28.Rebecca Romijin
An iconic look in the X-Men franchise is that of Mystique, first portrayed by Rebecca Romijin.
Romijin reflects on her time in the X-men films in a conversation with Looper, stating that the role is memorable for many reasons, primarily because of “the daily application of elaborate makeup that turned Romijn into the blue-skinned, scaly mutant”. Apparently, it was a nine-hour makeup process and the team managed to eventually get it down to seven, but Romijin would never want to do the role without the makeup transition and said she always thought it was the most beautiful costume she’d ever seen in her life.
29.Nicole Kidman
If you’d have told me at the time of watching The Hours, that the character of Virginia Woolf was really Nicole Kidman, I would have argued until the cows came home!
The actor looks like a totally different person and that’s primarily down to the prosthetic nose that completely masks her identity, which is then further complemented by a mousy brown wig. Even the actor’s eyes look different, so it looks like the makeup team worked their magic because if you look closely, her eyes in the film have a prominent droop. When talking to SF Gate, Kidman confirmed the transformation took three hours a day!
30.Steve Carell
In the spirit of prosthetic noses, let’s look at Steve Carell’s makeover in Foxcatcher.
In order to portray schizophrenic philanthropist, John du Pont, Carell underwent a complete transformation in which the end result looked nothing like his true self! When discussing the process with USA Today Carell explained that he wore a prosthetic beaked nose, thickened jowls, and fake teeth, and he had his head shaved back along with his eyebrows.
31.Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton played a total of three characters in the 2018 remake of Suspiria. Whilst all deserve credit for the makeup looks, I’d like to pull out the epic transformation that saw Swinton turn into an old man, aka Dr. Jozef Klemperer.
I mean when I first watched it, I genuinely thought the character was a real elderly man and was gobsmacked when I later found out it was Swinton. The process sounds pretty intense too! According to Deadline, the makeup department had to thicken up the jaw and neck, and Swinton was completely covered in several sections, with a silicone tubular neck that was pulled over, along with separate cheeks, a chin, top lip, nose, forehead, ears, back of the head, hand prosthetics, fingernails, a wig, and body padding! It’s fascinating to know the team decided against the easy option when it came to casting for this role!
32.Andy Serkis
Time for the king of performance capture! Andy Serkis breathed life into J.R.R Tolkien’s fictitious monster, Gollum, for The Lord of the Rings movie franchise.
The credit is all down to CGI and motion capture, but not forgetting Serkis’s hissing voice for the character of course! In an insightful interview with IGN, Serkis explained that director Peter Jackson used a lot more motion capture for Gollum than was originally intended, because of how Serkis would embody the character.
Serkis stated that “I'd crawl around, doing the voice of Gollum — I was being Gollum. I wasn't in costume, because there wasn't a costume — I was just wearing a skintight suit. Then they'd always shoot two versions — one with me on camera acting, literally on camera with Sean and Elijah, and then I'd do a version stepping off camera. Sean and Elijah would act to the void where I once was – having encoded the scene that we'd just done — and I'd do the voice off-camera, giving as much vocal energy, and also I'd kind of show them the moves so that they could mime exact moments. To pinpoint exact moments and stuff. Then, that would leave the animators two kinds of routes to go down. They either basically roto-scoped over my exact movements — if Peter liked a particular take, he'd get the animators to literally paint frame by frame over my exact moves and my facial expressions and everything — or, using the second take with them acting to the void where I once was, I'd then go back in post-production, which is basically all of 2002, to do motion-capture. It's basically kind of acting as a virtual puppeteer. You wear a suit with dots all over it, cameras pick up all the dots, and in real-time I could see this computer-generated image of Gollum — which, if I moved my right arm, then Gollum, in real-time, would move his right arm.”
It’s no wonder that Gollum almost felt like a real person when watching, and I think this transformation will forever remain in the motion capture hall of fame!
33.Kae Alexandra
When Kae Alexander accepted the role of Leaf, the leader of the Children of the Forest, in the epic fantasy series Game of Thrones, she had no idea she’d be spending so much time in the makeup chair.
Insider revealed the actor had prosthetics glued onto her entire body in addition to hours of hair and make-up, and when talking about the days she would need a full-body prosthetic, Alexander said “I would get picked up at midnight and then I’ll be on set by 10 am…I didn’t realize it was gonna result to nine and-a-half hours of makeup!” The final look saw Alexander dressed in distinct branches, with cat-like eyes, and tangled hair with flowers and twigs woven through it.
34.Jessica Chastain
Jessica Chastain transformed into real-life televangelist Tammy Fae Bakker for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and what a transformation it was!
As Entertainment Weekly reports, the actor’s angular face was built up with two and a half hours worth of prosthetics each day to create a fuller and rounder face, with the key pieces consisting of cheek appliances and prosthetics to fill in the dimple in her chin. Chastain also wore a dozen hairpieces, and wigs under wigs to mimic Bakker’s patchy natural hair! The makeup team also sourced products from drugstores and eBay to mirror Bakker’s real-life look and said it was crucial the character didn’t veer into caricature and honored the fact that Bakker loved beauty.
35.Doug Jones
If you haven’t clicked who Doug Jones is, you will likely recognize the characters he has played.
Jones typically portrays non-humans such as the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, the merman known as The Asset in Shape of Water, and Saru in Star Trek: Discovery. My favorite of all of Jones’s manifestations has to be the nightmarish Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth, one which is both terrifying and an amazing combination of traditional prosthetics and CGI.
CMU explained the work required to turn actor and mime artist Jones into the monster; "his transformation into both these characters [The Pale Man and The Faun] was about five hours, however, due to the complicated application process it wasn’t as simple as sitting in a makeup chair. [The] makeup required elaborate mechanical application for puppeteering that needed to be screwed, zipped, and plugged in to make it work. [The Faun] had complicated leg detailing and a heavy headpiece and so to apply the makeup for hours on end, Jones needed to either stand for the entirety of it or sit in a bicycle-like chair with a T-bar to support his head and body.” Now that is commitment to the role!
36.Aaron Eckhart
Last but certainly not least, we have Aaron Eckhart, whose face we saw was left totally disfigured as Harvey Dent (AKA Two-Face) in The Dark Knight.
To get the look right of someone who’s just had half their face blasted off in a gasoline fire, digital and visual effects artist, Emmet Griffin, came to the rescue. In a video posted by Griffin (50 seconds in), you can enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at Eckhart as he switches from his usual face to two-face in a matter of seconds, which solely involves digital effects as opposed to the combination of effects and specialist makeup.
