How Accurately Does Hollywood Age Actors?

Guy Pearce in Prometheus

Ridley Scott depicts interplanetary space exploration in impressive detail in his movie Prometheus. He fails, however, to convincingly transform 44-year-old actor Guy Pearce into an old man. Is it possible that Scott’s creative team knows something we don’t about the future of Pearce’s face? It’s too soon to know. In the meantime, we’ve paired up makeup artists’ attempts to age actors with photos of the actors when they actually turned that age. Of course, makeup artists are trying to age the character, not the actor—but it’s still fun to see how the wrinkles, bloating, and balding compare.

20^{CREDIT: th} Century Fox; Ian Gavan/Getty Images.
William Shatner in Star Trek

In the Star Trek episode “The Deadly Years,” which originally aired in 1967, the Enterprise crew is infected by a disease that causes them to age hundreds of times faster than normal. By the end of the episode, Captain Kirk is around 75, looking quite crusty, as if his face might crumble to pieces. This required a great deal of makeup and hair dye for Shatner, who was only 36 at the time. Had the Star Trek makeup team wanted a more realistic look—and been able to see into the future—they should have plumped up his face and kept a bit more of the brown. At right, he appears in 2006, at age 75.
Screengrab from CREDIT: Star Trek; Michael Buckner/Getty Images.
Crispin Glover in Back to the Future

Glover, then 20 years old, had to cover a wide age range for his role in Back to the Future, playing George McFly at ages 17 and 47. At the time, critics were very impressed by the film’s aging techniques. “The makeup that transforms their ages is just short of miraculous,” stated a Christian Science Monitor review in 1985. Now in his late 40s, Glover is faring better than papa McFly was at that age. Here he is pictured on April 22, two days after turning 48 and looking relatively wrinkle free.
Screen Grab fromCREDIT: Back to the Future; Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival.
Tom Wilson in Back to the Future II

The role of Biff Tannen required Tom Wilson to play the 18-year-old, 47-year-old, and 77-year-old version of himself. Given that he was 30 when Back to the Future II came out, this requires a wide range of aging (and de-aging) techniques. Though his career perhaps has not taken off the way he hoped, he should feel good about one thing: He was far more attractive in his 40s than the character who made him almost famous, maintaining his hair and the definition in his face. (At right, pictured in 2005, he is 46.) Avoiding the mutton chops has also helped
Screengrab fromCREDIT: Back to the Future II; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.
Orson Welles in Citizen Kane

Orson Welles was just 25 when Citizen Kane was released. Despite his youth, he managed to convincingly portray newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane in a movie that spanned the character’s lifetime. When Kane utters his famous dying word, “rosebud,” he is 78 years old. On the 50^th anniversary of the film, the Boston Globe praised the makeup, calling it “pimple-precise, aging the characters with an uncanny inevitability of features.” Are they really so inevitable? Here is the actual Welles, at age 70, a few months before his death, looking plumper and hairier than 78-year-old Kane.
Screengrab from YouTube; Derrick Ceryrac/ Getty Images.
Diane Keaton The Godfather III

If the aging job on Keaton, left, looks startlingly normal and believable, perhaps that’s because the jump between mid-40s (Keaton’s actual age at the time) and mid-50s (the age of the fictional Kay Adams by the time of the third Godfather installment) didn’t require drastic measures. At right, you can see what Keaton looked like at 55. She has less gray and a few more wrinkles than Kay, but the shape of her face is largely the same.

Screengrab from CREDIT: The Godfather III. Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night

Crystal made his directorial debut at age 44 with Mr. Saturday Night and also starred in the film, portraying comedian Buddy Young Jr. at various stages of his life. To get the right look for the aging Young, makeup artist Peter Montagna made a cast of Crystal’s face and a replica of his head. From there he sculpted a bust and created latex pieces that could be applied to various parts of the actor’s face. The careful application of these pieces took five hours every morning. Asked by Playboy in 1992 whether this vision of his older self scared him, he offered, "Oh, that's a nut I chew on a lot. Because it's not all that different from now." Though Crystal is still six years away from becoming a septuagenarian, recent photos of him suggest that the one thing the meticulous makeup artists failed to foresee was the fall of Crystal’s chin. Here he is pictured in April of this year.
Screengrab from CREDIT: Mr. Saturday Night; Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images.
Gloria Stuart in Titanic

Stuart, who played centenarian Rose Calvert in James Cameron’s Titanic, was 86 when she appeared in the memorable role (making her the oldest person to ever be nominated for an Oscar). At right, she is pictured at age 100 in real life, in July of 2010, looking strikingly similar to her character in Titanic. The Hollywood veteran died a few months later.
Screengrab fromCREDIT: Titanic; Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images.
F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus

When Abraham played Antonio Salieri in Amadeus in 1984 he was 45 years old. He ages dramatically during the movie, the lines in his face deepening and dark sports emerging as he moves into his 70s. His transformation required the talents of Dick Smith, considered one of the greatest Hollywood makeup artists of all time. Smith is known for revolutionizing the field, finding ways to layer latex and to fine-tune texture and shading techniques to create more realistic skin. Abraham’s brow has less visible wrinkles than the elderly Salieri’s did, but the evolution of his complexion, in particular, is startlingly similar to Smith’s vision of an aged Salieri. (Smith won an Oscar for his efforts in Amadeus.) To the right, Abraham, a few days from his 72^nd birthday in 2011.
Still from CREDIT: Amadeus; Cindy Orb/Getty Images.