Nuvein Magazine :: Ve Neill: The Many Faces of Fantasy

Ve Neill: The Many Faces of Fantasy by Scott Essman
Makeup artist Ve Neill has been doing landmark makeup for films for over 20 years. Responsible for many of the most famous characters in Tim Burton's movies, Neill has won three Academy Awards - for Burton's Beetlejuice and Ed Wood plus another for Mrs. Doubtfire — whilewinning several other nominations.In recent years, she has supervised the inventive period makeups for Steven Spielberg's Amistad — which included detailed looks for the slaves and distinguished historical characters. Neill also oversaw makeup for the currentfuturistic fantasy Galaxy Quest, which included an alien character designed by Stan Winston Studio, and character makeups for a Spock-like Alan Rickman and a voluptuous blond look for Sigourney Weaver.Mostnotably, she created a variety of period and character makeups for Jim Carrey and other actors inthe Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon. It goes without saying that Neill is a unique commodity inHollywood in that she equally commands the art of applying both specialized prosthetic makeups and unique character and beauty makeups, and effortlessly travels between the two worlds. Additionally, Neill has developed her own personal line of customized makeup brushes called "Ve's Favorite Brushes" which she now sells internationally. In this interview, she reflects back on her beginnings and some of her most important makeup achievements.
Early Influences I was born in Riverside, California, although I never lived there. Up until I was about 3, I lived in Culver City and then my parents moved to Granada Hills where I grew up. As a child I was always fascinated with movies and monsters and I used to love scaring the hell out of myself — I loved all the old Universal horror movies and The Outer Limits. I used to paint really horrible things on all my friends, starting with crayons, lipstick, and eyebrow pencils. My next door neighbor was Leo Lotito who was a makeup man. I used to say, "I want to do what you do when I grow up." "Of course," he always said, "yeah, sure kid," because women just weren't makeup artists back then. Maybe there was one, or two, but men did the makeup, women did the hair styling, and that is just the way it was.
First Experiences I worked with this really strange band who were dressed like aliens from space. I dyed their hair colors and did all their makeup and made all their costumes. Prosthetic makeup was really starting to be in the foreground of makeup artistry. This is when I met Steve Neill. Steve would do all the lab work and I would go to the set and do all the application. That is where I started, and I found that I was great at painting makeups. It came to me so easily, I had the patience for it, and I was really good with my attention to detail, which is something a lot of people don't have the patience for. Rick Baker used to make a joke about the fact that I could blend a dime into somebody's face because I had the patience and the wherewithal to really concentrate on the appearance. That is pretty much how it all started and it just snowballed from there.
First Films Steve and I hooked up with the infamous Charlie Band. One of my first films for Charlie was this movie called Laser Blast, which was pretty silly. My first real full-blown union movie was the first Star Trek movie. I went in as Fred Phillips assistant with his daughter, and the three of us did the show together. We did all of the principals, and that was my first real big screen credit. That is a pretty cool movie to have under your belt, breaking into the union circuit. I applied the head Klingon makeups — I actually did all the tests on all 12 or 13 of them. I got to decide on all the colorations and the way the hair was styled. I also did the three main Klingons that you see in the foreground. Then, Jana and Rick Baker both asked for me on The Incredible Shrinking Woman. I did the film Sword and the Sorcerer with Greg Cannom which was back in 1981. Then I got called in to run the department for the film the Last Starfighter. They asked me to go in and make sure all the prosthetic makeups on the aliens ran smoothly. THE LOST BOYS When I talked to the director, Joel Schumacher, who I had worked with on Incredible Shrinking Woman, he wanted thevampires to look sexy and scary and kind of ethereal. When I did the test on them, the makeups were very subtle. When you remove somebody's eyebrows they get the most bizarre look. They became really otherworldly. Also we changed where the teeth would be: we did double fangs and did them on the incisors and the tooth right in front of it; they were spooky but kind of sexy in a real weird way. It was Greg Cannom's design for those brows on The Lost Boys that has been used on just about every vampire movie since then.
