10 movie star transformations that will make your jaw drop

published 21 September 2024

From heart-throb to mob-blob, Colin Farrell’s transformation into Oswald ‘The Penguin’ Cobblepot in 2022’s The Batman was a sight to behold. The Irish Hollywood megastar was all-but unrecognisable as the infamous comic book villain, giving the iconic crime lord a grounded new look in Matt Reeves’ gritty caped crusader reboot.

Farrell piled on the pounds, thinned out the hair line and, thanks to a slathering of latex prosthetics, ditched his handsome good looks for a scarred, slimy and sinister take on the rogues gallery regular:

Farrell is back on the streets of Gotham this week in an all-new Batman spin-off show — HBO’s ‘The Penguin’ is streaming on HBO (Sky Atlantic / Now), and catalogues the rise of icy-cool mobster.

With Farrell sitting for four hours in make-up each day before filming as the Penguin, we thought it was time to shine the Bat signal on 10 other incredible cinematic makeovers that silver screen stars have undergone (or endured!) over the years.

From comic book creeps to historical heroes, cast your vote on the most unbelievable transformations below…

The 10 best movie makeovers

We had to double-check this one, so unexpected and unbelievable as it is. Steven Spielberg’s 1991 Peter Pan sequel, Hook, is chock a-block full of yo-ho-ho-ing pirates and grog swilling cut-throats. But when Dustin Hoffman’s Captain Hook lays down the law on his unruly crew, it’s an unrecognisable Glenn Close as the pirate Gutless who suffers a grisly punishment. Bearded and bawling, Gutless is thrown into a chest, and served up as as a snack for a series of scorpions. A memorable scene, but you’d be forgiven for questioning which star it is headed for Davy Jones’ locker.

There’s added pressure when an actor takes on the role of a well-documented historical figure — it’s not difficult to find footage of and audio recordings of the wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and so the performance can be much more easily assessed, and potentially mocked. But Gary Oldman’s take on the British bulldog is note perfect. Both stately and eccentric, Oldman’s Churchill is believably engaging — as well as believably rotund. Hours in the makeup chair see Oldman add decades to his age, inches to his waistline… and lose inches of his hairline, too. A well-deserved Oscar win was Oldman’s reward. Gary Oldman can also be unrecognizably seen in 2001’s Hannibal as Mason Verger, a man left horribly disfigured by Dr Hannibal Lecter’s cannibal cruelty.

At the height of his powers, Eddie Murphy was untouchable when it came to creating comedy characters. Though his best-known transformation is as the entire engorged Klump family in The Nutty Professor series, he is at the top of his game in Coming to America, playing the bickering Clarence and Saul in the barber shop, and the ‘soul glo’ showman Randy Watson. Murphy’s never been funnier — but the prosthetic work here is so good that you may not have realised just how many gags he’s personally delivering.

A star-making role for Charlize Theron, the story of Aieleen Wuornos is as tragic as it is brutal. You can’t take your eyes off the usually-glamorous South African actress for one moment of Monster — the real-life story of a sex worker-turned-serial killer. Theron is enveloped by Wuornos’s volatility and unpredictability, and her convincing performance is only heightened by expert make-up work that gives her an uncanny resemblance to the murderer. It rightfully earned Theron an Oscar.

The androgynous Tilda Swinton has regularly upended expectations around gender roles in her Hollywood performances, but her appearance in 2018’s creepy Suspiria remake saw her battling the forces of time itself to take on the role of Dr. Klemperer — as well as cheekily attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of viewers with the way she was credited. As well as holding a starring role as the uncompromising Madame Blanc, the British actress is completely unrecognisable as the old doctor Klemperer beneath many layers of ageing prosthetics. When the credits roll, the deception continues — Swinton is not credited as Klemperer, with the role instead assigned to the enigmatic ‘Lutz Ebersdorf’ alias instead...

It takes some skill to take a figure as tragic as that of John Merrick, Victorian London’s so-called ‘Elephant Man’, and portray him as anything but the sideshow attraction he was so cruelly made to be in life. But under the expert direction of David Lynch, John Hurt delivers the most powerful performance of his career, revealing Merrick (who is thought to have suffered from Proteus syndrome) as the warm, erudite, and dignified man he truly was. A spectacular performance, an unforgettable film, and an unimaginable transformation.

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Gerald Lynch is the Editor-in-Chief of Shortlist, keeping careful watch over the site's editorial output and social channels. He's happiest in the front row of a gig for a band you've never heard of, watching 35mm cinema re-runs of classic sci-fi flicks, or propping up a bar with an old fashioned in one hand and a Game Boy in the other.