Rebecca Romjin recalls the complicated makeup process she had to go through before shooting her scenes in the original X-Men trilogy.
Today fans of the genre are lucky 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 paved by the first X-Men movies, back in the early 2000s. Since then, much technical progress has been made and, although each filmmaker seems to rely more on the use of CGI effects, makeup is still a very important element in characterizing certain characters.
Specifically, the makeup was vital so that we could see Mística being transferred from the cartoons 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.
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 entire process took up to eight hours in the make-up room. "You had to put yourself in a very zen situation. And you had to get into some very awkward positions to help whoever was doing your makeup," the actress explained to FOX411.
The process developed 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 makeup, as it irritated the new Mystique's skin. "It's not that Jennifer Lawrence didn't do 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, that "evil of many..." also applies a bit, 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 whiny old couple. Like... 'uh, noUhhh understands us!'" In addition to the blue makeup, part of her characterization also included prosthetics on her face that made it difficult to act, and the contact lenses from the first film prevented her from properly seeing what he was doing.
"I couldn't see anything, and it's really hard to kick ass when you can't see what you're trying to hit. This time they did the eyes in post-production, but Alan had to bring his own. I told him it was a rite of passage." Romjin explained.
