Nicolas Cage spent eight hours in makeup preparing for ‘Renfield’
In his latest film Renfield, Nicolas Cage admitted to spending hours in a makeup chair to get his look exactly right. The supernatural horror comedy stars Cage as Dracula working alongside Nicolas Hoult, Awkwafina, and Ben Schwartz.
For one of the scenes, Dracula gets severely injured, which involved Cage spending eight hours in a makeup chair applying all of the scarrings. When crafting the look of Dracula, Cage gave thanks to the makeup crew for their hard work, telling Entertainment Weekly, “There were, I think, four different looks. But the first look was eight hours in the chair, it was literally 20 pounds of makeup, the body as well as the face”.
Though Cage admitted not enjoying the long hours sitting in the chair that long, he admitted that he wanted to do justice to the character just like actor Lon Chaney Sr had put his all into horror films like The Phantom of the Opera.
Working with Chris McKay on Dracula’s different looks, Cage was emphatic about letting his eyes do the acting, going on to say, “The good news for me on that was they still managed to let the eyes communicate. It was like, I just want to make sure the emotion still comes through, so maybe don’t do the contacts so much, so that even though I’m under all this, you still feel the emotional content”.
Renfield arrives in theatres on April 14th, 2023.
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