Makeup, Hair & Prosthetics Department

Makeup & Hair

From the invisible glamour work that makes actors look their best on screen, to the extraordinary prosthetic transformations that make actors unrecognisable — the makeup and hair department operates at the intersection of art, science, and craftsmanship. Kazu Hiro adding 35 years to Gary Oldman’s face as Winston Churchill, Adrien Morot creating Brendan Fraser’s 600-lb body for The Whale, and the effects team behind The Substance — these are some of cinema’s most astonishing practical achievements.

MUAHS Guild Awards Oscar Best Makeup & Hairstyling BAFTA Best Makeup & Hair
1981
First Oscar for Makeup
1999
MUAHS Awards Founded
2012
Oscar Renamed to include Hairstyling
10+
MUAHS Film Categories
Department Roles

The Makeup & Hair Department

The makeup and hair department covers beauty, character, period transformation, and special effects — often requiring teams with very different skill sets working in parallel.

Key Makeup Artist
Head of Makeup Department • Makeup Department Head
The creative lead of the makeup department. Designs the makeup looks for all principal actors, working closely with the director, DP, and costume designer to create cohesive character appearances. Manages the makeup crew on set, maintains continuity, and is responsible for all makeup applications from the first day of principal photography. Eligible for the Oscar and MUAHS Award.
Key Hairstylist
Hair Department Head
Department head for hair. Designs hair for all principal cast — sourcing or creating wigs, hairpieces, and falls, managing the styling and continuity of actor hair across the entire shoot. On period productions, the hairstylist must have deep knowledge of historical styling techniques. On contemporary productions, they must manage the complex continuity challenge of naturally growing or changing actor hair.
Special Effects Makeup Artist
SPFX Makeup Artist • SFX Makeup
Creates prosthetics, aging appliances, wounds, creature suits, and other physical character transformations. Works at the intersection of sculpting, moulding, chemistry (foam latex, silicone), and painting. A specialist role that is often hired from dedicated prosthetics studios (like Fractured FX, Legacy Effects, or Spectral Motion) rather than from within the general makeup department.
Prosthetics Designer
Creature Effects Designer
Designs and builds full prosthetic pieces — whether a subtle aging appliance that adds two decades to an actor’s face, or a full creature suit for a supernatural character. Prosthetics work begins in pre-production with lifecasts and sculptures, progressing through mould-making, material selection (silicone, foam latex, or gelatin), and painting. One of cinema’s most technically demanding craft roles.
Body Makeup Artist
Body Painter
Applies makeup to body areas beyond the face — body paint, tattoo applications, bruising and wound effects, and aging work on hands and arms that will be visible on camera. Often a specialist brought in for specific sequences.
Wig Maker / Wigmaster
Postiche Artist
Creates and maintains wigs and hairpieces for production. Hand-ventilating a film-quality wig — individually knotting thousands of hairs into a lace base — can take weeks for a single piece. Wigs are increasingly favoured over actor hair for period productions as they allow greater control over appearance and continuity.
Award Shows

How Makeup & Hair Gets Recognised

MUAHS Guild Awards
Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild • since 1999
The MUAHS Guild Awards are the most comprehensive recognition in the field — separating beauty from character, and makeup from hair, across film and television. The granularity of the categories means that invisible contemporary beauty work gets its own recognition alongside showier prosthetic transformation work.
  • Best Contemporary Makeup — Feature Film
  • Best Period and/or Character Makeup — Feature Film
  • Best Special Makeup Effects — Feature Film
  • Best Contemporary Hairstyling — Feature Film
  • Best Period and/or Character Hairstyling — Feature Film
  • Best Contemporary Makeup — TV
  • Best Period/Character Makeup — TV
  • Best Special Makeup Effects — TV
  • Best Hairstyling — TV
Annual • February • Beverly Hills
Oscar — Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences • since 1981
The Oscar for makeup is a relatively recent addition — not introduced until 1981, when An American Werewolf in London lost to Heartbeeps in a controversial decision that galvanised the profession to campaign for proper recognition. Originally called “Best Makeup,” it was renamed to include hairstyling at the 84th ceremony (2012). The category tends to reward prosthetic or character-transformation work over invisible beauty makeup.
  • Best Makeup and Hairstyling
  • Expanded to 5 nominees (from 3) beginning 2022
  • Category introduced 1981 (53rd Oscars)
Annual • March • Hollywood
BAFTA — Best Makeup and Hair
British Academy of Film & Television Arts • since 1981
BAFTA’s makeup and hair category tracks closely with the Oscar, with particular strength in recognising British prosthetics and character work. The UK has a long tradition of excellence in prosthetics, partly due to the influence of the Wig Creations and other London-based specialist studios.
  • Best Makeup and Hair
Annual • February • London
Oscar Winners Archive

Best Makeup and Hairstyling — Academy Awards

Oscar winners for Best Makeup and Hairstyling from 2010 to 2025. The category strongly favours character transformation and prosthetics work.

