Nominee Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou on Hair & Makeup in Sci-Fi Films

By Mandy Cordero 02-24-15

Actors in “Guardians of the Galaxy” spent hours in hair and makeup every day transforming into otherworldly beings. Stylists painted them blue, shaved them bald and glued on tons of prosthetics.

Hair & makeup nominee Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou explains the intricate process of creating an entirely fictional world.

“We had to use our imagination and different techniques. One of the women, the one with the really big red sort of mohawk that goes to the floor, we put a bald cap on her to take her hair line back. That just gave her a much bigger forehead and made her look much more alien,” Yianni-Georgiou tells WEBN.

The most noticeable characters were the ones with colorful skin and extravagant hairstyles. Benicio Del Toro spent over six hours in the chair for the first day because the stylists had to bleach his dark hair completely white. Yianni-Georgiou clarifies; this doesn’t mean that the more humanistic main character didn’t spend just as much time in hair and makeup.

“With Chris Pratt everyone thinks there’s nothing there, but we did quite a lot on him as well. We really chiseled his face by giving him sideburns and let him grow his beard a little bit to give it a different shape,” says Yianni-Georgiou.

Yianni-Georgiou’s team wanted to separate Pratt from his famous character in Parks and Recreation. Pratt himself even lost over 60 pounds to change from his goofy TV role. Even more unrecognizable was actor Lee Pace. He played the role of the film’s antagonist Ronan the Accuser.

Stylists painted him from head to toe in blue paint and even detailed veins on his body.

“We also gave him organic mouth dye, so that when he opened his mouth, because he’s really evil it would be like a black hole,” says Yianni-Georgiou. “We covered his teeth with little teeth covers, to get rid of the white.”