Kazu Hiro is an expert at making famous people look like other famous people.
It’s a talent the prosthetic makeup and hair designer honed through decades of working in the film industry. After starting his career working in special-effects makeup and contributing his craft to various sci-fi/fantasy and comedy films, Hiro has largely focused on the biographical-drama genre in his past few films.
Through “Darkest Hour,” “Bombshell” and “Maestro,” he has picked up three Oscar nominations and two wins for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, turning Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill, Charlize Theron into Megyn Kelly and Bradley Cooper into Leonard Bernstein. Now, as Dwayne Johnson enters the ring for his own dramatic turn, Hiro puts his skills to use on a new challenge: turning The Rock into MMA fighter Mark Kerr.
“It’s not just about the makeup,” Hiro said. This philosophy drives his work as he attempts to augment actors’ features without hiding their performances. When he met Johnson, Hiro created a 3D model of the actor out of a scan and lifecast. After making a 3D printout, he began developing two versions of Johnson’s makeup — one that rendered the star “as close as possible to Mark Kerr” and another, subtler version that would “give the essence of Mark Kerr on Dwayne’s face.” Wanting the performance to come through and fearing that any mishaps during a fight scene would require extensive corrections that cut into production time, Hiro elected the subtler option. For him, it’s important that the makeup remain “a part of the storytelling” and fit seamlessly into the narrative.
A lot of changes, both understated and explicit, went into transforming Johnson into Kerr. Johnson’s eyes, eyebrows, nose and body scarring were all altered to help bring his appearance closer to Kerr’s without fully transforming the actor’s own visage. One of the more notable changes was to cover Johnson’s often-bald head with the wigs he wears for the majority of the film. (In one late scene, Hiro punched hair through a bald cap so Johnson, as Kerr, could shave his head.)
“An important element of likeness is how audiences feel at a glance and how people recognize the difference or likeness between two different people,” Hiro said. “The hairline shape and how low the hairline is will also decide what they are looking at. That is the kind of element I can play with to bring the likeness closer.”
Once Hiro turned Johnson into Kerr, his work was far from over. “The Smashing Machine” may be a biographical drama, but it’s also a fighting movie that involves a number of intimate injuries and physical effects. Near the end of the film, a close-up shows Kerr getting a gash stitched shut, with practical effects depicting every gory detail. Earlier, a lengthy sequence involves the fighter injecting himself with drugs as he battles addiction — a moment Hiro said was achieved with a fake prosthetic arm on top of Johnson’s actual arm, loaded with blood to create the desired effect.
If the blood made you squeamish, don’t worry: You’re not alone. “I usually avoid jobs with injury and blood stuff because I don’t like it myself,” Hiro said. “Particularly, I don’t enjoy bloody gore stuff, so I don’t do horror films. I don’t watch fighting, either.” But Johnson’s passion for taking on this role pulled Hiro into the project. “What most of the actors I work with say is ‘Every morning I look in the mirror, there’s a new me as a character already there,’” he said. “It really helps them to become that character, too. At the same time, I need a great actor to make my work work, so I just kind of provide a vehicle for them. A vehicle needs a good driver.”
The legendary makeup artist started his career on a slate of genre films and blockbusters with celebrated prosthetics work: among them, Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy.” Soon after, Hiro picked up a pair of Oscar nominations for effects-heavy comedies “Click” and “Norbit.”
He has moved on from genre pictures, finding more meaning in biographical projects. “I had a hard childhood, so I always feared human beings,” he said. “As kind of a self-protection, I started to study. This person in front of me: What are they thinking? What’s in their mind below the surface? What’s going on? Just studying them. That became a fascination. I started to study people, and that combined with this job.”
This story first ran in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