Ceremony Film Makeup Team
2025 · 97th The Substance Pierre-Olivier Persin, Magi Maret Kaal, Stéphanie Guillon
2024 · 96th Maestro Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou, Lori McCoy-Bell
2023 · 95th The Whale Adrien Morot, Judy Chin, Anne Marie Bradley
2022 · 94th The Eyes of Tammy Faye Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram, Justin Raleigh
2021 · 93rd Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal, Jamika Wilson
2020 · 92nd Bombshell Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan, Vivian Baker
2019 · 91st Vice Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe, Patricia Dehaney
2018 · 90th Darkest Hour Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick
2017 · 89th Suicide Squad Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini, Christopher Nelson
2016 · 88th Mad Max: Fury Road Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, Damian Martin
2015 · 87th The Grand Budapest Hotel Frances Hannon, Mark Coulier
2014 · 86th Dallas Buyers Club Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews
2013 · 85th Les Misérables Lisa Westcott, Julie Dartnell
2012 · 84th The Iron Lady Mark Coulier, J. Roy Helland
2011 · 83rd The Wolfman Rick Baker, Dave Elsey
2010 · 82nd Star Trek Barney Burman, Mindy Hall, Joel Harlow

The Prosthetics Bias: The Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling has a well-documented tendency to reward visible prosthetic transformation over invisible beauty work. Critics of the category note that films where makeup creates extraordinary faces — Darkest Hour, The Whale, Vice, Maestro — dominate the winner’s list, while the equally skilled work of making actors look naturally beautiful or naturally aged goes unrecognised. The MUAHS Guild Awards partially correct this with separate categories for contemporary and character/period work.

Notable Makeup & Hair Artists

The Most Decorated Makeup Artists & Hair Stylists

Rick Baker
American • Prosthetics & Creature Effects
The most decorated makeup artist in Oscar history with seven wins. Baker is the pioneer of silicone prosthetics and character transformation in modern Hollywood, responsible for some of cinema’s most memorable creature and character effects. He received the very first competitive Oscar for makeup in 1982 for An American Werewolf in London — the film whose exclusion from the previous year’s ceremony had prompted creation of the category.
An American Werewolf in London Harry and the Hendersons Ed Wood The Nutty Professor Men in Black The Wolfman
★ 7 Oscars • MUAHS Lifetime Achievement • Saturn Lifetime Achievement
Kazu Hiro
Japanese-American
A two-time Oscar winner celebrated for photorealistic prosthetics. His work adding the distinctive aging and bulk to Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour and then recreating Leonard Bernstein’s features on Bradley Cooper in Maestro — including the controversial prosthetic nose — are among the most talked-about makeup achievements of recent years.
Darkest Hour Bombshell Maestro
★ 2 Oscars • MUAHS Award
Adrien Morot
French-Canadian
Won the Oscar for The Whale (2023), where he created the full-body prosthetic suit that made Brendan Fraser appear to weigh 600 pounds — while still allowing a nuanced, physically active performance. The work on The Whale is regarded as a landmark in prosthetics design, requiring months of pre-production development and multiple layers of silicone appliances applied in a multi-hour process each day.
Barney’s Version Pompeii The Whale
★ 1 Oscar • MUAHS Award
Ve Neill
American
Three-time Oscar winner and one of Hollywood’s most experienced makeup artists. Neill is particularly associated with fantasy and science fiction — her work on the Pirates of the Caribbean and Beetlejuice franchises is iconic. She also won for Mrs. Doubtfire and is one of the judges on the long-running TV competition Face Off.
Beetlejuice Edward Scissorhands Mrs. Doubtfire Ed Wood Pirates of the Caribbean
★ 3 Oscars • MUAHS Lifetime Achievement