BEETLEJUICE When we were doing Lost Boys, the art director, Bo Welch, came to me with a script for this movie. He said "it is right up your alley, you've got to get on the movie." I said, "okay, well how do I do that?" It turned out that the production manager had been the first assistant director on 9 to 5, which I had done. I kept calling him up and pestering him until he got me an interview with Tim Burton. Tim pretty much designs all of his characters and then you take his drawings and you go from there. I went in the office and I looked around on the walls and I said, "This is too fun." I went in to talk to him and I said, "Well what do you want to do with the character?" Tim drew a picture of Michael Keaton the way he wanted him to look — he kind of looked like a derelict that had crawled out from underneath a rock. It was real creepy looking. When we first started testing Michael Keaton's makeup, I created a look just like one in the drawing that Tim had shown me, but he was so creepy, he was too real. He didn't want him to be that unsettling — he wanted him to be funny. Tim wanted all the people in the waiting room and all the people in the afterlife to be fun and not scary as well, so we continued to test. Steve LaPorte made the bald cap and we had a wig made of pale, yellowy-green hair. We ended up using two swollen lips on his nose — one on each side of his nose to make him look like he had a broken nose. He was literally a real pale yellow, like the inside of a banana. Then, I painted the dark rings around his eyes. Everyone thought they were black, but I actually used different shades of brown and plum. Then I got the idea to put moss on him using colored foam. I put acrylic nails on him that were all gnarled and jaggedy and had ridges in them — he was just a mess. Then, of course, Steve LaPorte made some really cruddy teeth for him. Actually, Michael Keaton only worked a little over two weeks on the film. They sure got a lot of life out of him, as it were. Winning the First Oscar What was it like winning? I was scared to death. When we went in, number one, I had really stiff competition. We were up against Rick Baker for Coming to America, which had some of the most incredible makeup jobs I had ever seen. I saw those makeup jobs; they were flawless and phenomenal, but of course at that point, Rick had already won two Oscars. Scrooged was also nominated — there were some beautiful makeups in there that Tom and Bari Burman had done. As far as I was concerned, it was anybody's ball game. Nobody had ever heard of Steve or myself. When they called our names, I almost passed out. I jumped out of my seat, and I kept thinking "Why aren't the guys behind me?" because I think I ran up to the podium. It felt like I was on another planet and it was the most incredible high I had ever experienced. I got up and I don't remember seeing anything. I did not see an audience — I was blind, I was so excited.
Big Boy Caprice Makeup in DICK TRACY Doug Drexler and John Caglione set up a lab, actually in the back of Burman Industries and designed all the makeups in there. When it came time to do the Big Boy makeup they hadn't actually gotten the design of Big Boy per se because it was a character makeup that Al was going to work on himself. They hadn't sculpted anything specifically for him, like they did for Flat Top or those other characters which were full facial makeups. John asked me to go in to the makeup trailer with Al Pacino and figure out a Big Boy makeup. For three days Al and I sat around and tried on different noses and chins until we found a look that we liked, and one that Al was comfortable with. After we did that we took pictures and made the actual pieces specifically for Al. Then I did the application on him. Al Pacino was totally cool — he was great when I did the makeup. He would come in the morning and sit in my chair, I would make him up, he would fall asleep, he when he woke up, I had to paint around his eyes: the minute he looked in the mirror, he started getting right into character.
