Here are some behind-the-scenes horror stories from Jim Carrey, Oscar Isaac, Margaret Qualley, and more.

11 horror stories from actors who endured extreme makeup and prosthetics for a role

Here are some behind-the-scenes horror stories from Jim Carrey, Oscar Isaac, Margaret Qualley, and more.

By Randall Colburn

Randall Colburn

Randall Colburn is a writer and editor at **. His work has previously appeared on The A.V. Club, The Guardian, The Ringer, and many other publications.

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April 7, 2026 6:00 p.m. ET

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Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse in 'X-Men: Apocalypse'; Tim Curry as Darkness in 'Legend'; Margaret Qualley in 'The Substance'. Credit:

20th century fox; Universal, MUBI

Looking to suffer for your art? Spend a few hours in a makeup chair.

There's something magical about seeing an actor transform beneath makeup, latex, silicone, and fiberglass, but that makeover often comes with pain, exhaustion, and the occasional panic attack. Is it worth it? Sometimes, sure, but not always.

Below are 11 actors who've subjected themselves to hours upon hours of intricate (and maddening) cosmetic work behind the scenes — and what they have to say about it now.**

Jim Carrey as the Grinch in 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'.

Ron Batzdorff/Universal

Jim Carrey's transformation into the green, holiday-hating Grinch for Ron Howard's live-action adaptation of *How the Grinch Stole Christmas *took between three and eight hours — and required him to wear a suit made of "unnervingly itchy yak hair that drove me insane all day long," as the actor put it to Vulture in December 2025.

Upon the film's 2000 release, Carrey offered a sunny assessment of the ordeal in a chat with **. "You just forget [the pain]. Sitting around in that suit was not too fun, but performing in it was amazing," he said. "I can be as uncomfortable as I want, but when somebody says action, it's like going into another reality."

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Speaking with Vulture, however, Howard revealed that the makeup and prosthetics Carrey wore as the Grinch were "destroying Jim's skin." And because Carrey didn't want his eyes to be digitally colored, he wore contacts that were like "Frisbees in his eyes," according to producer Brian Grazer. "He was in so much pain," Grazer said.

Carrey revealed the Bee Gees' three-part harmonies helped him push through the pain. "I listened through the makeup process to the entire Bee Gees catalogue," he told the outlet. "Their music is so joyful. I've never met Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him."

But the Gibbs alone couldn't stave off the "panic attacks" Carrey was having on set, so Grazer brought in Richard Marcinko, a former U.S. Navy SEAL commander who'd trained CIA agents and soldiers on techniques to endure imprisonment and torture.

"He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral," Carrey said. "Like punch myself in the leg as hard as I can. Have a friend that I trust and punch him in the arm. Eat everything in sight. Changing patterns in the room."**

Lon Chaney Jr.

Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man in 'The Wolf Man'.

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty

Lon Chaney Jr. remains one of the seminal figures in horror cinema, having played various iterations of the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, and Dracula throughout the 1940s. Considering how much he hated the transformation process, it's a wonder he subjected himself to it so many times.

As the *Telegraph* details in a 2025 piece about makeup artist Jack Pierce, Chaney Jr. burned his skin on "specially treated bandages" while playing the Mummy, and got a rash from the head piece he wore as Frankenstein's monster. When playing the Wolf Man, Chaney Jr. had to endure Pierce glueing yak hair to his face "and then singeing it with a curling iron."

According to the *Telegraph*, it took roughly two-and-a-half hours to apply. And its removal was a particular thorn in Chaney Jr.'s side. “What gets me is after work when I’m all hot and itchy and tired, and after I’ve got to sit in that chair for forty-five minutes while Pierce just about kills me, ripping off the stuff he put on me in the morning,” Chaney is said to have grumbled.**

Tim Curry as Darkness in 'Legend'.

*Legend* was a flop upon release, but the Tom Cruise-starring fantasy-horror epic has persevered as a cult classic. Its reevaluation is due primarily to Tim Curry, who looms over *Legend* as the monstrous Lord of Darkness. In 2003, EW's critic cited Curry's "gleeful performance" as "a forgotten classic of operatic evil."

Curry, no stranger to shifting shapes, is near-unrecognizable as the demon, his body splashed red and layered in prosthetic muscles. As detailed in a 1986 issue of *Cinefantastique*, the *Rocky Horror* star also wore a "huge, bull-like structure atop his head, with three-foot horns of fiberglass supported by a harness beneath the makeup." The horns, despite being lightweight, nevertheless placed a strain on the back of Curry's neck.**

His transformation reportedly took between five and eight hours, and removing the makeup and prosthetics required an hour-long bath to liquify the gobs of spirit gum needed to keep it all together. It was here that Curry's frustrations emerged.

"Unfortunately he got impatient and claustriphobic and too hurriedly pulled [the spirit gum] off, which meant he tore his skin off as well," recalled *Legend *director Ridley Scott. "We had to shoot around him for a week to calm him down."**

Bolaji Badejo

A Xenomorph on the set of 'Alien'.

