How Andra Day, Sacha Baron Cohen and More Oscar Nominees Transformed

Glenn Close, Leslie Odom Jr., Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried also talk about how they used external elements — costumes, wigs, makeup and cigarettes — to capture the essence of their roles.

Published on April 16, 2021

• Andra Day, 'The United States of Billie Holiday'

  

  Day was introduced to Billie Holiday’s music by a musical theater instructor when she was a child and has been obsessed with the star ever since. “I think that’s why, when they approached me for this movie, I didn’t want to do it because my opinion of her was so high,” Day says. After landing the role, the singer and actress dove into the vast archives on Holiday, listening to all of her interviews and studio recordings as well as researching the FBI, the war on drugs and heroin addiction. To really get into the icon’s mind-set, Day began wearing Twi perfume and purchased lingerie from vintage brands that Holiday had loved, as well as smoking for the first time in her life. “I don’t have a personal frame of reference for what myself, Andra Day, is like on cigarettes,” she says of the immersion. “If I were to pick up a cigarette right now and smoke it, the headspace that it drops me in … I literally do feel like I become her.”

• Amanda Seyfried, 'Mank'

  

  Becoming Marion Davies, the 1920s actress commonly thought to be the inspiration behind Susan Alexander Kane in Citizen Kane, was a unique and mind-altering experience for Seyfried. “It was the most transformed I’ve ever felt,” she says. At first, Seyfried was concerned with fitting into the era, but the costuming and makeup for Davies drew her into the role. “The first time I put the whole thing on for the camera test, it was these big costume jewelry rings, and this fake fur went around my neck and the wig. The feeling of no hair on my neck absolutely impacted how I felt as soon as I put it on.” There is no footage of Davies outside of her film roles, so Seyfried was in the dark about her personal quirks and mannerisms. She credits Jack Fincher’s script for guiding her portrayal. “The script was so solid, and clearly David [Fincher] had done his homework,” she says. “The relationship between Marion and Mank paints a picture of the relationship between these people so clearly.”

• Glenn Close, 'Hillbilly Elegy’

  

  Close read J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy and went about searching for Mamaw’s essence, speaking to the Vance family about how she walked and smoked, how she sat. But costuming and makeup were the key to the character. “In life, she was a much bigger woman than I, so Virginia Johnson, our costumer, and I worked hard to get the right underpinnings to convey that — her breasts and stomach, the man-sized T-shirts and jeans,” Close says. “I went to [makeup artist] Matthew Mungle and asked him to make very subtle changes to my ears and nose, which helped me to not be distracted by my own face and stay true to Mamaw. Martial Corneville built a brilliant wig. During the filming, Eryn Krueger Mekash did a dazzling job, applying the prosthetics and painting my skin, and Patti Dehaney dressed the wigs and masterfully styled them for the various scenes I was in.” A cigarette became the most vital prop. Says Close, “Mamaw was known to have two going at the same time — to say she was a chain-smoker is an understatement.”

• Sacha Baron Cohen, 'The Trial of Chicago 7'

  

  Baron Cohen, a known master of disguise, credits wardrobe as his way into a character, so much so that to play activist Abbie Hoffman, it was “down to the very underwear that Abbie was wearing, I wanted it to be authentic to Abbie Hoffman,” which is “very different to the underwear I wear for Borat.” After months of research, watching and reading everything Hoffman had ever been a part of, Baron Cohen worked with the costume department to reflect real-life “costume choices that seemed clownish [but] were actual indicators to Abbie’s rebelliousness, to his buffoonery, to his attempt to undermine the establishment.” For private moments in which he was more reserved, “I ensured that the costumes were less flamboyant, more normal.” This public-private divide deeply informed the portrayal of Hoffman, who battled depression for most of his life. Says Baron Cohen, “I wanted to capture that seriousness and that subtlety, the contrast between his public dynamism and his private pain.”

• Gary Oldman, 'Mank'

  

  With no footage of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz from which to base his performance, Oldman turned to recordings of Mank’s younger brother Joseph L. Mankiewicz “as a springboard” for his vocal performance, with his own additional flare: “You’ve got your biography, you’ve got your scripts, you’ve got your Joe Mankiewicz, and then you just use your, as SpongeBob used to say, imagination.” His performance also was aided by Mank’s costume, and he put on some extra pounds to fill it out. “I wanted that slight sort of pear shape, figuring that he was an alcoholic. He was a big whiskey drinker,” Oldman says. “Once I started getting that tummy going and the way the shirt fit and the suspenders ­— we made the jacket slightly too tight as if it was a jacket that [had] once fitted him perfectly but he was now growing out of it.” Plus, there was the careful balance of keeping Mank funny and likable while delivering his scathing one-liners: “Like a lot of people when they’re in their cups, he could at times be pretty mean.”

• Leslie Odom Jr., 'One Night in Miami'

  

  Odom, who plays late singer Sam Cooke in Regina King’s directorial debut, says that channeling the “King of Soul” was all about the sound, with hours spent listening to his records for “things that get coded in the music.” He also practiced with dialect coach Tre Cotton to perfect Cooke’s exact idiolect: Together, they worked on certain phrases and exercises to “change my natural speaking voice to sound closer to Sam’s speaking voice, and that made me feel the most like him,” the Hamilton alum says. And though Cooke is most famous for his performances and onstage persona, Odom wanted to make sure that his “argumentative side” was illustrated after reading and hearing stories from his loved ones that “he was not the easiest to be around always,” which is highlighted in the film in his face-off with Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Malcolm X. “His experience as a businessperson, as a Black man, during the time in which he lived, meant that he was made of something, and it was not easy to pull one over on Sam.”

  This story first appeared in an April stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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