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS I think Johnny Depp really had a great deal to do with bringing that character to life. He really brought some heart and soul to it. It could have been on anybody and somebody else might have done it completely differently, but he was really great in that role. Even though Johnny spoke very little, he could really sell that empathetic character. It was really neat project to work on. Ultimately, Tim Burton designed the character, so Stan Winston and I just brought it to life. Stan had designed the makeup and I remember the first test we did. I think we basically used the forehead piece that was designed and then he had sheets of different types of scars. I just started putting scars into different areas. We just moved scars around and then of course there was the one that went through his lip which I actually put on with scar material, so it had to be constructed every day. Matthew Mungle, who was my assistant, took the vacuum form pieces of Johnny's face and he made a stencil so everyday we knew exactly where to put the little scars — we had them all numbered. Edward was supposed to real innocent, so I gave him a look almost like a clown makeup. One of my favorite colors has a real pale kind of a slightly grayish, yellow cast to it, Tuttle Shibui — that was the basic foundation. Around his eyes were charcoal and purple. On that character, I would change the configuration of the darkness around his eyes depending on the scene. It is real subtle, but you can sort of tell if you took stills of it and put them next to each other. At the end of the picture when he kills Anthony Michael Hall, I painted Edward's eyes. All of the lead characters in Tim's films have the Tim Burton look because that is the way he draws all of his characters: with pale faces and black circles around the eyes. Tim loves that; it is his signature.
BATMAN RETURNS I did the Penguin makeup. Again Tim Burton designed everything and Stan Winston sculpted the pieces and then I did all the test makeups and did all the actual application of the makeup. I designed the colors used — it was a similarthing, with Shibui and dark browns and purples around his eyes. Christopher Walken nearly had a beauty makeup on; Tim liked that look. There was also a lot going on with the Penguin's henchmen. They were all European clown designs. Our costume designer, Bob Ringwood, wanted to reference specific types of clowns, so we designed a lot of really cool, old-fashioned clown makeups. The idea was to make them look like they had been wearing the makeups forever and had never touched them up. Then, of course, Ronny Spector personally handled Michelle Pfeiffer's wonderfully stylized Catwoman makeup.
HOFFA Number one, it was just so cool to work with Jack Nicholson. I called Greg Cannom and said "here are pictures of Jimmy Hoffa, here is Jack's nose, make it so he has a nose like Jimmy Hoffa or as close as we can get to it." He took Jack's nose cast and within days, literally days, I mean that is how fast he had to pull together a full latex nose. Then I had a tooth made, a single tooth which really changed the whole shape of Jack's mouth. And then he also had little tiny plumpers that we used in the mouth. Just very subtle, but it was something he liked and it was easy to do for him. When he was really young, on Danny DeVito as well as Jack, I put lifts under their hairpieces just to pull up their face as much as I could to give them as youthful an appearance as possible. Then, as they got older, I enhanced everything that was on their faces. Of course, a lot of it was aided with the help of hairpieces which really did a great job in aging them as well. I did that picture with Yolanda Toussieng, the same hair stylist that I did all those other Tim Burton films with. Yolanda is actually the first hair stylist to have won an Oscar for actually doing hair. She won with me for Mrs. Doubtfire and Ed Wood. So I have quite a long career with Yolanda, and she and I work very well together. It is really nice to be able to have somebody that you like to work with where you can have a really copacetic relationship.
MRS. DOUBTFIRE We did all the tests up in San Francisco because that's where Robin Williams was from and that is actually where the production originated. Greg Cannom and I worked together on the first couple of tests to get the coloring of the makeup. Eventually, Greg said, "Here is a bunch of colors, have fun," so I started with Pax paint and then I stippled all the color washes on. Finished, it looked like an old woman who wore makeup. You had to figure that this character was having to do this to himself, so we didn't want it to look so realistic that this guy [Robin Williams' character] couldn't have done this to himself. This character is an actor, so he could make himself up. That was the premise that I worked from and I think we came up with a pretty realistic look for him. I wanted to make sure that it had enough depth of color because if you just slap one straight color on, it looks like a big rubber mask. We used six different shades of coloring, one layered on top of the other, so it resembled the look of skin. You could see differentiations in skin tones so that it didn't look like he was wearing a rubber mask. However, he was completely encased in rubber. The only thing that was real on him was around his eyes, because even his lips and ears were covered up with appliances. Stephan DuPuis was my assistant on Mrs. Doubtfire and I think the first few times we did the makeup, to get Robin completely ready as the Mrs. Doubtfire character, it took about four hours. That was hair, makeup and wardrobe. It took about 20 minutes to get him dressed, so I am including that in part of the character look. By the time we got finished with the film, we got it down to around two hours for hair and makeup. He was in the makeup for almost 70 days, so when you did it that many times, you were bound to get faster.
