Actress Rebecca Romjin recalls the complicated makeup process she had to go through before shooting her scenes in the original X-Men trilogy.
Nowadays, fans of the genre are lucky enough to be able to enjoy several superhero movies a year and to be able to see their favorite heroes on the big and small screen. To a large extent, the path to live-action superhero cinema as we know it today was opened by the first X-Men movies, back in the early 2000s. Since then, much technical progress has been made and, although each Once the filmmakers seem to lean more on the use of CGI effects, makeup continues to be a very important element to characterize certain characters.
Specifically, the make-up was vital so that we could see Mística being transferred from the vignettes to her flesh and blood counterpart. Of course, Rebecca Romjin, the actress who played the mutant in the original X-Men trilogy, remembers the complicated process as hell.
In order to make up her entire body, Romjin would start her shooting day at midnight, so that she would be ready to start shooting her scenes at 9 in the morning. The total process involved up to eight hours in the make-up room. "You had to put yourself in a very zen situation. And you had to put yourself in some very awkward positions to help whoever was doing your makeup," the actress explained to FOX411.
The process unfolded over the years, and by the time it was Jennifer Lawrence's turn, they were able to create a special outfit for her instead of the makeup, which irritated the new Mystique's skin. "It's not that Jennifer Lawrence wasn't great, she's phenomenal. I love being able to share the role with her, it couldn't be cooler. But I think spending nine hours in makeup makes you the villain you need to be Mystique." Romjin joked.
In this case, a bit of that "evil of many..." also applies, since Romjin and Alan Cummings, who played Nightcrawler in X-Men 2, had to go through a similar process for their characterization. "We hung out together like a complaining old couple. Like... 'uhhh, nobody understands us!'" In addition to the blue makeup, part of her characterization also included prosthetics on her face that made acting difficult, and the contact lenses from the first film prevented her from seeing what he was doing properly.
"I couldn't see anything, and it's really hard to kick ass when you don't see what you're trying to hit. They did the eyes in post-production this time, but Alan had to bring his own. I told him it was a rite of passage." Romjin explained.