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

The Xenomorph stalking the Nostromo's crew in Ridley Scott's terrifying *Alien *was played by Bolaji Badejo, a Nigerian welfare administrator who was first spotted by a casting director in a London pub. It was Badejo's first and only role, and the 6-foot-10-inch performer died in 1992 from sickle cell disease, per CNN.

In a 1979 piece in *Cinefantastique*, Badejo recalled the challenges of navigating the set with the creature's bulbous, banana-shaped head. "I could barely see what was going on around me, except when I was in a stationary position, while they were filming," he said. "Then there were a few holes I could look through… It was terribly hot… I could only have it on for about 15 or 20 minutes at a time. When I took it off, my head would be soaked."

John Matuszak

John Matuszak as Sloth in 'The Goonies'.

Warner Bros./ Courtesy: Everett

NFL player-turned-actor John Matuszak sat through five hours of makeup each day to play Sloth, the black sheep of the Fratelli crime family who forms a special bond with Chunk (Jeff Cohen) in *The Goonies*. The costume called for 15 different prosthetics, including a mechanical eye.

In September 2025, Martha Plimpton, who played Stef, recalled how Matuszak was "inaudible" on set due to "all that prosthetic makeup and that whole mask." She added, "The poor man was sweating."

Matuszak's mask and makeup were so delicate that director Richard Donner had to order the child actors not to get him wet during a scene in the water. Being kids, they instantly defied him, splashing the actor and sending him back to the makeup chair.

"This guy had been in makeup five hours, [but] he never said a thing," Donner said of the actor in *The Making of a Cult Classic: The Unauthorized Story of The Goonies,* calling him a "sweet, gentle giant."

Jessica Chastain

Jessica Chastain in 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye'. Searchlight Pictures

Jessica Chastain won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her transformative turn as the late televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker in 2021's *The Eyes of Tammy Faye*.

The cosmetic process changed as filming rolled on, with new prosthetics being introduced to portray Bakker at different times in her life. Speaking with EW, prosthetic makeup designer Justin Raleigh said the key pieces were "cheek appliances that would widen [Chastain's] face" and a "prosthetic to fill in the dimple in her chin."

Even the clothes she wore took a physical toll. "As the story becomes more exaggerated, the clothes do as well — I wanted to feel the weight of the clip-ons on her ears, the pressure of the shoulder pads on her body, so that it starts to become slightly suffocating to be Tammy," said costume designer Mitchell Travers.

This didn't go unnoticed by her costars. In a clip detailing Chastain's routine, actress Cherry Jones, who plays Tammy's mother, said, "The physical cost of doing this role is so tremendous because she is encased in latex, wigs, trusses, pregnancy pads, nails out to here. I don't even know how to describe what it must feel like."**

Bakker, however, is remembered for her elaborate makeup, which Chastain and the design team also worked to replicate. "The very first time I did the makeup test I had a complete panic attack. It was so much," the actress told The A.V. Club. "It felt like, 'I don't know how to act through it.' She's so open and vulnerable, if i can't feel the air on my skin, am I going to be able to do that? She had so much energy, am I going to be able to push my energy through the makeup?"**

Doug Jones as the Faun and the Pale Man in 'Pan's Labyrinth'.

Picturehouse/courtesy Everett Collection (2)

No one plays monsters like Doug Jones, the actor who's best known for playing creatures in various Guillermo del Toro movies, including *Hellboy* (2004) and Best Picture winner *The Shape of Water *(2017).

Jones also played dual roles — the Faun and the Pale Man — in del Toro's *Pan's Labyrinth* (2006). They're two of the most memorable parts of the pitch-black fairy tale, but they required ample sacrifice on Jones' part.

In a 2007 interview with Collider, Jones opened up about the struggles he faced in costume. The Faun's horns, for example, were extremely heavy, and he also had to wear a "leg contraption" that prevented him from being able to sit.

"So, to rest, they had like a bar thing with a bicycle seat on it and a tee bar that I could rest my head on forward," he explained. "I couldn't lean back on it but I could lean forward. So it was this one position. That's all I could [do]."

The Pale Man, meanwhile, was an "elaborately glued-together" costume. Since it took so long to assemble, Jones began wearing parts of it overnight as he slept. "I didn't tell anybody this during the shoot because I knew that Guillermo would have my hide for it... But I had them take my head and neck off and my hands off but leave the arms and the torso on," he said.

The makeup team, he recalled, would wrap him in Saran Wrap so that the "[silicone] flaps wouldn't stick to themselves or to my sheets, oh God."**

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow as Rosemary in 'Shallow Hal'. 20th Century Fox

*Shallow Hal* was a commercial success upon its 2001 release, but Peter and Bobby Farelly's comedy has been roundly criticized for its story about a man who falls for a plus-sized woman after being hypnotized to only see inner beauty.

