This is Mark Coulier. He's a makeup artist with two Oscars, two BAFTAs, a ton of amazing credits — and he worked on all eight Harry Potter movies.
He recently dropped by BuzzFeed to turn us into zombies, and while he was here, we picked his brain (haha) about his experience working on the magical films.
1. The underwater scenes from Goblet of Fire were "really intense," and so was the makeup. The gills Harry grows after eating the Gillyweed took about an hour and a half to apply and were made of silicone.
2. The interior gill filaments were made out of silk so they would flow nicely and billow underwater.
3. But doing Daniel Radcliffe's makeup was a lot of fun.
4. Ralph Fiennes only had his Voldemort makeup applied 60 to 70 total times throughout all the movies.
5. And 40 to 50 of those applications were in the two final films alone.
6. It took three people two hours to apply his makeup every time — which is actually pretty quick.
7. Voldemort's makeup included eyebrow blockers, a "little intricate paint job all over him," darkening of the eyes, and a lot of vein transfers — aka temporary tattoos — as well as fake teeth and fingernails.
8. His famously creepy nose was all CGI, and it took a while to decide whether or not they wanted his nose removed or not.
9. Partly because they wanted to use as much of Ralph's real face as possible, so he was still recognizable.
10. And Fiennes loved the makeup.
11. It took about 20 people four whole months to build Aunt Marge's inflatable suit in Prisoner of Azkaban.
12. And most of that scene is actually real — there isn't much CGI.
13. The suit required three stages of prosthetics, pumps, de-gassing chambers, and large inflatable bladders.
14. The prop they made for Aragog's dead body took 15 to 20 people about six months to make.
15. It weighed around one ton and was the size of a small car, and they needed a crane to shift it on set.
16. Even though it never moved during the funeral scene, the spider had to be jointed because they wanted to change the positions during filming. So it could, technically, move.
17. Ciarán Hinds, who played Aberforth Dumbledore, was made up extensively to look more like Michael Gambon, who played his brother, Albus Dumbledore.
18. After some concept designing, Coulier sculpted Gambon's nose, a full forehead piece, and exact prosthetic replicas of Gambon's eye bags on Hinds.
19. Coulier especially wanted to nail Gambon's unique eyebrows. He used the forehead piece to shift Hinds' eyebrows up, and punched every eyebrow hair into the piece. He copied every one of Gambon's eyebrow hairs as closely as possible.
20. Coulier initially made some prosthetic noses for Alan Rickman as Professor Snape, but in the end they decided not to use a fake.
21. Gambon was a blast to work with. He used to come back from lunch and put chips in his fake beard as a joke.
22. But Coulier is unsure who made the decision to tie Dumbledore's beard.
To see some of Coulier's more recent work, check out Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, available on DVD and Blu-ray now.
