For The Smashing Machine , Benny Safdie’s sports biopic about legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne Johnson ), prosthetic makeup design guru Kazu Hiro ( The Darkest Hou r, Maestro ) was confronted with two choices: craft a close resemblance to Kerr or merely capture his essence.

“It’s always tricky when we do [someone’s] likeness because, if I have time, I could come up with more than 10 answers of which direction to go,” says Hiro. “In this case, just to show Benny, I sculpted two [makeup] versions. One as close as possible and a more subtle version.”

Subtlety proved the best choice, requiring fewer prosthetics but multiple stages of makeup to account for eye swelling, a broken nose and a lost tooth. “Of course, I could do more, but during filming, there would be a

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