Are those movie masks for real where A impersonates B?

Factual Questions
1

You know the kind I mean. At the intro of Mission Impossible, we see Tom Cruise, who suddenly hooks a hand beneath his jaw and tears of his face, which turns out to be one of those vinyl masks. Beneathe the mask, he’s somebody totally different.

I have seen Mrs Doubsfire, where Robin williams wears one of thsoe masks and can seriously pass for an old lady, and even still has facial mobility. So I suppose it can be done, to a degree.

Given that the guy wearing the mask has a small face, small nose etc, could he really pass convincingly for someone else if he wore a mask?

2

On film, sure: see Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Lists of Adrian Messenger. In reality…some makeup can be pretty convincing, but not just a latex mask that you’re going to slap in in ten seconds. Plus, if you get up close and intimate with anyone they’re going to wonder why you’ve invested so heavily in Botox treatments that your face has no laugh or frown lines.

I remember seeing The Saint movie a few years ago (the disappointing Val Kilmer vehicle) and wondering why Elisabeth Shue–supposedly this brilliant physicist–doesn’t notice the fact that Templar is clearly wearing a wig even though she’s tending to a self-induced cut (his bizarre and curiously successful attempt to worm his way into her heart) that is right at his hairline. Of course, she also thinks that she’s discovered cold fusion, so…

I also remember the miniseries “V”, with the lizard-headed aliens invading the Earth, who disguised themselves with latex-type masks, even though their lizard-heads are clearly much larger than human heads. They also seemed to not really like their natural appearance much because they were always wearing the masks even on-board their ship. Weird…

Stranger

3

I seriously doubt that Robin Williams wore a single vinyl mask in Mrs. Doubtfire. (I haven’t seen it) Most Hollywood makeup – especially the convincing stuff – is a polymer appliance that’s glued to the face in many places, and usually made of several pieces. For years the standard was latex “appliances”, but they’ve been getting more exotic in recent years, with gel-filled appliances and other materials. As a kid who grew up on Dick Smith’s Monster Make-Up Handbook, I’ve been doping this stuff for years, myself. You need something like this if you’re going to simulate reality with an appearance that can move and show expression. Appliances respond to muscle movem,ents. Vinyl or even latex masks don’t.

Even a GOOD makeup job is going to be visible at close range, though, after a while. Any kind of mask is going to be instantly obvious unless the people looking at it are far away or it’s dark or something. Harlan Elison used to rage against TV writers and producers who could have a villain pull off a mask at the end of the show and reveal a completely different face. He felt it was insulting the audience to believe that they’d buy such an impossibility. But I’ve noticed that people will accept the silliest of TV conventions. heck, Mission Impossible had a make-up guy (Rollin Hand, played by Martin Landau) in every damned episode.

4

It’s a difficult question to answer.

Is it possible for someone, just wearing a mask (made of latex or whatever), to successfully disguise their own appearance without it being obvious they are wearing a mask? I don’t think so, and I’ve never seen it done or heard of it being done successfully. People can disguise their own features to conceal their own identity, but this is not done by wearing a mask.

Is it possible for someone to successfully disguise their own appearance using the services of a special make up FX team? Yes. The process involves taking a life cast of the person’s face, then building a ‘new face’ by creating a rubber, foam or latex mask or set of mask pieces which fit on to the life cast. The mask (or these separate pieces) are then glued on to the person’s face, and everything is blended together using several layers of make-up followed by a very careful process of surface painting, often inlcuding an ‘air brush’ type of applicator to produce subtle tones and a very high level of surface detail and variation (because real skin is never completely pure or even in tone).

That this is possible has been demonstrated many times. There was a British TV show a few years ago called “Celebrity Swaps”, in which some very well-known people underwent this process. The celebs were transformed as above (a process that could take weeks to complete), and then met and socialised with people who knew them in real life, to see if their friends would spot who they were. In most cases, they got away with it. In one case, a famous model and TV presenter (Melinda Messenger) was not even recognised by her own mother. In another case, a man called James Hewitt, easily one of the most recognisable people in Britain through his association with the late Princess Di, passed completely un-noticed even when among people who had known him most of his life.

Note that this is not quite as specified in the OP, in that the transformation does not usually involve a single-piece ‘mask’ as such, but several prosthetic pieces which are blended together. Also, there is much more to the transformation than just the mask or mask elements - there are several other make-up processes involved. It should also be mentioned that in order to disguise themselves, the celebs also had professionally designed and applied wigs, clothing and costume advice, acting lessons and lessons in how to moderate their voice and speech patterns.

Note also that asking if person A can hide their own identity is quite distinct from asking whether person A can successfully impersonate person B, using a mask or special FX make-up or anything else. I have not heard of anyone doing this successfully, except in cases where the people who were fooled didn’t know what person B looks like. In other words, it’s easy to forge papers and official documents and pretend I am the Ambassador From Timbuctoo, provided the people I am trying to fool don’t know what the real Ambassador looks like.

In the original ‘Mission Impossible’ TV show, the characters often impersonated other people by using single piece latex masks that they could put on or take off at will, and this worked even among people who knew the impersonated person very well. This was, of course, fiction, and it was plainly implausible. There was often a laughable disparity between the size and shape of the heads of the two people, so that even a very good mask would not have been usable in this way.

