Christopher Tucker

For other people named Christopher Tucker, see Christopher Tucker (disambiguation).

Christopher Tucker is a British make-up artist for theatre and film. He specializes in the creation of prosthetic make-up for horror films. Among his notable works are the make-up effects for The Elephant Man, The Company of Wolves and the stage musical The Phantom of the Opera.

Career

Tucker was born in Hertford, attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and began experimenting with artificial noses when he was asked to perform in the opera Rigoletto. The results were well received, and in 1974 he abandoned a career in opera and became a full-time make-up artist. He works from an eighteenth-century manor house in Berkshire, and is assisted by his partner Sinikka Ikaheimo.

Tucker's earliest credited work is the make-up for the 1970 film of Julius Caesar, starring Charlton Heston and Sir John Gielgud. He was also responsible for aging the characters in the BBC series I, Claudius.

In 1980, Tucker was hired to create the prosthetics that would transform John Hurt into the hideously deformed Joseph Merrick in David Lynch's film The Elephant Man. According to his website, "The head had 15 different sections, some of them overlapping never done before [sic], made in foam and silicone rubber. It took seven hours to apply." An appreciation of the work involved led to the creation of the Best Make-up category at the Academy Awards run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was first awarded in 1981.

In the early 1980s, at the prompting of photographer Jay Myrdal, he fashioned the prosthetic which considerably enhanced the natural endowments of porn star Daniel Arthur Mead, who later gained notoriety under his pseudonym, Long Dong Silver. Myrdal commented that Tucker “normally wouldn’t have taken the job, but he was amused by the idea of making a cock…”

In 1983, he transformed Terry Jones into the fantastically obese Mr Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

In 1984, he developed original forms of werewolf transformation in The Company of Wolves, in which a man is seen to tear his own skin off, after which his features elongate as he becomes a wolf, and in which a wolf emerges from another man's throat. Tucker attempted to create sequences in which men turned into wolves, rather than turning into creatures which were wolf-like, and the skin-tearing sequence was achieved by the actor initially removing a latex prosthesis from his own face, and as the transformation progressed, using three dummy figures, called Bert 1, 2 and 3.

In 1986, he created the prosthetics for Michael Crawford in the musical adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

His most recent credited work is prosthetics designer for Amitabh Bachchan's character in the 2005 Indian film Black.

Awards

Tucker won the BAFTA and Academy Awards for best make-up for 1983's Quest for Fire.

He was also the subject for a TV documentary called Skintricks made in 1988 for Amsterdam TV. The documentary was made at the time that A company of Wolves was being produced, and featured behind the scenes footage of the make-up process. It included interviews with the actor Ronald Pickup, John Hurt, talking about his make-up for The Elephant Man, and Terry Jones talking about the make-up for Mr Creosote in the Monty Python film.

Bibliography

References

• Official website