The crazy story behind how the make-up on The Grinch drove everyone mad…!
A Christmas classic and favorite among families is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. With Jim Carrey and a pre-Gossip Girl Taylor Momsen, this Dr. Seuss adaptation gave us such memorable and frequently quoted lines as "But what would I wear" and "6:30, supper with me." That can't be canceled once again.
But making it must have been a living nightmare.
It was difficult for Carrey to get into character. The procedure entailed enlarging contact lenses that the artificial snow from the shoot kept getting into, face prosthetics, and being covered head to toe in green yak hair. Although lead make-up artist Rick Baker has recalled it being more like two and a half hours, Carrey characterized the procedure as "being buried alive every day" and said it took eight and a half hours in total. Learn more about
Grinch Costume.
Carrey started becoming angry with the crew as he became more and more upset with this everyday task. In an interview with Vulture, Baker's make-up artist Kazuhiro Tsuji recalled how "nasty" Carrey was to everyone. "After two weeks, we were only able to complete three days' worth of filming because he kept disappearing for no apparent reason and then wrecking everything when he reappeared. Nothing could be shot by us.
Carrey attacked Tsuji on a particularly awful day. He rises up out of nowhere in the make-up trailer, glances in the mirror, and remarks, "This color is different from what you did yesterday," pointing to his chin. I was using the same color that I did the day before. He commands, "Fix it." It's all right, I 'fixed' it. It was like that every day.
In an effort to help Carrey understand how important Tsuji was to the character's development, Baker and one of the producers gave Tsuji permission to take a break from the movie for a time. When Carrey and the director at the time, Ron Howard, phoned Tsuji after a week apart, Howard said Carrey had pledged to change and asked Tsuji to come back.
I returned with one stipulation, Tsuji stated. "When I was chatting to my friends, they all advised me to ask for a raise before returning to work. I didn't want to do it since it was unpleasant. Then it dawned on me: "How about I ask them to assist me in obtaining a green card?" Tsuji's application was granted thanks to letters of support from the directors and awards for Best Make-up at the BAFTA and Oscars; nevertheless, after the production, he began visiting a therapist and became aware of how miserable he was on set. He recalls thinking, "If I had a choice, I would not be in this mental state all the time."
Carrey, too, was experiencing his own suffering in the interim. Producer Brian Grazer hired a guy who taught CIA agents how to undergo torture to assist him to deal with the "horrifying" experience of wearing the Grinch suit, which he ultimately spent 92 days in.