Gwyneth Paltrow starred alongside Jack Black as Rosemary, a role that required the Oscar winner to wear a 25-pound bodysuit, a wig, and other prosthetics. "No one had really taken a woman in a [fat] suit this far before," said makeup-effects designer Tony Gardner in a 2001 interview with the *Los Angeles Times*.

Paltrow spent two weeks filming in the suit, which required more than two hours to apply. "They basically Krazy-Glue it to your face,” the actress said of her facial prosthetic. “It takes an hour to get it off, and it just feels like your head is wrapped in Saran Wrap and then covered in something very heavy. So it’s very claustrophobic.”

But her experience turned out to be as uncomfortable emotionally as it was physically. “No one would even look at me,” Paltrow recalled. “If I was walking by a table, you know how naturally you just glance up. But people would see that I was heavy in their peripheral vision and not look, because I think they assume that’s the polite thing to do. It was incredibly isolating and really lonely and sad.”

She added, “I didn’t expect it to feel so upsetting. I thought the whole thing would be funny, and then as soon as I put it on, I thought, well, you know, this isn’t all funny.”**

Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse in 'X-Men: Apocalypse'. 20th Century Fox

After his breakout turns in acclaimed films such as *Inside Llewyn Davis* (2013) and *Ex Machina* (2015), Oscar Isaac pivoted to franchise filmmaking as Poe Dameron in the *Star Wars* sequel trilogy (2015–2019) and as the ancient mutant Apocalypse in *X-Men: Apocalypse* (2016). The former made him a part of sci-fi history; the latter just made him really uncomfortable.

Speaking with *GQ* in 2018, the actor explained how he was forced to wear a sweltering 40-pound suit that required a cooling mechanism at all times. "I couldn't move my head. Ever," he recalled. "I was also in high heels inside of a boot, so that was difficult to move at all. Every time I moved, it was just like rubber and plastic squeaking, so everything I said had to be dubbed later. And then getting it off was the worst part, because they had to kind of scrape it off for hours and hours."

He took the role so he could work with an ensemble cast that included Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, James McAvoy, and Michael Fassbender, but the demands of the suit hindered his ability to meaningfully engage with them.

"I couldn't even see them because I couldn't move my head," Isaac recalled. "I had to sit on a specially designed saddle—because that's the only thing I could really sit on —and I would be rolled into a cooling tent in between takes. So, I just wouldn't ever talk to anybody."**

Margaret Qualley

Margaret Qualley in 'The Substance'.

Coralie Fargeat's *The Substance *is easily one of the sickest movies to earn an Oscar nomination. That success was surely satisfying for stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, both of whom spent hours being fitted for the film's grotesque prosthetics.

Moore previously told EW that her transformation could take upwards of 10 hours, plus an additional two hours of removal at the end of the day. Qualley, meanwhile, told us that shooting the film pushed her to the brink "every goddamned day."

She later opened up to the *Happy Sad Confused* podcast about the long-term effects of her prosthetics, saying the process left her with severe acne. When filming Yorgos Lanthimos' *Kinds of Kindness* (2025), in which she plays multiple roles, she made lemons out of lemonade.

"You know the character that has, like, all the acne, like, that was just my acne from the prosthetics," she said. "And I was like, 'Oh, this is actually kinda perfect. Like, I'm playing all these different characters. For one of them, we'll really use all my crazy prosthetic acne.'"

She continued, "When they're shooting up my skirt at the end, or in the beginning credits, when it's, like, the palm trees all around, and they have, like, all these long lenses from the bottom. That's just because my face was so f--ked up by that time that they couldn't, like, shoot my face anymore."**

A man in Power Armor and Aaron Moten as Maximus on 'Fallout'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

You can't adapt *Fallout* without the Brotherhood of Steel, a faction of warriors who march through the Wasteland in hulking suits of Power Armor. Aaron Moten plays a budding Squire on Amazon's adaptation of the video game series, meaning he's had several opportunities to perform under all that steel.

The actor previously told The Gamer that the suit weighs roughly 60 pounds. "For the first 15 minutes, I think, 'Yeah, this is cool, I've got this. Look, I'm moving my arms and I can dance.' And then 20 minutes have passed and I'm like, 'Why did I do all that dancing? This is really heavy, and I'm exhausted.'"

He elaborated in a chat with *Esquire*. "It's one of the greatest challenges. I do feel like my body has adjusted," he said. "You have to exaggerate everything you're doing. Like breathing, it's a shoulder exercise lifting up and down. It looks normal from outside but it's a challenge because of the weight. The weight has to exist because we need that thing to go through walls. We need it to hold up and not fall apart."**

Walton Goggins, who plays the irradiated Ghoul, also got the opportunity to shoot inside the suit. "It’s not pleasant working in the T-45. In fact, it’s extremely unpleasant," he told Cinemablend. "I thought I had a tough run with becoming the Ghoul — but there’s something so claustrophobic, almost coffin-like, about putting on that armor because you can’t move your body and you’re being pulled in two different directions. There’s gravity and the weight of the machine is pulling your legs and your arms down – and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Mentally, you have to submit to it. It’s not easy. My hat’s off to Aaron."**

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