ED WOOD Rick had done a test makeup on Martin Landau. Of course, nearly all films are done in color and very few of us have to change to do a film in black-and-white; there are many differences. We put the test makeup on film and Martin looked so healthy. Tim kept saying, "I want him darker around the eyes, darker around the eyes." I'm thinking, "Oh my god, it is going to be another white guy with dark circles around his eyes!" The worse I made Martin look, the more he looked like Bela Lugosi and the more Tim liked it! Rick did, however, tease me about giving me a makeup and turning it into another white guy with dark circles around his eyes. After I had done the makeup for about a week, I really settled into a nice look for it, which was what you finally saw in the film. When you see Martin in person he was very pale shades of beiges and charcoals and blacks, so he was almost made up black and white when you saw him. He still was flesh tones, but everything was in shades that would work on black and white film because none of the flesh tone shading colors that were being used even showed up on black and white film. So it was a lot of playing around trying to make it all work, and it turned out to look really good. That makeup took about an hour and a half. He had ears, a nose, upper lip, chin and ears. It was very subtle. Also, people never really saw Bela Lugosi's teeth in a movie, so what I did was literally paint out Martin's teeth. He had clip-on plumpers that we put on him that were actually dental appliances. If you actually put a picture of Martin and Bela side by side, they really don't look anything alike, but the fact that Martin was so good in the role, and the resemblance that Rick created so that Martin didn't have to be completely encased in rubber was just absolutely stunning.
COBB When I started the film Cobb with Tommy Lee Jones, I was already scheduled to do the next Batman film as department head. So I knew going in that I had to get along well with Tommy Lee because Batman's director, Joel Schumacher, was going to ask him to be Two-Face. On Cobb, Tommy had said to me, "Ve, you have an hour to make me look 80 years old." I said, "I tell youwhat Tommy, we'll see how old you look in an hour." So we shaved his head, did a full facial and neck stretch-and-stipple makeup on him, painted him in a half-hour. Then I moved over to the hair chair with the hairdresser, and she and I painted all the hair white into his hair and applied the wig and we got him out of the trailer in an hour. I think one day we even did it in 45 minutes and totally blew him away.
BATMAN FOREVER Rick Baker designed the Two-Face makeup for Tommy Lee. That was really cool because it was my first experience with a makeup that was first designed with a computer drawing. I did the initial test on Tommy Lee with Rick, who mixed all the colors. I took some products over to Rick's because we wanted to try some luminescent powders inside the makeup. We wanted Two-Face to look really messed up, but we didn't want him to be so scary that you couldn't look at him. So the idea of the vibrant colors was something that director Joel Schumacher and I had suggested. I tweaked the color placement slightly because the character was always in the dark or they lit him with red, so he was just looking solid pink. Rick had done such a great sculpting job on it I really wanted to enhance the three dimensional quality of the makeup. For instance, I made sure that the veins were really hot pink, and then the recessed areas in his face were dark luminescent blue and purple. We used this beautiful cobalt blue luminescent powder, so the makeup was very colorful and pleasant to look at. We really had to compensate for the sets being so dark by painting a very contrasting makeup.
