With an impressive pedigree, the talented makeup artists Love Larson and Eva von Bahr's latest work is now Oscar-nominated. Here, the duo discuss their experience on the set of Dune
When multi award-winning hair and makeup artist Donald Mowat needed help with his recent film Dune, he turned to long-time Swedish friends Love Larson & Eva von Bahr who run The Makeup Designers Sthlm AB and have shows including Euphoria, Bohemian Rhapsody, Skyfall and Hundraåringen som Klev ut Genom Fönstret och Försvann in their repertoire.
Now, this talented trio have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Larson and von Bahr took the time to speak to Vogue Scandinavia about how they got their big break in Hollywood and what it was like transforming Stellan Skarsgård into the Baron…
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VS: Congratulations on being Oscar-shortlisted for your work on Dune. How does it feel to be nominated for such a prestigious award?
Von Bahr: Well, this is our third time, but every time you feel really like, 'Oh my God, is this happening to me?' It feels surreal until you're actually sitting at the Oscars and they read out your name. It's also fantastic because we are working from a small shop in Stockholm and we've been nominated for an Academy Award.
VS: As Scandinavians was it hard to get your big break in Hollywood?
Von Bahr: With the Academy Award nominations, it's much easier because you don't have to prove who you are, and the first two nominations were for Swedish movies. But you still have to meet the right people, have a good portion of luck and naturally be super good at what you do – maybe even be a bit better if you come from another country.
Larson: We've been lucky to work with Donald [Mowat]. We met him on David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, when he was personal makeup artist to Daniel Craig, and then I helped him do stuff for Skyfall.
VS: You’re married – how does working together affect your relationship?
Von Bahr: The benefit is that when you go home, you can still discuss things. Also sometimes when we work, we don't need to speak to each other because we work intuitively well together.
VS: What was it like working on Dune with Stellan Skarsgård?
Larson: I think he tricked us into doing it! We didn't really know what we were getting into. I mean, we'd seen the old Lynch movie and we thought it could be like a costume thing and something on the face. But then it turned out that the Baron was going to be naked for like six scenes. That's when the work became something huge and it was terrifying. But it was also amazing. The sets were the biggest we've ever seen. There weren't green screens or blue screens, it was like you were there.
Von Bahr: We were so lucky to work with Stellan on this film because he loves makeup. He was very interested in what we put on and how it looked. He became the baron when he had the makeup on. I think that played a huge part in how well it turned out because he takes advantage of the actual makeup. Some actors don't do that. They feel like they're pretty restricted and they move in a weird way. Even if the make-up is super, it can turn out to be a disaster if the actor doesn't become one with the makeup.
Larson: We started in January doing Photoshop designs and I met Stellan at the end of February to do his live cast. Then we started sculpting, making molds and started producing pieces. We had six suits to make within four weeks.
VS: Dune is based on book by Frank Herbert. How did you adapt the Baron’s character for screen?
Larson: I decided not to read the book but to stay with the script. We made several Photoshop designs and sent them to Donald. The Baron came back bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, we started with red hair and everything, and then he became bold and more like a gorilla, muscled and kind of obese.
Von Bahr: The Baron was going to be so big and scary, which is also really tricky because when you see big characters, it's usually for a comedy. So to do that kind of a makeup was a challenge.
VS: Tell us a little bit about what you used to transform Skarsgård into the Baron?
Larson: I mean, he's got silicone pieces on his face, hands and neck and then we had a bodysuit made. On top of that, he has a skin that was made out of foam latex that covers him so you can see him naked. We can only use those skins once so we had to produce a lot of big skins to cover his fat suit. We would have probably asked for at least a month to make one finished skin but then we only had one month to make six or seven. Big American studios have like 60 people working there. We are a small workshop and five of us worked around the clock, but we managed it.
VS: How long, on average each day, would Skarsgård be in the chair getting his face put on from start to finish?
Larson: It was like a four hour operation because we had the skin suit and a bodysuit. When he was completely naked, it was like six to seven hours. We pre-painted all prosthetics and foam skins to save time on the day.
Von Bahr: We always left at least one hour for painting the skin. You didn't know until he got the bodysuit on if it really matched his skin tone.
Larson: The only the only part that was Stellan's own skin was his nose and upper lip. The rest were prosthetics. But since we made everything so pale, it was really tricky to match the pieces to his skin's undertones. We also had a red lipstick from Face Stockholm that we used on his eyelid to make him look even more ugly and scary.
VS: Did you come across any issues?
Von Bahr: The tricky part was when we were told that he was going to be in the bathtub. He was also going to be in the sauna. We didn't know how the skin and body suit would react.
Larson: The foam skin absorbed all the water so he got heavier and heavier. We had to kind of wrench him out of the bathtub. If it had just been water that would have been easier, but it was also oil with black pigment. So he was basically taking a bath in make-up remover.
Von Bahr: In the end, we had a stunt guy come in the day before so we could try it. We cut the suit in half and the foam soaked up all the black pigments so there were big black spots but they loved that as it looked like he'd been attacked by poisonous gas.
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