For the role, the Actor was outfitted entirely in prosthetics, make up, costume…No CGI. Here’s what went into 7 hours of hair, makeup and costume; every scheduled shooting day.
J. Edgar Hoover was known for his bulldog jaw, which is why DiCaprio wore dental appliances to push out the lower part of his face. According to Grigg, he also had terrible teeth. “He didn’t like to show them,” she says. “I only saw one bit of footage where you could see his teeth, and they were dreadful. He had them all replaced in his 30s and wore dentures the rest of his life.”
The uppers and lowers were for old Hoover, and “Leo asked to wear the lower one for the younger scenes. I think it helped him change his speech,” says Grigg.
The Hair: For the older Hoover, DiCaprio wore a full silicone bald cap, with individual hairs punched in. Then a toupee was glued on top and the two were blended together.
The Eyes: The actor wore two pairs of contact lenses, one on top of the other. Brown contacts were overlaid with lenses that yellowed and aged the whites of his eyes.
The Skin: Ultra-soft silicone appliances were applied all over the actor’s face. “The fact that they are so soft makes them hard to apply. They are like pieces of Jello, but they enable the face to move like real skin,” says makeup artist Sian Grigg.
The Nose: Because one side of Hoover’s nose protruded (the result of an infected boil when he was young), Grigg inserted a circular augmenter in one of DiCaprio’s nostrils to make it look slightly off-kilter.
When it came to the clothes for the film, a big conundrum for BAFTA-nominated costume designer Deborah Hopper (Changeling) was DiCaprio’s padding. Grigg applied molded latex on his body so that it felt like his own flesh. He wore a small amount of padding as young Hoover, but the fat suit was enlarged and included latex arm pieces as he aged. Given Hoover’s increasingly portly physique, it’s hard to think of him as a fashion plate. But think again. Hopper’s intense research revealed that Hoover and his protege, Clyde Tolson, were keenly aware of — one might say obsessed with — their images. “Hoover and Tolson were extremely meticulous about their appearances,” says Hopper. “They wore pocket squares, watch fobs, ties, tie tacks and cuff links, and Hoover was very particular about his hats.”
In the film, Tolson, played by Armie Hammer, brings Hoover to his tailor at Garfinckel’s department store to be fitted for his first double-breasted suit, just as Tolson did in real life. DiCaprio wears 80 suits, several custom-made from vintage fabrics. Rather than crafting a similar number of pairs of shoes, Hopper trimmed her expenses by buying classic wing tips, lace-ups and spectators — which pass for period footwear — from Wisconsin-based shoe company Stacy Adams.
The designer — who also oversaw costumes for more than 3,000 extras and 130 speaking roles — used color palettes for each decade to help the viewer keep track of the time from the ’60s to the ’20s and ’30s and back again. The ’20s feature brown, nubby-textured suits. In the ’30s, the dark navy and gray wool suits are showier, some with bold stripes and textures. In the ’60s, sleeker suits come in smooth solids like charcoal, navy and brown.
“Having worked with Clint for so long, I also know that he prefers a muted palette,” says Hopper, who was with the director on Mystic River, Gran Torino and Million Dollar Baby. As Hopper sees it, the film, in addition to being a fascinating American political drama, is an “American men’s fashion history.”
Share this please.
