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- "I think at our peak we had, not even counting the people in the makeup trailers, probably about 45 makeup artists working with background players on some."
- ―Ve Neill
Ve Neill, born Mary Flores (1951) is an American makeup artist. Over the course of her career, Neill had won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, two Saturn Awards, the BAFTA Award and Makeup Artist of the Year from the Foreign Press, with a total of 18 international nominations for her creative and innovative makeup. She had won three Academy Award, for the films Beetlejuice, Mrs. Doubtfire and Ed Wood.
Other notable films she has worked on are Edward Scissorhands, Hook, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Austin Powers in Goldmember, The Hunger Games and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
One of the most renowned makeup artists in motion pictures, Ve Neill (Key Makeup Artist and Makeup Effects Designer) was nominated for her work, along with key hair stylist and designer Martin Samuel, for a Best Makeup Academy Award for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. They also won a BAFTA Award for their work on that film. They returned to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which brought her and Samuel yet another nomination from the BAFTA Awards.
Biography[]
Career[]
Over the course of her career, Ve Neill has won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, two Saturn Awards, the BAFTA Award and Makeup Artist of the Year from the Foreign Press, with a total of 18 international nominations for her creative and innovative makeup. From her early career as a rock 'n' roll stylist, Ve Neill began to develop her skills as a designer and makeup artist. Specializing in concept, design and execution, Neill entered the film industry and discovered a talent for extreme fantasy makeup. These unique skills put her at the forefront of the early 1980s film extravaganzas. Neill created space travelers for the first Star Trek film and for the hit comedy Galaxy Quest, rock and roll vampires for Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys and visions of the afterlife for Tim Burton's wacky comedy Beetlejuice, her first Oscar. In addition, she turned Robin Williams into a Scottish nanny for Mrs. Doubtfire (Neill's second Oscar win), Martin Landau into horror king Bela Lugosi for Burton's Ed Wood (her third Academy Award) and brought to life an onslaught of villains, beauties and superheroes for Burton's Batman Returns and Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. She gave Patricia Arquette the Stigmata, transformed Christine Baranski into The Grinch's sexy girlfriend, aged Johnny Depp 60 years for the film Blow and turned Jude Law into the perfect Love Robot for Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Some of her other credits have included Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Danny DeVito's Matilda and Hoffa, and Spielberg's Amistad. Neill continued her illustrious career with an assortment of new characters ranging from a manic 100-year-old lady in Duplex, possessed beings in Constantine and turning Johnny Depp into the infamous Demon Barber of Fleet Street for the film Sweeney Todd.
In 2021, Neill started her own school, Legends Makeup Academy in Los Angeles, California.[1]
Pirates of the Caribbean[]
One of the most renowned makeup artists in motion pictures, Ve Neill served as Key Makeup Artist for the Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy. Ve Neill was credited as Make-Up Supervisor in The Curse of the Black Pearl, later as the Make-Up Department Head as well as the "Make-Up Effects Created by" credit for Dead Man's Chest and At World's End. Ve Neill also shared being a Key Make-Up Artist and Designer with Joel Harlow.[2][3] Along with key hair stylist and designer Martin Samuel, Ve Neill was nominated for a Best Makeup Academy Award for The Curse of the Black Pearl. They also won a BAFTA Award for their work on the film. They returned to Dead Man's Chest, which brought her and Samuel yet another nomination from the BAFTA Awards.
For At World's End, makeup department head and makeup effects creator Ve Neill, along with makeup effects supervisor Joel Harlow, had their hands full once again taking perfectly reasonable-looking human beings into their trailer and then unleashing an astounding assortment of international pirates, soldiers, creatures and more proletarian citizens of the Caribbean, Asia and Great Britain upon the world. "I think at our peak we had, not even counting the people in the makeup trailers, probably about 45 makeup artists working with background players on some," says Neill.[3]
Some of the biggest and most difficult days were actually on the Universal Studios backlot, where Neill, Harlow and company were weaving their magical transformations for the Singapore sequence. "We did lots of prosthetics for Singapore. When Sao Feng's pirates are in the bathhouse, they actually have mushrooms growing out of them, so as to make them appear as though they have been sitting in there for months on end. We wanted to give the Asian pirates, like the other pirates, a really aged, roughed-out look. We make them tan, dirty, stipple to give them a more rugged appearance, and lots of dirt. Oh, and don't forget the rotten teeth. On 'The Curse of the Black Pearl,' we were painting their teeth, which became a little bit of a drama. Gore would be getting ready to roll, somebody would go and eat an apple, and all of a sudden they didn't have rotten teeth anymore. So what we did for 'Dead Man's Chest' and 'At World's End' was to have a traveling lab with us for dental prosthetics."[3]
As befits his continued deterioration and merging with the ship to which he's enslaved, Bootstrap Bill "does progress quite a bit in the third film," notes Neill. "And unlike Davy Jones and the other members of his crew, it's all makeup on Bootstrap, and no CGI. He's a progressive silicone makeup in At World's End until he's pretty much covered up, with very little of his own face left by the time he reaches what we called 'stage 6.'" Stellan Skarsgård, the distinguished Swedish actor who portrays Bootstrap Bill, enthused that he had fun spending more time in the makeup chair than in front of the camera. "Stellan was really into it," continues Neill. "What a great guy. He was so patient and willing to sit for hours. He said that it helped him feel the character. But it was really difficult for Stellan to go through all those stages." Another actor who got the full treatment from Neill was Chow Yun-Fat, whose handsome, world-famous visage was completely altered into a shaven-head, scarred scoundrel of the seas for Sao Feng. "Chow was a lot of fun. We shaved him, and he grew his own mustache and beard, which we then augmented. He also has a fabulous tattoo, which was designed by Ken Diaz, who runs background makeup and is a master tattoo artist."
The stars of At World's End also undergo some changes, except Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. "Gore and Johnny both agreed that he has to be exactly who he is, without any changes," continues Ve Neill. "It's great to have Geoffrey Rush back, and he's completely fabricated. Beard, mustache, sideburns, wig, scar...all appliances. And because Geoffrey isn't very old, I also do a big aging stipple all the way around so he gets all crusty and wrinkly. Keira has gotten more rugged as Elizabeth. She's not that beautiful, pale-skinned little princess who we started off with in ‘Dead Man's Chest' at the wedding altar. She gets very tan, and dirty like the boys, quite womanly and brazen. And as Will, Orlando has a darker, moodier look."[3]
"I think we all work together really well," notes Neill about working with chief hairstylist Martin Samuel. "It starts with costume designer Penny Rose, and we follow suit from there." Samuel and his team provide the hundreds, if not thousands, of hair designs, wigs, extensions for a kaleidoscopic array of characters, from the traditional "pigtails" of the Chinese pirates to Admiral James Norrington's powdered wig.[3]
Pirates of the Caribbean work[]
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - Key Make-Up Artist, Make-Up Supervisor
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - Make-Up Department Head, "Make-Up Effects Created by" and Key Make-Up Artist/Designer
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - Make-Up Department Head, "Make-Up Effects Created by" and Key Make-Up Artist/Designer
Gallery[]
Some photos taken with Ve Neill or posted on her social media posts.
External links[]
Ve Neill on Wikipedia- Ve Neill at the Internet Movie Database
- Ve Neill - Facebook
- Ve Neill (@therealve) - Instagram
- Ve Neill at Batman Anthology Wiki
