Aging Tilda Swinton: Best Makeup and Hairstyling Academy Award Goes To Grand Budapest Hotel

Noël DuanFebruary 23, 2015

54-year-old Tilda Swinton wore 11 prosthetic pieces to play 83-year-old Madame C. in Wes Anderson-directed Grand Budapest Hotel. (Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures)

When Best Actress nominee Reese Witherspoon presented the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, she made sure to say that the magic of movies would not be possible without visionary hair and makeup artists. At this years Oscars, Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier won for the Wes Anderson-directed Grand Budapest Hotel, beating out Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard for Foxcatcher, and Elisabeth Yianni-Georgiou and Davie White for Guardians of the Galaxy. This was Hannon and Coulier’s first Academy Award, but the second win for the film tonight. All three nominated films exemplified excellent usage of prosthetics—but not surprisingly, the academy was charmed by Grand Budapest Hotel.

In a recent panel discussion, Hannon said that Tilda Swinton was the perfect person to age with makeup, because she has “such a fine bone structure.” In the film, the 54-year-old actress was aged to become 83-year-old heiress Madame D. She wore 11 prosthetic pieces, which included two prosthetic hands, a cheek piece, a chin piece, a forehead piece, nose pieces, and long earlobes. The look took hours to create and was an example of the magic of makeup.