◄ IMDb Polls
Poll: Man! You Don’t Look Like Yourself or Who Would Win a Lon Chaney Award
For those who don’t know who Lon Chaney was, he was a famous silent film star known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” because he was an expert at makeup and created his own character makeup. But more importantly for this poll, his makeup was so complete that you could not recognize his face. The following is a list of actors/actresses who wore makeup for a role that you couldn’t recognize their face. And there are some characters who appear in multiple films where makeup is required — like the Joker or Frankenstein’s monster. Who is the most unrecognizable?
The best part is that since the IMDb always print the names of the people in the images, I don’t have to write the name for each entry. But I will have an IMDb link to a picture of how the actor looks without makeup. And nowhere in the film is their real face is shown except for Mel Brooks and Eddie Murphy who did multiple roles in their own films like “Coming To America” or “Spaceballs” or “Wizard of Oz”. One entry per actor.
If you know anybody else who had a makeover of the worst or weird kind for a film, the makeup chair is right over here.
Make Your Choice
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Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour (2017)
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Tony Randall in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)
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Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931)
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James Arness in The Thing from Another World (1951)
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Fred Gwynne in The Munsters (1964)
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Cesar Romero in Batman (1966)
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Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
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Peter Cushing in Space: 1999 (1975)
Even though he played Professor Van Helsing in all the Hammer horror films, most remember him as Grand Moff Tarken in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). -
Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride (1987)
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Billy Crystal and Carol Kane in The Princess Bride (1987)
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Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz (1939)
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Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz (1939)
How he looked at the time without the makeup - on the left - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/mediaviewer/rm3987536897/?ft0=name&fv0=nm0481618&ft1=image_type&fv1=still_frame -
Dom DeLuise in Spaceballs (1987)
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Mel Brooks in Spaceballs (1987)
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Eddie Murphy in Coming to America (1988)
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Arsenio Hall in Coming to America (1988)
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Helena Bonham Carter in Planet of the Apes (2001)
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"Planet Of The Apes" Roddy McDowall 1968 20th Century Fox
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"Planet Of The Apes" Kim Hunter 1968 20th Century Fox
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Rebecca Romijn-Stamos stars as Mystique
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James Cagney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
He is playing Lon Chaney as Chaney was filming He Who Gets Slapped (1924). https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000010/mediaviewer/rm914331648/ -
Tim Curry in Legend (1985)
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James Stewart, Emmett Kelly, and Squeaky in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
For the youngsters who don’t know, the man on the right is the world’s most famous clown in history, Emmett Kelly. The man on the left wears the greasepaint throughout the whole movie. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000071/mediaviewer/rm4020676608/ -
Ron Perlman in Beauty and the Beast (1987)
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Claude Paré and Bill Skarsgård in It (2017)
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Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder (2008)
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Louis Gossett Jr. in Enemy Mine (1985)
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Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
This is a picture of how he looked two years earlier in a film called I, Claudius (1937) - it is closer than that profile picture. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028723/mediaviewer/rm4135259136/?ft0=name&fv0=nm0001452&ft1=image_type&fv1=still_frame -
Frank Langella in Masters of the Universe (1987)
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John Hurt in The Elephant Man (1980)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000457/mediaviewer/rm4173760256/ (suggested by Mariojacobs) -
Joel Grey and Fred Ward in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)
The guy on the right: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001297/mediaviewer/rm1227070208/ (Suggested by Mariojacobs) -
Warwick Davis in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001116/mediaviewer/rm1394968576/. This man has been to the makeup chair more times than almost all of the people on this list. He has played multiple roles in the Star Wars Saga and Harry Potter Films. Sometimes within the same film. -
Peter Dinklage in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
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Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000196/mediaviewer/rm4021458688/ (Suggested by Pencho15)
