Exploring Orson Welles’ bizarre obsession with his nose
The late thespian and filmmaker Orson Welles is rightly hailed as one of the greatest figures in the history of drama and cinema. A dextrous talent, he was afraid of no subject matter. His 1941 title Citizen Kane is hailed as one of the most significant features ever released, with its impact on culture manifold and everlasting.
As was only natural for someone of Welles’ standing, Citizen Kane was not the only classic that he contributed. The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil are just a handful of the exemplary moments he gave us, standing the test of time like a monument of old, something that cannot be said for the works of many of his most esteemed contemporaries.
Unsurprisingly, Welles was an unwavering iconoclast, and his colourful character coursed through every title that was luckily enough to have him. From The Lady from Shanghai to The Transformers: The Movie and even the game-changing radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, Welles’ spirit was indomitable, making his life and career so incredible that it is best described as an odyssey.
Despite being such an icon, Welles was still a human after all, and he came complete with a lifelong insecurity just like the rest of us mere mortals. It transpires that the director hated his nose so much that throughout his career, he became the most famous advocate of the prosthetic nose, wearing many of them in a variety of his works. Ever wondered why Orson Welles’ face seemed to change so much? Now you know why.
In 2017, The Criterion Collection released a short eight-minute documentary about Welles’ penchant for fake noses, aptly titled On the Nose. “In most of the films that I appear in, I put on a false nose,” Welles says in a featured recording. “Usually as large as I can find.”
Elsewhere, in the famed English auteur Lewis Gilbert’s 2010 memoir, All My Flashbacks, he remembered directing Welles in the 1959 drama Ferry to Hong Kong, and a time when he ordered a makeup test for the actor. However, it did not go to plan, with Welles quickly revealing that he sorted his own makeup.
Welles told him that he didn’t do tests, and after Gilbert explained that it was for makeup, the American actor responded, “No, that’s not for me.” He explained: “I have one problem with my face – my nose. It’s too small and I always fix that myself.”
Asked how he fixed it, Welles responded: “It’s all arranged”.
He continued: “I had a parcel sent ahead specially. Everything for making a false nose is in it.”
The Citizen Kane star would promptly fix himself his fake nose every day on set, with varying results. “Some shots had the nose tilting upwards; others had it tilting downwards,” Gilbert remembered. “Occasionally, it went sideways and in one shot it was suddenly big and hooked.”