BATMAN AND ROBIN As department head, I created a makeup for Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and we pre-tested the Mr. Freeze character to get a look for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wanted him bald like he was in the cartoon. Director Joel Schumacher and I then figured out what we wanted. We waited to get Mr. Freeze's helmet design from wardrobe; that absolutely dictated what his head was going to be like. When we were doing our original tests, we tried varying hair colors and created luminescent skin qualities. Jeff Dawn designed the final Mr. Freeze makeup. There was always so much stuff going on in terms of makeup in all of the Batman movies. We also had a great time designing all the motorcycle gangs and the Day-Glo gang in the sewers. I hired Brian Penikas to do the look for 'Bain,' Uma's henchman, and he did a fabulous job of airbrushing his entire torso.
Straight vs. Prosthetic Makeup Straight beauty makeup for me is not very challenging. But, on Batman Forever, I had Debbie Mazar in the 'Spice' makeup, which was quite elaborate. I blocked out her eyebrows, added extensive eye makeup, and altered her skin color slightly – that was a real challenge, especially at 4AM! Also, a straight beauty makeup on a woman who isn't particularly beautiful has its challenges and then becomes a corrective makeup. For men, if it's a character makeup, that could be something totally different. There could be unique challenges in that, especially if you are using facial hair and paint techniques to alter his look. Working with Actors That is what I am good at — doing the application, being on the set, and making the department run smoothly. That is what I have always wanted to do. However, there is not as much money in it as having my own lab. Ten or fifteen years ago, everybody asked, "Why don't you start up your own lab?" I said, "Why would I want to do that? There are so many good labs." I have absolutely no desire now. I like the fact that I get to work with all different styles of makeup artists from the different labs. I have worked with all the best ones, so I couldn't ask for anything more. Women in Makeup I think as long as there are women that want to do it, there will be a place for them. They just have to keep up with theirtechnology, keep abreast of everything that is going on, and make sure to practice. I test my makeups before every movie I do, and I never stop learning. There is always something new. In most of the movies I do, I hook up with male actors. Julia Roberts has asked for me many times, but I have never been available. I'm interested in doing character work, and men do more character work than women do. One woman I never got bored working with was Lily Tomlin because she was always 10 different people. I suppose because of my own film history, I don't get requested by many actresses because perhaps they feel that all I do is special makeup. That's really too bad because I do killer beauty work. Neill's Future in Makeup The part that I think is great about my career is the fact that I can do everything. A lot of makeup people can't do everything and I can do it all — everything from beauty makeup to creatures and monsters. I think I have a nice broad spectrum of the craft, and if you want to be a well-rounded makeup artist that is what you have to do. I have little desire to follow an actor around and do them exclusively right now. That doesn't mean that in three years, if I get sick of what I'm doing, and Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson and maybe Robin Williams or whoever will say, "Just do my movies." I will say "Sure, I will wait for you." I might do that. Just recently, Johnny Depp asked me to do three movies with him in Europe, and if I hadn't been hired to do another project, I would have gone. I just feel so ecstatic about the fact that being a makeup artist is something that I have wanted to do ever since I was a child. Now, I'm good at it, people like my work, and I make good money. I have absolutely nothing to complain about — I have a great life and a great career, and I owe a lot of thanks to many different people for showing me things and helping me when nobody else would do it. At first, I just fought and faked my way through. On the first 10 movies I did, they said, "Well can you do this, that, and the other?" I would say "Oh yeah, yeah," and then I would say to myself, "Oh shit!" and I would have to go and look it up in a book or I would call Rick Baker. He would tell me how to do it over the phone. I would think, "Okay, it is kind of like cooking, I guess; if you know what it tastes like, you can make it. So, if you know what it looks like, you can make it look that way." Now I have it down, I love what I do, and I'm not going to stop just yet.
Note: Since this interview, Neill has also worked on a range of additional recent projects, including the creation of the Wicked Witch for 1998's Tribute to the WIZARD OF OZ and the Bride of Frankenstein for the 2000 Tribute to JACK PIERCE. Her recent films include Gattaca, Stigmata, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. She also wrapped Blow starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz and headed the makeup department for Steven Spielberg's new film A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) which shot in the summer and fall of 2000. Please contact this article's author, Scott Essman, at scottessman@yahoo.com