So, the short and sweet answer to the OP is: no, it can’t be done the way they do it in the movies with a simple ‘rip off’ mask. Modern special FX make-up can enable you to disguise who you are, even if you are sitting among your best friends, but this isn’t the same as successfully impersonating another person.

5

I got to meet Gord Smith who did the special make-up effects for a lot of Oliver Stone movies (prosthetics mostly.) I got the see Jeremy Iron’s face lying on a table. He had developed a very cool type of prosthetic that was liquid-filled, so when actors wore age make-up it would move with their faces reasonably convincingly. You could even play with your old man jowls, pulling and stretching the “skin” and it looked like the real thing. Actors’ expressions and range of facial mvement was vastly improved over ye olde foam rubber from the days of yore.

HOWEVER, while that worked for actors who were wearing age make-up to look like themselves decades later, it didn’t work for people who were wearing other people’s faces. For example, a stunt double wore Iron’s face. It looked great until the stunt person tried to talk or move his facial muscles in any way. The stunt double’s real musculature did not line up with the bones and musculature of Jeremy Iron’s faux face. The cheekbones, lips, and brow below did not line up with the cheeks, lips, and brow above.

A full mask on someone’s face still looked like a rubber mask when they talked or moved significantly. He said that some choice prosthetic elements were usually better than a full mask. Like giving Anthony Hopkins a different nose and ears made him look convincingly like Nixon, whereas a full mask would have looked like a rubber mask.

Now that was a major innovation about 15 years ago. I would presume that Mr. Smith has developed much cooler stuff since then, however, the principle remains the same: if the architecture of your face doesn’t line up, no matter how great the “skin”, it won’t look right. Your muscles just won’t move the right parts of the mask when you talk or try to wiggle your eyebrows.

If you just want a decoy to stand there and smile and wave, if would work though.

ETA: You could probably successfully disguise yourself so people don’t recognise you too. But too effectively look like someone else would be near impossible unless you looked a fair bit like the person form the start.

Just suspend your disbelief and pretend the V aliens could pull it off.

6

Sure they will. It’s called willing suspension of disbelief and if you’re not prepared to go along with it you rob yourself of many great movies and shows, including Mission Impossible.

7

You have a stunning grasp of the obvious.

8

And not to forget (spoiler alert):

Scooby Doo

9

To specifically address the two points above –

In Mission Impossible, the masks are not for real. They use the actor the mask is supposed to look like, and use well hidden transitions to cut just at the point where the mask is being removed, at which point they cut to a real mask that wouldn’t fool anyone in real life. I have no cites, I just work in film and tv and know how effects are done, and the transitions points in those films are fairly obvious, even though they are very well done. There’s a magazine called Cinefx you can get with extreme detail on movie fx if you want. I’m sure they’ve covered all 3 MI movies.

As for Doubtfire, I heard that Robin Williams did the same thing Dustin Hoffman did for Tootsie, just to see if he could do the role convincingly. In Tootsie, when Hoffman’s drag character meets his agent for lunch at the Russian Tea Room (I think), that was based on a real event where Hoffman went in to see if he could fool his agent, and if he could do that he’d take the film role.

But that’s not just prosthetic makeup. It’s SOME prosthetics, with standard makeup, and with a top notch whole body performance as well. In that case, the agent was fooled and Hoffman accepted the role.

Personally I think it’s much harder for a woman to pass herself off as a man, even with makeup and effects. I think Glen Close’s cameo in Hook is obvious, Victor Victoria never worked for me, even the Killing Fields has issues – I always assumed the character of Billy was a woman with a man’s nickname… took me a long time to realize the actress was actually trying to play a man!

10

I read in a Ruth Rendell book, about a male impersonator, that when a woman impersonates a man, she gets younger. That is to say, if a 40 year old woman dresses in drag, as a man, she’ll look, say, thirty. Whereas if a 40 year old man dresses in drag, as a woman, he might look around fifty. Not sure if there’s any truth to this.

I feel kind of stupid now…I never saw through Glenn Close’s “Hook” cameo.

11

LOL, sorry, didn’t mean to insult. I’m not saying it’s obviously Glen Close, but it was obviously a woman in man’s makeup, IMO. I can’t remember when I saw it if I knew it was Glen Close or not, but I was surprised they put a woman in the role, fake beard and all.

Interesting about the aging… not sure it’s true either, but certainly worth thinking about!

12

Okay, I googled Glenn Close in “Hook” and it does look kind of girly. Granted, when I first saw “Hook” I was about eight years old and not expecting to see a woman, so for years, I just saw a male pirate. There’s definitely something feminine about the pirate. Something just a teensy bit off, that maybe the pre-“Crying Game” Freudian Slit wasn’t prepared to see.

13

So glad you did that. I realized I had the killing fields movie down wrong.

http://www.themakeupgallery.info/character/male/malesmisc.htm

Shows what I mean. Movie is “Year of living dangerously”… Linda Hunt was the actress.

14

And even won an Oscar for it